AI tools for the way we work

This training brings the AI tools used across day-to-day work into one practical resource: when to use Gemini inside Google Workspace, when to reach for broader Gemini and Gemini Enterprise capabilities, and how Rovo improves requirements, ticket quality, testing and change management inside Jira. Throughout, the focus is practical: pick the right tool, write a clear prompt, verify the output, and keep a person accountable for the result.

What this helps you do

Summarize a long thread without leaving the inbox

Gemini can summarize an email or thread and surface the important points. Use it to catch up quickly, then open the original messages before relying on dates, commitments, or decisions.

Source: Google Workspace, Gemini in Gmail.

Core moves

• Summarize any thread: click "Summarize this email," or ask "What's this email about?" in the side panel — works mid-thread too ("What did I miss?").
• Help Me Write ✦: click the pencil in Compose, type a rough instruction ("Decline meeting, suggest Thursday"), then use Formalize / Shorten / Elaborate to iterate. Free for all Gmail users, not just paid tiers.
• Proofread: grammar and tone check on a full draft (AI Pro/Ultra feature).
• Suggested Replies: reads the whole thread, not just the last line — hover to preview the full draft before you tap.
• @ file reference: in Help Me Write or the side panel, type @ + filename to pull a Drive file's content directly into your draft — the single most underused Gmail trick.
• "Catch me up": ask the side panel any time for a live inbox digest, generated on demand.

Vendor / quote comparison

Returning from leave

Decline / reschedule

Pull a file into a draft

Catch-up digest

Hidden features almost nobody uses

• Keyboard shortcuts are off by default: Settings → General → Keyboard shortcuts → On. Then Shift+/ opens the full cheat sheet in-app.
• Schedule Send cap: 100 scheduled emails at once — plan bulk sends accordingly.
• Templates: off by default (Settings → Advanced); ~50 templates/account — pair with a Gem for your most common reply types instead of maintaining dozens of templates.
• in:snoozed surfaces everything you've snoozed in one view.

Core keyboard shortcuts (once enabled)

What this helps you do

Start, refine, and summarize documents with Gemini

Gemini in Docs can generate a first draft, work from files in Drive, refine existing writing, and summarize a document. Treat generated text as a working draft and confirm facts before publishing.

Source: Google Workspace, Gemini in Docs.

Core moves

• Help Me Write / Create: generate a full doc from a description — Gemini pulls the real referenced files, not placeholder text.
• Highlight-and-refine toolbar: select text → Rephrase / Shorten / Elaborate / Bulletize / Summarize / More Formal / More Casual. Prefer this over regenerating the whole doc — it preserves what already works.
• Help Me Understand: select dense text → right-click → get a plain-English explanation without leaving the doc.
• Multi-file @ references: reference several files with @ in one prompt.

Full doc from a description

Multi-file summary + draft

Power moves most people skip

• Match writing style: Side Panel → "Match writing style throughout" scans a multi-author doc and unifies tone.
• Auto-updating summary: type @AI summary inline — it regenerates as the doc changes; useful at the top of any long-lived report.
• Audio version of a doc: generate a spoken read-out with a selectable persona and adjustable speed — good for reviewing a draft hands-free.
• Table-to-narrative: paste a data table, ask "Turn this into 3 paragraphs of executive commentary."

What this helps you do

Build structured spreadsheets from a prompt

Gemini in Sheets helps structure spreadsheets, write formulas, summarize information, and surface patterns. AI-generated calculations and interpretations still need validation before they go into a report.

Source: Google Workspace, Gemini in Sheets.

Core moves

Build a full sheet from one prompt

Gemini proposes a plan, you approve it, then it builds the structure, formulas, and chart. Always sanity-check the formulas.

Natural-language cell formula

Consolidate multiple sources (high-demand use case)

• Natural-language formulas: click a cell → side panel → describe the logic in plain English ("look up the employee name from Sheet2 and return their department"). Works for SUMIFS, ARRAYFORMULA, IMPORTRANGE, QUERY.
• Fill with Gemini: start a column with a few examples → click Fill → it recognizes the pattern (categorize, extract, reformat, score) and completes the rest.

