Integrations
Connecting to Google Drive
Find files by what is in them, read them for answers, and put new ones where they belong.
Every shared Drive is full of files nobody can find, because they were named by whoever made them on the day they made them. Content search fixes that, and it is most of what this connection gets used for.
One connection covers four products
Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs share a single Google Workspace grant, so connecting any one of them connects all four. Google Sheets is separate.
What it can do
- Search for files by name or by content, across every connected account at once.
- Read and download files, including exporting a Google file to another format.
- Upload and create files.
- Update, copy and delete.
- Organise. Move files, and work with shared drives.
- Manage sharing. Read, grant and revoke permissions.
How to connect
Open Integrations
app.ginicomputer.com → Integrations → Google Workspace.
Authorise with Google
Google's consent screen lists what is granted.
Come back
Gini can now find and read your files.
What changes anything
| Operation | What it does | Changes anything? |
|---|---|---|
| Search files | Find by name or content | No |
| Get file metadata | Read details about a file | No |
| Download or export a file | Read the content | No |
| List shared drives | See what exists | No |
| List permissions | See who can access a file | No |
| Create or upload a file | Add a new file | Yes |
| Update or copy a file | Change or duplicate | Yes |
| Delete a file | Remove it | Yes |
| Create, update or delete a shared drive | Change team storage | Yes |
| Grant or revoke a permission | Change who can see a file | Yes, and sharing outside stops for approval |
Sharing is the row to read
Granting a permission can expose a file to someone outside your company, and that is not undone by deleting the link afterwards. Sharing externally waits for a person. Read who it names before you approve it.
What it's great for
- Finding the thing. "Find last quarter's board deck and pull the retention slide." Naming conventions fail; content search does not. This is the single most used thing here.
- Reading a stack. "Read the three vendor proposals in this folder and compare them on price, term and support."
- Answering from documents. "What does our security questionnaire say about subprocessors?"
- Putting the output somewhere durable. Ask Gini to save a report to Drive and it lives past the Slack thread.
- Cleaning up. "Which files in this folder have not been touched in a year?"
Example routine
Filing what arrives, so a shared folder stays navigable:
- Each morning, look at what landed in the shared intake folder.
- Read each file enough to classify it.
- Move it into the right subfolder, and rename it to the team's convention.
- Post anything ambiguous in the channel rather than guessing.
Good to know
- File search spans every connected account. It is the only Google read that does. Every other operation names one account, so if you have several connected, a search finds the file and the read that follows knows which account it came from. That combination is why "find the deck" works without you saying where it lives.
- It works within your access. A file shared with a group you are not in is invisible to Gini too.
- Deleting is real. It goes to your Drive trash rather than vanishing, but ask for a list before any bulk delete.
- Large files cost more to read. Reading a 200-page PDF is real work. See How credits work.
Troubleshooting
Gini can't find a file you can see
Check that the connected account can open it. A file shared to a group rather than to you directly is sometimes invisible to the connection even when you can see it in the web UI.
It found the wrong version
Two files with the same name, usually. Ask for the link or the folder, or say "the most recently modified one".
It cannot read a file it found
Some formats do not export cleanly, and a file owned elsewhere may be view-restricted in a way that blocks download. Gini says which it hit.