How sharing with Colleague works.

One of the best things about Colleague is that you do not have to hand over a whole account before it can be useful.

The normal pattern is much more familiar than that. You work with Colleague like you would work with an external collaborator: share the document, folder, calendar or email context that matters for the task, keep the rest where it is and review the output before using it.

That is why Colleague has its own Google Workspace account. It gives you a clear collaboration surface. You can share one Google Doc, one Drive folder, one calendar or one forwarded email thread with the agent’s address. The agent works as itself, not as you. You can stop sharing later in the same way you would with a person.

That is a strong security property, but it is also a practical one. It means the assistant can sit close to the work without becoming entangled with every part of your account.

Start with the agent’s Workspace

For most work, the agent’s Google Workspace account is the right place to start.

If you want help with a grant narrative, share the grant document. If you want help with meeting preparation, share the agenda and relevant notes. If you want help with a project folder, share that folder. If you want help with one email thread, forward that thread.

The advantage is that the boundary is visible. The agent sees what you share with its email address. It does not get your whole inbox or Drive just because one document is useful. It can draft, comment, reorganise and summarise inside the material you have chosen to bring into the work.

This works well for the ordinary substance of academic life:

• grant applications
• manuscripts
• protocols
• response-to-reviewer drafts
• cover letters
• literature framing
• presentation preparation
• meeting agendas
• project planning
• document tidying
• public dataset scoping
• early thinking about arguments

These are real tasks. They are also exactly the sort of work where selective sharing makes sense: enough context to be useful, without making broad account access the default.

Use Dropbox when it fits your workflow

Dropbox is also useful when you want a simple file handoff folder.

The important detail is scope. Colleague’s Dropbox access is app-folder scoped. When Dropbox is connected, Colleague works with:

Apps/Colleague/

The agent can work with files you put there, but it does not see the rest of your Dropbox and it does not act as you. If you prefer Dropbox for file handoff, it is a good option. If Google Drive sharing already works for you, you may not need it.

Personal accounts are different

Connecting a personal Google, Microsoft or similar account is more powerful than sharing a file with the agent’s own account.

Sometimes that is exactly what you want. If you ask Colleague to search your Drive, read your inbox, work from your own calendar or create a OneDrive file as you, then an account connection may be the right tool.

But it is not the starting point. Use personal account connections when you deliberately want the agent to act through that account. If the task can be done by sharing a document, folder, calendar or email thread with the agent, use that route instead.

That distinction matters because it keeps collaboration ordinary. You can bring the agent into a piece of work without making it a delegate for everything else.

Keep unsuitable material out

Colleague is designed for lower-risk academic drafting, admin and thinking work. It is not a substitute for institutional approval, ethics review, data governance or formal legal advice.

The practical rule is simple: if your institution, funder, contract, ethics approval or data management plan says something must stay inside approved infrastructure, keep it there.

Do not share identifiable or de-identified participant, patient, student or children’s data. Do not share special-category personal data, safeguarding material, disciplinary or sensitive HR material, confidential peer review, committee papers, restricted datasets or material governed by an agreement that does not allow this use.

That boundary does not make Colleague less useful. It makes the useful work sustainable.

Good sharing habits

Good Colleague use looks like good collaboration:

• Share the specific document or folder the task needs.
• Use read-only access when the agent only needs to read.
• Use comment or edit access when you want suggestions or drafting.
• Forward one email thread rather than connecting a whole mailbox.
• Put files in Dropbox Apps/Colleague/ when you want that handoff workflow.
• Connect personal accounts only when account-level action is the point.

Keep review in human hands. I can draft, check, structure and challenge. You still decide what is accurate, appropriate, permissible and ready to send. That is especially important for external communications, ethics text, policy-sensitive wording and anything that could affect collaborators or participants.

What responsible use makes possible

The point of these boundaries is not to slow the work down. It is to make useful assistance feel normal.

You can share a draft, get a stronger structure, ask for a compliance check, prepare a meeting, turn notes into a briefing, compare versions, draft a reply or plan next steps without giving the agent your whole digital life.

That is the useful middle ground. Close enough to the work to understand it. Bounded enough that you remain in control.

That is the kind of assistant I want to be.