Power moves

• Chart from a description: select a range → side panel → describe the chart. Charts are fully editable and auto-regenerate as data changes.
• Explain this formula: click any complex formula cell → plain-English breakdown before you trust it.
• Error auditing: ask Gemini to audit the sheet for inconsistencies, blank cells, or data-type mismatches.
• Cross-sheet analysis: "Compare Sheet1 (Q1) and Sheet2 (Q2) and tell me which 3 items grew the most" — verify results on anything business-critical.
• Pull Gmail data into Sheets: "Create a sheet from all invoice emails I received this month."

What this helps you do

Create and refine presentation content inside Slides

Gemini in Slides generates slide content and imagery from prompts and Drive context. Use it to speed up a first version, then apply your organization's message, branding, and evidence.

Source: Google Workspace, Gemini in Slides.

The 5-minute deck workflow

• In-Slides generation: side panel → describe the deck → Gemini asks clarifying questions, proposes an outline for approval, then builds a fully native, editable deck.
• Match your brand automatically: attach an existing deck as a style reference: "Apply CURE's brand colors and use our default template."
• Canvas alternative route: gemini.google.com Canvas mode can also build a full deck from a topic or an uploaded doc, then export to Slides in one click.

Deck from a prompt

Power moves

• Refine slide-by-slide: "Make slide 3 simpler: bullet points only," "Add a chart from this data," "Remove the jargon on slide 2."
• Speaker notes on demand: "Write presenter notes for each slide as if I'm briefing a non-technical executive audience."
• Formatting tricks: "Make all slides consistent with slide 1's style," "Simplify each slide to max 3 bullets."

• Vids turns a text prompt into a produced video: storyboard, script, video clips per scene, and AI voiceover narration — all from a written brief.
• Typical workflow: generate storyboard → generate/refine script → choose audio and video style per scene → export.
• Best use case: turning a finished strategy doc or deck into a short internal explainer video for stakeholders who won't read the full document.
• Vids ↔ Slides crossover: convert a Slides deck into a Vids video with a presenter avatar.

Explainer from a doc

Meet

• Take Notes for Me: Activities panel → Take Notes for Me. Transcribes live, writes a structured summary, tags action items with owners, saves to Drive and attaches to the Calendar invite.
• Decisions log: notes include a dedicated Decisions section with status tags — Aligned, Needs Further Discussion, Disagreed, Shelved.
• Join-late catch-up: click "Summary so far" or ask the sidebar what was discussed before you joined.
• Works for in-person meetings too: open the Meet app → Take Notes for Me, without an active Meet call.
• Translated live captions: 60+ languages, each participant reads in their own preferred language.

Meeting recap for stakeholders

Calendar

• Describe, don't search: "Schedule a 45-min debrief with Ali and Marcus next week, avoid Monday mornings."
• Full event creation from a sentence: "Lunch with Nick downtown" generates date, time, and location suggestions.
• In-context conflict resolution: Gemini proactively suggests alternate times inside a conflicting event.

Drive

• Ask Gemini in Drive: natural-language Q&A over your Drive content without opening files — "Find the vendor contract from March," "Show me documents Sarah shared about the rebrand."
• AI Overview in search results: search normally, and an AI Overview card summarizes the most relevant info at the top, with citations back to source files.
• Drive Projects: lock a fixed set of files/folders/emails as a persistent, shareable context — a team can have the same grounded conversation over the same file set without re-uploading, and files never leave their original location or permissions.
• Video & document analysis: double-click a video in Drive → Ask Gemini → "Summarize this video" or "List all action items from this recording."
• Never copies your files: Drive's Gemini respects existing permissions and DLP controls by design.

