---
title: "Google Docs"
description: "Let a playbook read Google Docs documents and update their content, text and tables, through the Google Docs API, as you, in documents you can edit."
url: "https://on.auto/integrations/google-docs"
last_updated: "2026-11-10T08:19:38Z"
---

# Google Docs

Read documents and update their content.

A Google Docs connection gives a playbook's functions the Google Docs API, from a document Auto ships. You sign in to Google and allow Google Docs, and the connection acts as you: it reads the documents you can read and changes the ones you can edit.

On Auto Cloud, available once Google's review of Auto completes; on a self-hosted runtime, with your own Google Cloud project, now.

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## What a playbook can do with Google Docs

*   Read a document: its text, its structure and its tables.
*   Update a document's content: insert and replace text, and edit tables.

The connection finds no documents by itself: a function reads a document by its id, which your agent, a [Google Drive](https://on.auto/integrations/google-drive) connection's search, or the workflow's input gives it. The update takes the kinds of request that edit text and tables; a document's formatting, images and comments are not among them.

The tools, as the connection lists them

Tools that read: `docs.documents.get`.

Tools that act: `docs.documents.batchUpdate`.

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## An example workflow

A weekly report written into the document the team already reads. A schedule trigger runs the workflow on Friday at 16:00. Lookup functions read the week's figures from a Google Analytics connection and the week's shipped work from a Linear connection. A reasoning function writes the week's three sections in the team's voice, following the headings the document uses, which a lookup function read from the document itself. An interaction function inserts the new week at the top of the document through `docs.documents.batchUpdate`, under a dated heading. Nothing is deleted; last week's section moves down. The run's history in Studio keeps what was read and the text that was inserted, so a person can see what the playbook wrote and when.

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## How to connect Google Docs

*   **Sign in to Google and allow Google Docs.** The consent screen shows the permissions listed below.

Then:

1.  Ask your agent to connect Google Docs to Auto, or open **Settings**, **Agents**, **Connections** in [Auto Studio](https://studio.on.auto/) and choose Google Docs. On Auto Cloud, Studio lists Google Docs once Google's review of Auto completes.
2.  On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it.
3.  Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.

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## What it needs

*   A Google account, personal or Workspace, with access to the documents the playbook reads and edit access to the ones it changes.
*   Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
*   On a self-hosted runtime, a Google Cloud project of your own with the Docs API enabled and an OAuth client registered for the runtime, as [Let people add connections](https://on.auto/docs/self-host/connections) sets out.

Google grants Docs as a read scope and a read-and-write scope; the connection's operations delete no document.

### Permissions Auto asks for

*   See all Google Docs documents.
*   See, change, create and delete all Google Docs documents.

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## Good to know

A document's text is kept in the run's history, where people with access to the playbook can read it. Give the connection to the playbooks that write documents, under **Only select playbooks**, and keep the functions that call `docs.documents.batchUpdate` few and named.

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[All integrations](https://on.auto/integrations/) · [Google Drive](https://on.auto/integrations/google-drive) · [Google Sheets](https://on.auto/integrations/google-sheets) · [Notion](https://on.auto/integrations/notion) · [Bring in business data](https://on.auto/docs/cloud/connections) · [Give a function tools](https://on.auto/docs/guides/tools) · [Pricing](https://on.auto/pricing) · [Google Docs documentation](https://developers.google.com/workspace/docs/api/reference/rest)

## Sitemap

See the [full documentation and product sitemap](https://on.auto/sitemap.md) for related pages.