Permission, with a pipe attached.
Connect the systems your work already lives in, then set what it may do, one verb at a time. Draft, yes. Send, no. Read, ask me first.
AI Impact HubAI Impact HubFor the person who spends half of every AI session copy-pasting context in.
Try it right here ↓Free to read. The try-it part runs on a free account.
Out of the box, AI knows exactly what you paste into it. Connectors change the deal: link it to Drive or Microsoft 365, your email, your calendar, your CRM (hundreds of platforms now), and it stops asking you to copy things in and starts working with where your work already lives. The rule that goes with them is the second brain's: point, don't duplicate.
A connector is permission with a pipe attached. Instead of you fetching documents for the AI, the AI fetches them itself: your policy from Drive, this morning's email, next week's calendar. Always the current version, never the copy you pasted in March.
The permissions are the real teaching. Every connection exposes its abilities verb by verb, and each one can be allowed, need approval, or be blocked. Some are governed for you: Gmail can draft and cannot send. Others are blunter than you expect, and Drive is all files or none, which is exactly why the honest setting for reading is needs approval.
This is where AI stops being a private experiment and starts touching organisational data. Leaders: make sure your AI policy covers connectors. Everyone else: read what your policy says before you plug anything in.
Connect the systems your work already lives in, then set what it may do, one verb at a time. Draft, yes. Send, no. Read, ask me first.
Copilot and Gemini put AI inside the tools you already use. Connectors bring those tools to your AI. Plenty of organisations sensibly run both.
Four statements before you plug anything in. Score honestly: this is the check to run before the first connection.
Not AI in general, connectors specifically: which systems may be linked to AI tools, and who approves it.
Client records, HR, finance: named systems and folders, not “somewhere in Drive”.
People see what their role needs. Nothing important is on an everyone-can-view link from 2021.
Somebody owns the list. Unplugging is a decision, not an archaeology project.
Nothing scored yet. Start at the top.
The guide is free to read. This part is a working exercise, and a free account opens it and keeps your progress across the Hub.
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