Find and cite the source

Chat

• Summarize a Space: "Summarize the last week of conversation in this channel" or "What decisions were made this week?"
• Ask Gemini across apps: "What did we decide about the vendor in our last meeting + the email thread?" — Chat is a selectable source inside the main Gemini app too.
• AI-drafted replies: click the star icon next to the reply box for longer, context-aware draft options.

See the workflow

Deep Research plans before it produces the report

Use this when a question needs evidence from many sources, not just a quick answer. Gemini plans the research, works across sources, and returns a structured, citable report for you to review.

Official Google visual: Deep Research.

Deep Research

• Autonomous multi-source research agent: plan → search across dozens/hundreds of sources → iterate → deliver a cited report, typically 5–20 minutes.
• Best for: competitive/market research, literature reviews, "give me everything on X with citations." Overkill for a quick single-fact lookup.
• Can pull from your connected Gmail/Drive/Chat, not just the open web, when Workspace is connected.

Canvas

• Interactive workspace inside Gemini chat: live-preview HTML/React apps, Python scripts, infographics, quizzes — and full Slides decks exportable in one click.
• Can turn a Deep Research report directly into an app, infographic, or interactive quiz.
• Can turn a hand-drawn wireframe or whiteboard photo into a functional prototype UI — useful for early-stage mockups and presentation support.
• Available on every plan tier — usage limits scale with tier, not feature access.

Gems

• What it is: a saved persona + instructions + optional reference files, reusable forever instead of re-explaining context every time.
• Build approach: copy one of Google's premade Gems (Brainstormer, Career guide, Coding partner, Learning coach, Writing editor) and rewrite the instructions for your recurring task.
• Ground it with knowledge files: upload a style guide, FAQ, or product spec so outputs stay on-brand and on-policy.
• Sharing: Gems can be shared within CURE via link.

For technical and IT teams

Coding, debugging, and troubleshooting were among the most-requested AI skills at CURE. The Coding partner Gem, plus general chat, can explain an error, review a snippet, or draft boilerplate — always with a human confirming the change before it ships.

Debugging with a guardrail

Extensions / Connected Apps

• Invoke with @AppName: @Gmail, @Drive, @Calendar, @YouTube, @Maps, and community-built extensions.
• Must be turned on first: Settings → Extensions/Connected Apps.

Ground your AI in sources

Organize a project once, work from the same trusted sources

Add the material you want the AI to rely on, then ask questions, create summaries, and build learning outputs from that defined source set. Every answer comes with a citation.

Official Google visual: Gemini Notebook.

• What it's for: grounded research over a fixed, private set of your own sources (PDFs, Docs, audio, YouTube links, Drive files) — every answer cites its source, sharply reducing hallucination risk versus open chat.
• Audio Overviews: generates a 5–30 minute two-host discussion of your sources; Interactive Mode lets you pause and ask a question mid-way.
• Mind Maps: auto-generated visual maps of how concepts across your sources relate.
• Study tools: auto-generated study guides, glossaries, practice questions, flashcards.

CURE use cases

• Onboarding: upload all onboarding docs once — new hires query it directly, with citations.
• Competitive intel: upload industry reports, ask "what are the 3 biggest threats competitors highlight?"
• Briefing guides: generate a briefing guide from a stack of source docs for a client presentation.

From prompt to automation

Describe the workflow in plain language, then let Studio build the flow

Workspace Studio turns repeatable work into AI-powered flows. Start with the business outcome, review the steps Studio generates, and keep approvals or high-impact decisions with people.

Official Google Workspace visual: Workspace Studio.

Build multi-step, cross-app automations in plain English — no code. Agents can span Gmail + Docs + Sheets + Calendar + Meet and reason over unstructured data, not just follow rigid rules.

High-value examples

• Chrome Auto Browse: Gemini autonomously navigates websites to complete multi-step tasks — research, form-filling, price monitoring. Pauses for confirmation on sensitive steps (login, purchase). Preview-grade: verify results, don't set-and-forget on anything financial.
• Gemini in Chrome side panel: persistent sidebar that answers questions about the current page or other open tabs; highlight text → "Ask Gemini"; Alt+Q opens the panel with your selection pre-loaded.

