Hello Reader,

A few weeks ago, we discussed the new Agent controls rolling out in the Google Admin Console. Today, I want to take you inside the user-facing tool powering those agents: Workspace Studio.

Workspace Studio is new, and very few teachers have started using it. It’s important that you understand what you can do with Workspace Studio so that you can determine the right policies for your district.

Here is a quick look at the core features of this tool and a practical 10-minute flow you can build to capture rogue support emails and route them into your ticketing queue.

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Flows and Skills: the building blocks of workspace studio

There are two primary sections inside of Workspace Studio

• Flows: A flow is an end-to-end automated sequence triggered by an event (like receiving an email, submitting a form, updating a Drive file, or running on a timer). It connects triggers, conditional logic, and actions across Google Workspace apps. If you've ever used Zapier or IFTTT, a flow is the equivalent of a "Zap" or recipe.
• Skills: A skill is a reusable action. Instead of hardcoding complex scripts or repeatedly writing long prompts, a skill packages a specific task—such as extracting data from an invoice, summarizing meeting notes, or querying a custom database—so it can be easily used. Skills can be added to a flow or used inside of Gemini.

With those basics out of the way, I would encourage you to give Workspace Studio a try by building your own “flow.” Here’s an idea to consider...

Find tech support requests in your inbox...

No matter how many times you remind staff to "please submit a ticket through the portal," we all get requests sent directly via email. Here is a flow I built to catch and catalog tech support questions, getting them out of my inbox.

Step 1: Trigger ➡ When I get an email

• Trigger: Gmail – When I get an email.
• This flow is scanning each incoming email that I receive.

Step 2: The Brain ➡ Decide (Gemini)

This is where generative AI outclasses traditional Gmail filters. A filter only checks for exact keywords. Gemini checks intent.

Prompt: "Analyze the incoming email content and determine if the sender is asking for technical assistance, troubleshooting, or hardware/software support. Return TRUE if it is a tech support request, and FALSE if it is general communication, marketing, or administrative."

Step 3: Logic ➡ Check if Step 2 is "true"

• Set a conditional branch: If the decision evaluates to true, proceed with the actions below. If false, the flow quietly ends and leaves your inbox alone.

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Step 4: Summarize

I don’t need a long winded explanation. Gemini will scan the incoming email and write a summary, identifying the key request.

• Gemini Action: Summarize the core technical issue into 1–2 actionable sentences.

Step 5: Extract Key Fields

• Gemini Action (Skill): Automatically extract structured metadata from the email body and headers:
  • Sender Name
  • Sender Email
  • Date / Time
  • Gemini summary of the request

Step 6: Add a Row (Google Sheets)

• Action: Choose a designated Google Sheet
• Map your extracted data into neat columns

Pro Tip: If your district ticketing system (Incident IQ, Freshdesk, Zendesk) accepts inbound email-to-ticket creation, you can swap this step to send a structured email directly into your help desk queue instead of writing to a Sheet!

Step 7: Add Labels with Gemini

• Action: Apply a Gmail label (e.g., Processed Tech Request).
• This gives you visual confirmation in your inbox that the email was successfully analyzed. This also prevents the flow from generating a new ticket if the email thread is updated.

Why you should pay attention...

Beyond saving your personal inbox sanity, there are three big reasons to explore Workspace Studio right now:

1. Staff (and students) will discover it: Curious tech coaches, administrative assistants, and teachers will start experimenting with Studio. Understanding how flows and skills work ensures you can establish sensible sharing rules before someone accidentally automates a workflow that exposes student records or blasts your entire district with automated emails.
2. Create modern workflows: If you’ve struggled to automate routine IT tasks because you don’t have time to write and maintain Google Apps Script, Workspace Studio gives you a visual canvas that handles 80% of routine administrative workflows.
3. Unstructured to structured data: It bridges the gap between messy human communication (teacher emails) and structured administrative data (clean rows in a Sheet or tickets in your queue).

Give it a test run with your own inbox this week. Build a simple 3-step flow and see how Gemini handles the classification. It might just save you a couple of hours of manual triage every week.

During my fall Admin Bootcamp (starts Oct. 6) we will talk more about Workspace Studio and managing AI agents. Registration is open...I hope you will join me!