Gemini Connector: What Data We Access
Section's Gemini connector reads Google Workspace's admin activity logs to show you how widely Gemini is being adopted across your organization. This page explains, in plain terms, exactly what Section receives — and what it cannot see.
The short version: Section can see that an employee used a Gemini feature, in which app, and when. Section cannot see what they asked or what Gemini answered. The prompt text and the response are never sent to Section, because Google's admin logs do not contain them.
What Section can and cannot see
| Section receives | Section never receives |
|---|---|
| The employee's work email address | The text of anything they asked Gemini |
| When the interaction happened | Anything Gemini generated or replied |
| Which Workspace app they were in (Gmail, Sheets, Docs…) | Email bodies, document text, or spreadsheet cell contents |
| Which Gemini feature they used (e.g. "Help me write") | Meeting audio, video, or transcripts |
| Whether it was a deliberate action or an automatic one | Names of files or documents |
| How many messages were exchanged in a conversation |
This is a property of Google's API, not a filter Section applies. The admin activity log is built for usage accounting — it records that a feature was used, never the content of the interaction.
Use case examples
These two things happen in Google Sheets. To an employee they feel quite different — one they typed, one they clicked. Section receives the same kind of record for both, and in neither case does it include what was asked or answered.
The employee asks Gemini a question
An employee clicks the Gemini icon in Google Sheets. The side panel opens as a chat interface, and they type a question about their data.
What Section receives: one record saying an interaction of type conversation took place in Sheets, via the side panel, at a given time, for a given employee — and that it was a genuine, user-initiated conversation.
What Section does not receive: the question they typed, the data in the sheet, or Gemini's answer.
The product asks on the employee's behalf
An employee right-clicks a cell and chooses Analyze with Gemini. Google sends a built-in prompt — "Analyze this data and tell me about any interesting trends or patterns" — that the employee did not write.
What Section receives: a record of the same shape as the first — a conversation-type interaction took place in Sheets, at a given time, for a given employee.
What Section does not receive: the contents of the cells analyzed, or the analysis Gemini produced.
Why the distinction matters
Both examples produce a record that a prompt was submitted. Only in the first did a person actually compose one. Google itself defines this interaction type as a prompt "initiated by the user directly or by another feature on the user's behalf."
Google labels each record as active or inactive to capture this. Automatic and proactive behaviour — Gemini suggesting things, detecting intent, summarising without being asked — is labelled inactive. A large share of all recorded Gemini events fall into that category.
The practical consequence: counting every recorded event substantially overstates how much employees are deliberately using Gemini. Google's active/inactive label is what separates the two, and any figure you are shown should make clear which it reflects. If you are reviewing an adoption number and it is not obvious, ask.
What a stored record actually contains
A complete Gemini record in Section holds the following, and nothing else:
| What it is | Example |
|---|---|
| Employee work email | [email protected] |
| Google's internal user ID for that employee | 105928623619457954733 |
| When it happened | 2026-08-05 18:09 UTC |
| Which app | gmail |
| Which action | auto_proofread |
| Where in the interface it started | help_me_write |
| Active or automatic | inactive |
| Whether an agent initiated it | false |
An entire record is under two kilobytes — smaller than a paragraph of text. There is no field in it that could hold a prompt, and no such field exists in Google's API.
Two technical details worth disclosing
Network information. Google attaches the originating IP address, plus a country and state/region derived from it, to most activity records. Section did not request this and uses none of it — no report, metric, or score reads these fields. They are retained only because the connector stores Google's record exactly as it arrives.
Document identifiers. A small minority of records include an opaque Drive file ID for the document involved — a string like 1ZobpW35SKjBWQ3o…. It is not a filename and not content. Section cannot open the file or resolve the ID to a title, because the connector has no permission to read Drive file contents. File and assistant display names are deliberately discarded, since names people write can themselves be sensitive.
Coverage and limits
Included: Gemini features inside Gmail, Sheets, Docs, Slides, Meet, Drive, Calendar, Forms, Chat, and Workspace Studio — and chat sessions in the standalone Gemini app when used under a company account. In every case only the fact of the interaction is visible, never its content.
Not included:
- Activity under personal Google accounts. Only company Workspace accounts are visible.
- Employees without a Gemini license, who generate no records at all.
- Anything outside Google's admin APIs.
Other data the connector reads
Organization-wide usage counters. Daily Workspace totals for the tenant as a whole, with no attribution to any individual. Used as denominators for adoption rates.
Employee directory (required). For each employee: name, email address, account creation date, last sign-in, whether the account is suspended, and their organizational unit. This is what lets Section attribute Gemini activity to the right person and report adoption by department — without it, activity cannot be matched reliably to your workforce. No message, document, or file content is involved.
Custom Gemini assistants, or "Gems" (optional). Only if you grant the Drive metadata permission. Section records how many Gems exist, who owns each one, whether it has been shared, and how many people it is shared with. Section never receives a Gem's name, its instructions, or anything it produces — only the fact that it exists and how widely it is shared.
Retention and deletion
Google's limit. Google keeps Gemini activity logs for up to 180 days, and these logs only exist from 20 June 2025 onward. Older activity cannot be retrieved by anyone, including you.
Section's retention. Records collected by the connector are kept for the life of the integration; there is no automatic expiry. You can request deletion of your organization's connector data at any time through Section support.
If an employee leaves and their Workspace account is deleted, their historical records remain in Section under their former email address until a deletion request is processed.
Summary for a security review
Everything Section holds from this connector is usage metadata: who, when, which app, which feature, and whether the action was deliberate. No message content, document content, or AI-generated output reaches Section at any point.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can Section read employees' prompts? | No. Prompt text is not present in Google's admin logs. |
| Can Section read Gemini's responses? | No, for the same reason. |
| Can Section see the content of emails, documents, or spreadsheets? | No. The connector has no permission to read file or message content. |
| Can Section read Gemini chat conversations? | No — only that a conversation took place, in which app. |
| Are IP addresses used? | No. Google supplies them with each record; nothing in Section reads them and no report or metric is derived from them. |
| Is location data used? | No. Google derives a country and state/region from the IP; Section uses neither. Nothing more precise is ever provided. |
| Are file names stored? | No. Opaque Drive file IDs appear on a small minority of records; names are discarded. |
| Can Section identify individual employees? | Yes — records are attributed to a work email address. That is what makes department-level adoption reporting possible. |
| How long is data kept? | For the life of the integration, with no automatic expiry. Deletion on request. |
| Is non-Gemini Workspace activity collected? | Only organization-wide totals with no individual attribution. |
Technical reference
For reviewers who want the underlying API definitions:
- Admin SDK Reports API — Activities: list
- Gemini in Workspace apps — activity events — the complete list of recordable actions
- Admin SDK data retention and lag times
Each activity record carries exactly four descriptive fields — app_name, action, feature_source, and event_category — alongside the actor's email, a profile ID, and a timestamp. Every one of those four is a fixed value drawn from Google's published list; none is free text.
Updated 2 months ago