New-Hire Procedures Notebook

1. List the pages a new colleague needs in the first month: routing steps, checklists, template lists and who-to-ask pages.
2. Remove personal phone numbers and anything not meant for the whole office.
3. Add a "Last updated: [date]" line to each document.
4. Give each file a clear name, such as subaward-routing-checklist-2026-10.

What you should see: A short set of documents with dates and descriptive names. Troubleshooting: Long manuals can be split by topic, which gives more precise citations.

1. Open Gemini Notebook and create a new notebook.
2. Name it "Office procedures (new hires)".

What you should see: A blank notebook ready for sources.

1. Add your documents. Google's page lists Google Docs, PDFs, text and markdown files, and web URLs as supported source types.
2. Wait for each source to load.
3. Open two sources to confirm the text came through.

Troubleshooting: If your manual lives in a shared drive, add the Google Doc version so you can refresh it later.

Ask three questions you know the answers to. Click each citation and check that it points to the right page.

What you should see: Answers with numbered citations that open the passage in your own document. Troubleshooting: If an answer is vague, the manual may be vague on that point. Fix the manual and replace the source.

1. Decide who gets access. Google's page says notebooks can be shared with a team.
2. Share only with colleagues who may see the documents inside.
3. Tell the new colleague the rule: the notebook points to our pages, and a senior colleague confirms anything involving money or a deadline.

1. When the manual changes, replace the old source with the new version.
2. Write the change date in a notes document and add that to the notebook.
3. Once a quarter, ask the notebook about a page that changed, and confirm the answer matches the new text.
4. Gemini Notebook keeps no chat history according to Google's page, so pin a response when you want to keep it.