Who still remembers our blog about Workspaces? This is chapter two of the same story, so go read up if you're not up to speed.
Projects in Google Drive is a (relatively) new feature designed to organize your files smartly and make optimal use of Gemini within Drive. This method of file management can significantly speed up your approach (or even completely make you rethink your folder management)! In essence, it's a continuation of the Workspace concept, but this time it's shareable and includes AI.
Limited resources
Of course, you can already ask AI questions in Drive via AskGemini, but... if AI wants to scan your entire Drive and understand "the bigger picture" with every question, each prompt will take longer than necessary, and you will quickly run into usage limits. What's more, sometimes it's just too much for Gemini, and it misses certain information. Therefore, it's useful to define your data silo. (Essentially the basic principle of Notebook, but incorporated into your Drive!)
When you create a Project, you select specific documents as "sources" for the AI. You can then ask Gemini questions, have it create summaries, conduct research, develop proposals, etc., with the AI using exclusively the information from this specific Project, instead of searching your entire Google Drive.
You create a project from scratch or you build on a prompt (Save as a Project). By default, a Project is saved in your MyDrive, but you can also move it to the relevant SharedDrive.
AI together
You can share an entire Drive Project with others. This means that the team no longer only shares the files, but also the AI context and chat history. Please note that a colleague can only see the parts of a Project for which they have (temporary) access rights. Users must actually have viewing rights to the underlying files in Google Drive for the content to be visible or for the AI to consider it. Sharing a Project never overrides Drive's strict security in the background! Thanks to the smart permission check when sharing, you get a pop-up (similar to when you share a file via Mail) to distribute the desired rights with one smooth action. Gemini respects individual rights, filters the sources/answers and will never leak information from a document to which the colleague does not have Drive access.
In essence, you can even share a Project externally, which is useful, for example, for sifting through a large set of campaign or marketing documents with an external agency using AI. Just make sure that your company settings allow external sharing and that the recipient also has a suitable license* to use Projects (and that their IT administrator has enabled the 'Gemini in Workspace services' option in the Google Admin Console).
Smart integration with AskGemini
The biggest added value of Projects is the powerful collaboration with Gemini. Here are three examples.
1. Project Management: You gather the minutes of the last three steering committee meetings (Docs), the current project plan and budgets (Sheets), and the original launch plan (PDF) and ask: "Write a commercial one-pager for the client about the progress of their assignment. Use the minutes to identify the main obstacles, without causing alarm, and retrieve the current budget status from the Sheet." You move the Project to the client folder, so everyone working for this client can immediately follow along.
2. Task Management: You combine disparate to-do lists and follow-up documents and ask: "Filter all action items from last month's minutes and create an overview per employee of what is still open." Gemini then creates a Google Doc for the team and assigns Tasks and deadlines. This finally creates an activity overview specific to the project, and everyone can see at a glance who updated what and when! You keep the Project in your MyDrive, but share it with three colleagues, so only you maintain visibility of the status.
3. Comparing Candidates: You put the job description (Doc), the company's competency profile (Sheet), and 5 resumes and cover letters from applicants (PDFs) into the Project and ask, "Compare the resumes with the requirements from the job description. Create a table for each candidate with: name, relevant work experience, education, and whether they meet the hard requirements," or "For each candidate, devise two specific interview questions based on their missing experience in their resume and our company's core values." You save the Project under the SharedDrive HR, so only the appropriate colleagues can access this sensitive information.
Project principles
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Central workspaces: With a Project, you can bring together related files and folders in one central, designated location. You don't need to move your files for this; you simply bundle them virtually around a specific goal or topic. This way, you never have duplicate copies or outdated versions! Thanks to the flexible source selection, you also don't have to remove a file from a Project if you want to ignore it for one specific question. You can simply temporarily check or uncheck sources in the sidebar to precisely adjust the AI's focus. Drive Projects stands out because it is directly linked to your live Google Drive without you having to re-upload or update your documents!
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History, multithreading and citations: Gemini automatically saves your conversation history per Project, so you can continue your work later without losing context. Thanks to the clickable citations that Gemini always provides in its answer, Drive directly opens the specific document and jumps straight to the exact paragraph where the AI retrieved the information. This allows you to immediately check the facts. Finally, within a Project, you are fortunately not stuck with one long AI chat. You can start and save multiple separate conversations (multithreading) within the same Project. For example, create one chat for "Financial analysis," a second for "Writing assignments," and a third for "Q&A," all fed by the exact same collection of source files but nicely separated to keep it workable and organized.
- Additional context: You might think: I should disable (the slider for) additional access to other sources (Mail, Chat, the internet...), so as not to disturb my data silo? That's correct, but... Don't worry. The content of the Project remains the fixed, defined 'source of truth,' while external sources like Google Search merely serve to enrich with current context. This allows you to specifically combine your internal documents with the latest emails or market data, without losing control over your basic files. The best of both worlds.
- Some limitations: Currently, you can only create new Drive Projects via the web version of Google Drive (drive.google.com). Via the mobile apps (Android and iOS), you can only share, rename, and manage access rights for existing Projects. There is also a limit to the number of files (maximum 100 sources), a maximum file size of 200 MB per file, and a context window (1 million tokens, which amounts to approximately 1,500 pages of text (or about 750,000 words) per active chat session).
Conclusion
Brace yourself for a poetic comparison.
You can prepare a dish by collecting an ingredient from each drawer of the fridge, getting a cookbook, setting up a pot and ladle, gathering the spices and then chopping the vegetables, cooking the chicken, separating the eggs, etc., until the plate is served. Or you can put a sous-chef to work (Gemini) who, thanks to Projects, has everything at hand and can immediately start the prep. Enjoy your meal!
A Project in Google Drive is not a folder, just like a Workspace, but a focused knowledge base that allows you and your team of pros to gain insights from a specific collection of files even faster thanks to artificial intelligence.
*Integrated AI features such as AskGemini and Projects are not included with Google Workspace Business Starter.
