At Google‘s IO conference in May, executive Aparna Pappu showed off new AI features for the company Workspace productivity service.
To make this technology really useful, though, users must enter special prompts that extract the best outputs from the company’s Gemini AI models.
In search of ideas, Google held a competition for employees to suggest “golden prompts” for Workspace, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider. Prizes included gold bomber jackets and even cash.
The goal: Come up with prompts that help Workspace customers use AI to more efficiently do things like file and track invoices, or surface customer inquiries that need immediate attention.
Google is injecting Workspace with generative AI features to compete with Microsoft’s Office 365 suite, which has its own AI Copilot capabilities. Both tech giants are trying to convince corporate customers to pay more for AI-powered versions of these productivity software bundles.
To get the golden prompts competition going, Google gave cloud employees an example of a small business owner struggling to respond to all of the reviews being left for his business on Google Maps.
The “golden prompt” that this user should enter was suggested by an employee as: “Every time I get a new Google review from a customer, add it to my Reviews Sheet and suggest a response. Let me review the response before publishing to Google Maps.”
At the end of the internal competition, seven winners were chosen. The victors got a golden bomber jacket with a white Gemini logo emblazoned on the back. Spot bonuses were also offered, one of the documents notes.
Winning ideas
According to the internal documents reviewed by BI, here were the winning ideas:
- That first prompt to help a business respond to reviews on Google Maps.
- Another one for tracking and following up on new business leads.
- A prompt to help users research information on a lead.
- Another prompt to help users answer questions from these customers and leads.
- One was crafted to flag customers who need an urgent response.
- Another prompt helped users organize receipts and invoices.
- And a final one helped users keep track of those receipts and invoices.
A preview of what’s to come
Workspace teams have been exploring putting some of these prompts into the official product, one of the documents noted. A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
We may have got a preview of how they’ll work at Google IO in May, where Pappu showed a demo of Gemini extracting a batch of invoices from a folder and automatically turning these documents into a color-coded Google Sheets spreadsheet.
She said these types of AI functions will roll out to Workspace Labs pilot program this September.
Google also been disseminating some of this know-how to the masses, publishing a guide to prompting that suggests ideas for different business sectors, such as marketing and human resources (note: successful AI prompts average 21 words, according to Google).
Are you a current or former Google employee with more to share? Got a tip? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal at hughlangley.01 or email at hlangley@businessinsider.com.