Plenty of companies have run on Google Workspace for years. Gemini now sits inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet and Drive, and still hardly anyone on the team uses it on purpose. The side panel stays closed, meeting notes get typed by hand, and nobody can say clearly what happens to company data.
Which features does our plan include? What happened to NotebookLM? Are our Gems going away? The value is often already paid for in the licenses; it just isn't being collected.
Gemini training for your company: what it should cover
Good Gemini training doesn't start with prompts. It starts with which Gemini surfaces your people actually have, and that depends on your Workspace plan and your Admin console settings. The overview as of October 2026, based on Google's pricing page and help center:
| Gemini surface | What teams use it for | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini app | Chat, research, Deep Research, drafts | All Business plans; basic on Starter, expanded from Business Standard |
| Gemini in Gmail | Summarize threads, draft replies, find emails | All Business plans, including Starter |
| Gemini in Docs and Sheets | Write and revise text, analyze data | Business Standard and up |
| Gemini in Meet | Meeting summaries and notes | Business Standard and up |
| Gemini in Drive | Find, summarize and analyze files | Business Standard and up |
| Gems | Your own Gemini with standing instructions and files | All Business plans; being replaced by skills |
| Skills | Reusable instructions in the Gemini app and Workspace apps | Rolling out from October 5, 2026 |
| Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) | Questions about your own documents, with answers that cite the source | Basic on Starter, expanded from Business Standard |
| Gemini Enterprise | Search and agents across Workspace and systems like SharePoint, Jira, Confluence or ServiceNow | Separate license |
So a team on Business Starter mostly learns Gmail, the Gemini app, reusable instructions and Gemini Notebook; Business Standard adds Docs, Sheets, Meet and Drive. Gemini Enterprise matters once workflows span several systems.
What our Gemini training includes
Beforehand we check which features are turned on and which data Gemini should see. People practice in your Workspace, on your own email, documents and spreadsheets. Typical content:
- Gemini in Gmail: summarize long threads, draft replies, find information in the inbox.
- Gemini in Docs and Sheets: drafts and rewrites, analyzing spreadsheets, formulas explained.
- Gemini in Meet: notes and summaries, with clear rules on when they are created.
- Gemini in Drive: ask questions of folders and files instead of digging through them.
- Gems and skills for recurring tasks, shared across the team.
- Gemini Notebook for onboarding, bids and product knowledge.
- Deep Research for market, competitor and supplier research with sources.
- Data rules: what goes in, what stays out, and how to check results.
Gems, skills and Gemini Notebook in a team
A Gem is your own version of Gemini with standing instructions and reference files. Sales builds one for proposal drafts in the company's voice, HR one for job ads. Shared Gems live in Drive, so your Drive sharing rules apply, and the team works from one standard instead of private prompts.
Google is now replacing Gems with skills, reusable instructions that work in the Gemini app and inside Workspace apps. Skills roll out from October 5, 2026. On November 17, 2026, Gems move into the Gemini app's settings and keep working. For business and enterprise accounts, Gems stop working no sooner than March 1, 2027, and the rest become draft skills that their owners review and turn on. In training we build new team instructions as skills where your admin has them enabled, and we plan the move for the Gems you already rely on.
NotebookLM has been called Gemini Notebook since July 16, 2026. The product is the same, and existing notebooks and shared links keep working. A notebook answers from the sources you add and cites the passage. Participants build one from their department's real material and agree which documents go in.
Who offers Gemini training?
Specialty Tokens is one of the providers and wrote this page. The overview should still help you pick the right format:
| Provider type | Strength | Fits when | Doesn't fit when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google itself (Workspace Learning Center, self-paced courses) | Free or low cost, official, always available | Individuals want to look up features | A team needs shared workflows |
| Course providers with open-enrollment classes | Fixed dates, online or in a classroom | A few key users need the basics | Practice should happen on your own data |
| Google Workspace partners | License, setup and training from one source | You are rolling out Workspace itself | You want to compare several AI tools |
| In-house trainers like Specialty Tokens | On site, on your real work; connections to systems outside Workspace | A department should change how it works | One person just needs a quick feature tour |
Gemini, ChatGPT or Copilot?
For a company on Google Workspace, Gemini is usually the natural start, because it lives in the apps people already have open. It is not always the best choice:
- Microsoft Copilot fits better when the working day happens in Outlook, Teams and Excel.
- ChatGPT fits when teams already use it or want a tool independent of the office suite.
- Claude is strong with long documents and writing.
The full comparison is in ChatGPT vs Copilot vs Claude vs Gemini. We train in the tool you have approved.
What stays after the training
After an AI enablement workshop and an internal AI platform, TimeTac's marketing and growth team had 10 automations live: 117 runs in three weeks, 54 unattended, with no engineers on the team.
Everything built in the training is yours: the skills, the notebooks, the workflows. No per-seat fees to us and no dependency. Gemini training is part of our AI training for employees. Talk to us about your team.