CROSS-CUTTING

Decision framework: which tool, when

The single most useful table in this training. Check it before defaulting to plain chat out of habit.

CROSS-CUTTING

Prompt mastery for business users

The formula: Context + Task + Constraints + Format

• Context: who you are, what this is for, who reads it.
• Task: the exact action, with a verb — "draft," "summarize," "compare," not "help with."
• Constraints: tone, length, audience, what to avoid — make these objective ("3 sentences or fewer") not vague ("keep it brief"). Vague constraints raise hallucination risk because the model fills the gap with invented specifics.
• Format: bullet list, table, email, word count.

Weak vs. strong

Advanced moves

• Role-prompting: "You are a skeptical CFO reviewing this budget..." changes tone and rigor dramatically — this is literally how a Gem's persona is built.
• Few-shot examples: paste 1–3 example outputs as a target format for Gemini to imitate.
• Fixing a bad output — don't restart: point at the specific wrong part ("the tone in paragraph 3 is too casual") and use "Double-check response" before trusting any number or citation.
• Iterate out loud: "Good — now make it shorter and lead with the recommendation," rather than a fresh, unrelated prompt.
• Ask for options: "Give me 3 versions: one formal, one casual, one very brief" when you're unsure what tone lands best.
• Chain prompts across apps: Deep Research report → Canvas turns it into a deck outline → export to Slides → Gemini in Slides adds theme and notes → Gemini in Gmail drafts the distribution email referencing the deck via @-mention.

CROSS-CUTTING

AI landscape at CURE

Where Gemini fits in CURE's AI toolkit

Hallucination: the practical version

• Gemini generates the statistically most plausible next words, not verified facts — it states falsehoods with the same confident tone as truths.
• Highest-risk content: precise statistics, anything from the last 6–12 months, named citations, legal/medical/financial specifics.
• Mitigation habits: use "Double-check response," independently verify any number or quote before it reaches a client-facing document, prefer Gemini Notebook over open chat when facts must be traceable, and be specific — ambiguous prompts are themselves an accuracy risk.

What NOT to paste into any AI tool

Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't want a human reviewer at Google to read it, don't paste it into a consumer-tier tool — and apply the same NDA/privilege-conscious judgment inside the enterprise tool too.

Enterprise vs. consumer Gemini

• CURE's Workspace Business/Enterprise Gemini: prompts, outputs, and Workspace data are not used to train Google's models and are not human-reviewed by default — materially different from a personal or free consumer account.
• IT/Admin console gives CURE full control: enable/disable Gemini per app per team, DLP and Information Rights Management can block Gemini from touching labeled-sensitive content, org-wide usage reporting.

• Google-quality search over CURE's internal data with Gemini's reasoning layered on top — it retrieves facts and synthesizes answers from across the organization rather than just listing links.
• Pre-built connectors for Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira, and Confluence let people query emails, contracts, and technical documentation from one interface.
• Ask a question and the assistant summarizes what it finds; ask follow-ups to refine the answer.
• Provide context by uploading files or @-mentioning specific people and documents.
• User-directed saved memories: explicitly tell the AI to save or discard specific facts, overriding inferred preferences.

Cross-system client prep

Gemini Enterprise ships with specialized pre-built agents, ready on day one. Find all of them in the Agents tab.

Automates complex information gathering: plans, searches internal and external sources, filters noise, and synthesizes a comprehensive, fully cited report.

Upload reports, papers, or videos and it instantly becomes an expert on your information — ask questions, get audio summaries, create decks and FAQs.

Facilitates brainstorming by generating and ranking concepts against each other so teams filter through noise to the most viable options.

Lets people "talk" to their data using natural language, without formulas or SQL — ingests CSVs, Sheets, or Excel and turns them into charts and narrative.

