Multi-App AI Workflows

You’ve learned Gemini in individual apps. The real power unlocks when you chain them together. A task that touches Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides — like preparing a quarterly report — can be orchestrated with AI across all four apps in a fraction of the usual time.

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you learned to search and summarize files with Gemini in Drive, and use NotebookLM for source-grounded research. Now you’ll connect individual app skills into end-to-end workflows.

Workflow 1: Meeting → Report → Email

Scenario: After a team meeting, you need to create a summary report and distribute it.

Step 1: Capture (Meet)

Enable “Take Notes with Gemini” during the meeting. After the meeting, Gemini generates notes in a Google Doc.

Step 2: Structure (Docs)

Open the AI-generated meeting notes. Use Gemini in Docs:

“Restructure these meeting notes into a formal meeting summary with these sections: Attendees, Key Discussion Points, Decisions Made, Action Items (with owner and deadline), Next Steps. Remove any informal conversation and keep it professional.”

Step 3: Review and Edit

Read through the structured report. Fix any misattributions, add context Gemini missed, verify action item details.

Step 4: Distribute (Gmail)

In Gmail, use Help me write:

“Draft an email to the project team sharing the meeting summary. Reference @Meeting-Summary-March-5. Highlight the 3 most important action items and their deadlines. Ask recipients to confirm their action items by end of day.”

Total time: 15 minutes instead of 60+.

Workflow 2: Data Analysis → Presentation

Scenario: You have quarterly sales data in Sheets and need to present it to leadership.

Step 1: Analyze (Sheets)

Open your data in Sheets. Use the Gemini side panel:

“What are the top 3 insights from this quarterly data?”
“Create a chart showing revenue by region over the last 4 quarters”
“What regions grew fastest? Which declined?”

Step 2: Create (Slides)

Open Google Slides. Prompt Gemini:

“Create a 7-slide quarterly business review presentation. Based on these key findings:

Total revenue: $4.2M (up 12% YoY)
West region grew 23%, East declined 5%
New product line contributed 18% of revenue
Customer retention improved from 82% to 89%

Include: title slide, revenue overview, regional breakdown, product mix, customer metrics, challenges (East region decline), and next quarter priorities.”

Step 3: Refine (Slides)

For each slide with data, verify the numbers match your Sheets source. Then refine:

“Add speaker notes to each slide for the CFO presentation”
“Make the regional comparison slide more visual — suggest a map or colored bar chart”

✅ Quick Check: In the data-to-presentation workflow, you let Gemini summarize the Sheets data and then create slides from the summary. The slides show “revenue grew 15% YoY.” Your Sheets data shows 12%. Where did the error occur? (Answer: Likely in the summarization step. When Gemini summarized the Sheets data, it may have approximated or misread the growth rate. By the time it reached Slides, the wrong number was treated as fact. The fix: always copy exact numbers from your data into the Slides prompt — don’t let AI round, estimate, or paraphrase numerical data at any step.)

Workflow 3: Research Pipeline

Scenario: You need to research a topic, compile findings, and share a brief.

Step 1: Collect (Drive)

Gather relevant files in a Drive folder. Use Gemini:

“Find all documents in my Drive related to competitor pricing strategies from the last 6 months.”

Step 2: Deep Analysis (NotebookLM)

Upload the most relevant files to NotebookLM:

“What pricing models do our competitors use?”
“Where do they agree and differ from our approach?”
“What gaps or opportunities exist?”

Step 3: Synthesize (Docs)

Open Google Docs and prompt Gemini:

“Write a 2-page competitive pricing brief based on these findings: [paste NotebookLM’s key insights]. Structure: Executive Summary, Competitor Overview, Our Position, Recommendations.”

Step 4: Distribute (Gmail + Slides)

Create a summary slide deck for the leadership meeting, then draft an email with the Doc and Slides attached.

Workflow 4: Feedback Collection → Analysis → Action

Scenario: You collected customer feedback in a form and need to analyze it and act on it.

Step 1: Classify (Sheets)

Your feedback is in a Google Sheet. Use the =AI() function:

=AI("Classify this feedback as Bug Report, Feature Request, Praise, or Complaint: " & A2)

Drag down to classify all responses.

Step 2: Analyze (Sheets)

Use the side panel:

“How many responses in each category?”
“What are the top 3 feature requests?”
“Create a chart showing feedback distribution”

Step 3: Report (Docs)

“Create a customer feedback report from @Feedback-Analysis-Sheet. Include: volume summary, top issues, recommended actions, and priority ranking.”

Step 4: Assign (Gmail)

“Draft emails to the product team and engineering team. Product gets the feature requests with priority recommendations. Engineering gets the bug reports with severity assessment.”

Building Your Own Workflows

The Template

Every multi-app workflow follows this pattern:

Input (raw data/notes/files)
    → Process (analyze, classify, summarize)
        → Create (report, presentation, brief)
            → Distribute (email, share, present)

Tips for Reliable Workflows

Verify at each handoff. When data moves from Sheets to Slides, check the numbers.
Use @ references. They carry context between apps — Gemini reads the referenced files.
Keep humans in the loop. AI workflows are “human-assisted automation,” not full autopilot.
Save your prompts. When you find a workflow that works, save the prompts in a Doc for reuse.

✅ Quick Check: You’ve built a workflow: Sheets analysis → Docs report → Gmail distribution. It works perfectly this week. Will it work the same way next week with new data? (Answer: Mostly, but not guaranteed. The Sheets analysis step depends on your data structure staying consistent — if column names change or new categories appear, Gemini may misinterpret. The Docs report step may produce different phrasings. The Gmail step should work consistently if your prompt is specific. Pro tip: test workflows with new data each cycle and adjust prompts as needed.)

Practice Exercise

Pick one of the four workflows above that matches a task you do regularly
Walk through it step by step using your own data
Note where the AI output needs the most editing
Time yourself: how long does the AI-assisted workflow take vs. your usual approach?
Save your prompts in a Google Doc for reuse

Key Takeaways

Multi-app workflows chain AI features across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Meet
The pattern: Input → Process → Create → Distribute
Use @ references to carry context between apps without re-explaining
Verify data accuracy at each step — errors compound as data moves between apps
Numbers are the highest risk: never let AI approximate or fabricate statistics across steps
Save working prompts for reuse — successful workflows become reusable templates

Up Next

In the final lesson, you’ll simulate a full AI-powered workday, combining every technique from the course into a realistic morning-to-evening workflow.