Workspace Studio aims to solve the real agent problem: Getting employees to use them
In the rapidly evolving landscape of enterprise technology, one of the significant challenges organizations face is ensuring that employees effectively utilize AI agents developed by their tech teams. Google aims to address this issue with the launch of Google Workspace Studio, a platform now generally available that empowers employees to design, manage, and share AI agents directly within their existing workflows. This move not only democratizes access to AI tools but also positions Google in direct competition with Microsoft’s Copilot, while also diminishing the reliance on third-party integrations, such as those that leverage OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Powered by Google’s advanced Gemini 3 AI, Workspace Studio is tailored for business teams, enabling them to delegate repetitive tasks to intelligent agents that can reason and understand context, thereby alleviating the burden of mundane tasks like managing emails and calendars.
Farhaz Karmali, the product director for the Google Workspace Ecosystem, highlights the need for intuitive automation solutions that cater to everyday users rather than just technical experts. By integrating AI agents into widely used applications like Google Docs and Sheets, as well as third-party tools such as Salesforce and Jira, Google is poised to enhance productivity across various business functions. However, the challenge remains: while interest in AI agents is on the rise, organizations are struggling to seamlessly integrate these tools into their employees’ workflows. Traditional chat interfaces for agent interactions can disrupt user flow, which necessitates a more integrated approach to ensure that employees can engage with AI without losing their focus.
Workspace Studio offers a solution by allowing users to create AI agents using templates or custom prompts tailored to their specific needs. For instance, employees can automate tasks such as generating Jira issues from emails or creating tasks when new files are added to a folder. Karmali emphasizes that these agents are designed to align with company policies and can generate personalized content that reflects the user’s tone and style. With the capability to monitor agent activity directly from the side panels of Google Workspace apps, the platform not only enhances user experience but also increases the potential for widespread adoption of AI agents within organizations. By leveraging its existing suite of applications, Google is uniquely positioned to harness the contextual data necessary to power effective AI agents, potentially setting a new standard for workplace automation and productivity.
One problem enterprises face is getting employees to actually
use the AI agents
their dev teams have built.
Google
, which has already shipped many
AI tools through its Workspace apps
, has made Google Workspace Studio generally available to give more employees access to design, manage and share AI agents, further democratizing agentic workflows. This puts Google directly in competition with Microsoft’s Copilot and undercuts some integrations that brought OpenAI’s ChatGPT into enterprise applications.
Workspace Studio is
powered by Gemini 3
, and while it primarily targets business teams rather than developers, it offers builders a way to offload lower-priority agent tasks.
“We’ve all lost countless hours to the daily grind: Sifting through emails, juggling calendar logistics and chasing follow-up tasks,” Farhaz Karmali, product director for the Google Workspace Ecosystem, wrote
in a blog post
. “Legacy automation tools tried to help, but they were simply too rigid and technical for the everyday user. That’s why we’re bringing custom agents directly into Workspace with Studio — so you can delegate these repetitive tasks to agents that can reason, understand context and handle the work that used to slow you down.”
The platform can bring agents to Workspace apps such as Google Docs and Sheets, as well as to third-party tools like Salesforce or Jira.
More AI in applications
Interest in AI agents continues to grow, and while many enterprises have begun deploying them in their workflows, they’re finding it isn’t as easy to get users on board as expected. The problem is that using agents can sometimes break employees out of their flow, so organizations have to figure out how to integrate agents where users are already fully engaged. The most common way of interacting with agents so far remains a chat screen.
AWS
released
Quick Sight in hopes
of attracting more front- and middle-office workers to use AI agents, although access to agents is still through a chatbot. OpenAI has
desktop integrations that bring ChatGPT
to specific apps. And, of course, Microsoft Copilot helped was ahead of this trend.
Google has an advantage that only Microsoft rivals: It already offers applications that most people use. Enterprise employees use Google Workspace applications, host data and documents on Drive and send emails through Gmail.
This means Google can easily get the context enterprises need to power their agents and reach millions of users.
If people build agents through Workspace Studio, the platform can prove that agents targeting workplace applications, not just Google Docs, but also Microsoft Word, could be a winning strategy to increase agent adoption from employees.
Templatizing agent creation
Enterprise employees can choose from a template or write out what they need in a prompt window.
A look around the Workspace Studio platform showed templates such as “auto-create tasks when files are added to a folder” or “create Jira issues for emails with action issues.”
Karmali said Workspace Studio is being “deeply integrated with Workspace apps like Gmail, Drive and Chat,” and agents built on the platform can “understand the full context of your work.”
“This allows them to provide help that matches your company’s policies and processes while generating personalized content in your tone and style,” he said. “You can even view your agent activity directly from the side panels of your favorite Workspace apps.”
Teams can extend agents to third-party enterprise platforms, but they can also configure custom steps to integrate with other tools.
Eric
Eric is a seasoned journalist covering US Tech & AI news.