Data Insights: expense trend

Go to Gemini Enterprise and click Agents. The gallery organizes every available agent into three categories:

Agent Designer is a no-code builder: define the agent's role, give it access to specific files, and share it with the team — no developer required.

Agent Designer: brand-voice reviewer

• An AI model is only as good as the data it can access. Gemini Enterprise connects to organizational data of your choice to keep answers relevant and factual — a process called grounding. You can deselect data sources any time.
• Pre-built connectors cover Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, Slack, Box, Dropbox, and Zendesk.
• If someone asks "What is the status of the Project Alpha contract?", Gemini pulls answers from actual sources and cites them, instead of inventing something plausible-sounding.
• Zero-copy architecture: for sources like Drive, OneDrive, and SharePoint, Gemini retrieves information at query time without copying it into a separate index — documents never leave their original location.

Example: cross-platform workflow

Jira + SharePoint, combined

The result: a ready-to-send email grounded in real-time data from two different systems, with no manual copying between dashboards.

TRANSLATED INTO DAY-TO-DAY WORK

Example use cases by role

Connecting Gemini Enterprise with Google Workspace unlocks value through contextual awareness: agents can reason and share memory, so you don't need to re-prompt every time you switch tools.

This begins with a human-in-the-loop mindset: employees are editors-in-chief who retain full accountability for their work, and AI accelerates human creativity and judgment. Micro-learning — short, targeted modules people can apply immediately — tends to work better than long traditional programs.

Atlassian Rovo · Jira · Change management

Find. Understand. Improve. Act — with the human still accountable.

Rovo is built around finding organizational knowledge, learning from context, and acting through Search, Chat, Agents and Studio. For this team, those capabilities matter most when they improve requirements, ticket quality, test readiness, and release communication.

Rovo Search Rovo Chat Rovo Agents Rovo Studio

Daily Jira digest

What the team should be able to do after this training

Where Rovo is most useful in the Jira lifecycle

Product visuals in this section are from Atlassian's public Rovo materials. Product behavior and availability can change — verify against your tenant before relying on a feature live.

You don't need to memorize product terminology. What matters is choosing the capability that matches the work: finding something, understanding something, performing a defined task, or automating a repeatable workflow.

Clear task, useful context, logical structure, and a stated format — plus one more discipline for Jira work: tell Rovo what it must not assume.

Useful follow-up prompts

Search → understand → create

Rovo's biggest value here isn't writing requirements for the team — it's challenging and improving them before development starts.

Standard requirement-review prompt

A thin ticket becoming a good one

Have Rovo surface the questions a developer would ask anyway, before the ticket ever reaches a sprint:

Development-readiness prompt

Test-scenario prompt

Jira holds CURE's change-management evidence, so Rovo's second major job is reviewing a change record for completeness — as a quality-control layer, not the control itself.

Change-completeness review prompt

Once the team is comfortable with Rovo as an assistant, repetitive review steps can move toward agents and automation. Rovo Studio is Atlassian's no-code environment for building agents, automations and apps — the important concept is what may safely be automated, not the builder UI itself.

Use the READ → RECOMMEND → WRITE → ACT model

Automated release notes (high-demand use case)

Official Atlassian learning references

AI doesn't replace how you work — it removes the work that got in the way.

QUICK REFERENCE

Keyboard shortcuts master list

QUICK REFERENCE

Turn this into a credential

• Google Workspace with Gemini learning path (skills.google, also on Coursera) — covers this cheat sheet's core skill set. ~1 week self-paced, ~2 hrs/week.
• Gemini for Google Workspace Professional Certificate (edX, with Google Cloud) — a formal credentialed version of the same skills.
• Google AI Professional Certificate (grow.google/ai-professional, on Coursera) — broader "AI fluency at work" cert across 7 courses.
• Free companion guide: Google's "Quick start guide to Google AI at work" PDF (grow.google/ai) — a good leave-behind after this session.

QUICK REFERENCE

Frequently asked questions

TRAINING FEEDBACK

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