Authorize the Google Workspace connection and use it in workflows to search Gmail, create Drive documents, append rows to Sheets, and schedule Calendar events automatically.
Authorizing the Google Workspace Connection
Cotonity connects to Google Workspace through OAuth 2.0, which means each connection is authorized by a specific Google account and inherits that account's permissions. Navigate to Connections → Add Connection → Google Workspace. You will see checkboxes for the services you want to enable: Gmail, Drive, Sheets, Calendar, and Contacts. Select only the services your workflows actually need — granting fewer permissions reduces your security footprint. After clicking Connect, you are redirected to Google's consent screen. Sign in with the Google account whose data the workflows should access (often a shared service account rather than a personal account), and grant the requested permissions. The connection is now available to all workflows in your workspace.
Working with Gmail
The Gmail integration supports reading emails from a label or search query, sending emails on behalf of the connected account, and creating draft messages. A common pattern is a daily digest workflow that searches Gmail for messages with a specific label, extracts the sender, subject, and snippet from each, and posts a formatted summary to a Slack channel. Use the Gmail: Search Messages step with a query string in Gmail's native syntax — for example, 'label:support is:unread newer_than:1d' — and it returns a paginated list of message metadata. To read the full body of a specific email, follow up with a Gmail: Get Message step using the message ID from the search results. Email bodies are returned as HTML; use the Text Transform step to strip HTML tags if you need plain text for downstream processing.
Google Drive and Docs
Cotonity can list files in a Drive folder, create new documents, append content to existing documents, and upload files to Drive. These capabilities support workflows like: automatically archiving completed project briefs to a designated Drive folder, creating a new Google Doc for each inbound client request with pre-filled metadata, or appending AI-generated summaries to a shared running log document. When creating or modifying a Doc, content is provided as plain text or HTML; Cotonity handles the conversion to Docs format. For structured data, Google Sheets is usually a better target than Docs — see the dedicated spreadsheet automation article for details on writing rows, updating cells, and reading data from Sheets within workflows.
Google Calendar Events
The Calendar integration allows workflows to create events, update existing events, and list upcoming events on any calendar the connected account can access. Use the Calendar: Create Event step to automatically schedule follow-up calls, onboarding sessions, or renewal reviews when a trigger condition is met — for example, creating a 30-day check-in meeting the moment a new customer account is created in your CRM. Set the event's start and end time using ISO 8601 timestamps computed from your workflow's trigger data, add the relevant attendees' email addresses as a comma-separated list, and include a Google Meet link by toggling the 'Add conferencing' option. Events created by Cotonity appear in the calendar with the connected account as the organizer, and invites are sent to attendees automatically.