Build a market or account brief

By the end of this guide, an agent hands you a brief on a market or an account as a Word document or a deck in Drive, with its sources cited.

Who it’s for

• Sales and account teams who need a short brief on a company before a call or a renewal.
• Strategy, marketing and product people who need a quick view of a market, a competitor or a pricing trend.
• Anyone who now spends an afternoon copying from web pages, old decks and CRM notes into one document.

What you’ll set up

Start with a single task. Once the brief comes out the way you want, save the instructions as a skill and, if you need the brief every week, schedule it.

Piece	What it does	Needed?
Task	Runs the research once and saves the brief to Drive	Yes
Skill	Keeps your brief’s sections, length and citation rules the same every time	Recommended
Agent	Holds the skill, the connectors and the permissions for your team	Optional
Automation	Writes a fresh brief on a schedule	Optional

The agent can use three kinds of source:

• The web. Web search runs without asking under Ask for changes, Ask for apps and Full access. Stricter presets ask first, and Read only blocks it. While it works, the task shows “Searching the web for” and the query. In the reply, numbered links to the pages it found show as citation pills.
• Drive files. Past decks, call notes, analyst reports and spreadsheets you attach or mention. The agent can read Word, PDF, Excel and PowerPoint files.
• Connected apps. A CRM, email or a chat app, if your organization has set them up. See Connectors.

Web search needs a search provider set up on your deployment. If it isn’t, the agent tells you “Web search is not configured on this deployment”. Ask your admin; trying again won’t help.

Steps

1. Gather your files. In Drive, put the files the agent should read in one folder, for example “Harbor & Pine account”. Past proposals, meeting notes and any analyst PDFs all go here. See Drive.
2. Open the composer and pick the output. Go to Home and pick a workspace. Click Make and choose Document for a Word brief, or Presentation for a deck. For a deck, the deck pill lets you pick Standard deck or PowerPoint deck (the same deck, also as an editable .pptx).
3. Write the brief. Name the subject, the reader, the length and the sections. For example:

   Write a two-page account brief on Harbor & Pine for Priya, who meets their operations lead next week. Use the files in @Harbor & Pine account and search the web for news from the last six months. Sections: who they are, recent news, what they buy from us, risks, three questions to ask. Cite a source for every fact. Save it to the Harbor & Pine account folder.

4. Attach the files. Type @ to mention the folder, or click + > Drive and pick it. The agent can only read files you attach, mention or give it access to.
5. Add connected apps (optional). Click the Connectors icon and pick the apps this task may use, such as your CRM. If an app shows Ask an admin, your organization hasn’t set it up yet: ask your admin, or leave it out and attach an export instead.
6. Send it. Press Enter. Follow the work in the task. If the agent asks for approval to use a connected app, answer the card. See Monitor and steer a task.
7. Check the sources. Click the citation pills in the reply to open the pages the agent used. Check every number and date that will go in front of a customer.
8. Open and edit the result. The file is saved to Drive. Click Open in Drive in the task header, then open the file to edit it in place, or Download it.

To change the brief, reply in the same task, for example “Cut the risks section to three bullets and add a slide on their competitors.”

Make it a skill

When you have a version you like, turn its rules into a skill so every brief follows them. Follow Create a skill, then paste text like this into the body:

# Account brief

Use this when someone asks for a brief on a company, a competitor or a market.

## Steps
1. Read every file the user attached or mentioned before you search the web.
2. Search the web for news from the last six months: funding, leadership
   changes, product launches, layoffs, lawsuits.
3. If a CRM is connected, read the account and its open opportunities.
4. Write the brief with these sections, in this order:
   - Who they are (two sentences)
   - Recent news (up to five bullets, newest first)
   - Our relationship (what they buy, renewal date, open opportunities)
   - Risks (up to three)
   - Three questions to ask at the next meeting
5. Save it as a .docx in the folder the user named. If no folder is named,
   save it with the task's files. Name the file "<Company> brief <date>".

## Rules
- Cite a source for every fact: a link for web sources, the file name for
  Drive files, the app name for CRM data.
- Never guess a number. If you can't find it, write "Not found".
- Keep it to two pages.

Add the skill to a task with Attach skills in the composer. To give it to a team, put it on an agent (below) or share it (Share and manage skills).

Tips

• Start from a ready-made agent. Go to Agents > Starting points. “Research desk” writes cited briefs and fact-checks. “Account researcher” writes pre-call briefs and suggests CRM connectors. Click Use to create your own copy, then add your skill and connectors. See Create an agent.
• Say what “recent” means. “The last six months” gives far better results than “recent news”.
• Name the save folder in the brief. Otherwise the file lands in the task’s own folder.
• Run it weekly for a watch list. Once the task works, go to your workspace’s Automations, click Create automation, paste the same instructions, then click Add trigger > Schedule. Put the date in the file name so each week’s brief is kept. See Automations.
• Pick a careful preset for team agents. An agent that only reads apps and writes to Drive fits Ask for apps. See Agent permissions.

Next steps

• Send a task: the composer options used in this guide.
• Connectors: connect a CRM or email app, and what each status means.
• Create a skill: save your brief’s format as a skill.
• Automations: run the brief on a schedule.