Custom Assistants

Have more than one assistant, each with its own name, personality, and job to do.

You don't have to stick to just one assistant. You can set up several — each with its own name, its own email address, and its own personality — and use them for different parts of your life. One person might want a sharp, no-nonsense assistant for work and a warmer, more casual one for personal errands. It's entirely up to you.

Why have more than one?

Different jobs call for different styles. A scheduling assistant might be brisk and efficient, while a research assistant might be more thorough and conversational. Some people split things up by context — one assistant for work, one for home — while others create a specialist for a specific kind of task, like booking meetings or digging through email. Since each assistant has its own name and personality, you can shape each one to fit the role you give it.

Giving each assistant its own personality

When you set up an assistant, you can choose how it comes across with three sliders: Professionalism (from formal to casual), Humor (from serious to sarcastic), and Emoji use (from never to often). On the Personality tab you can also name characters or celebrities it should remind people of, pick a country of origin, describe how it should communicate with other people versus with you one-on-one, and write free-form personality details and a backstory. Two assistants can handle the exact same request very differently depending on the personality you've given them. You can adjust these any time from your assistant's settings, and changes save automatically.

Your main assistant

One of your assistants is always your primary one. This is the assistant that steps in by default whenever you ask for something without saying which assistant should handle it. To change it, open another assistant and switch on its Primary toggle — nothing is permanent.

Where to find your assistants

Open Assistants in the sidebar. Your assistants are grouped into a few sections depending on who they belong to:

Your Assistants — the ones you've created yourself, just for you
Team Assistants — set up by a team or company admin and shared with everyone in that group
Organization Assistants — shared with everyone in your organization by an admin
System Assistants — built-in assistants that come with the platform

Click an assistant to open its settings, which are organized into tabs: Profile (name, avatar, primary toggle, sharing), Personality, Signature (its email signature), Email (its address, or connecting your own Gmail or Outlook inbox), and Phone (its text and call lines, and requesting a phone line). Profile also has a Talk to strangers toggle: when it's on, your assistant reviews messages from senders it doesn't recognize but still checks with you before replying; when it's off, those messages are ignored.

Can't edit an assistant someone else set up? Use Duplicate to start your own copy of a system, team, or organization assistant.

An assistant you create yourself is private to you by default. If you have permission, you'll see share toggles on its Profile tab to share it with your team or organization. If an admin on your team or in your company sets one up instead, everyone in that group can see and use it automatically. Sharing assistants is available on plans that include team features. Either way, you'll always know where an assistant came from by which section it appears in.

Removing an assistant

If you no longer need an assistant you created, open it and click Delete Assistant at the bottom of its Profile tab. Deleting also deletes the tasks and inbox items assigned to it. Since you always need a primary assistant, you'll need to make a different one primary first if the one you're removing holds that role. To delete an assistant you've shared with your team or organization, unshare it first.

If the assistant still has work in progress, you'll be asked whether to move that work to your primary assistant and delete anyway, so nothing gets dropped or forgotten.

A quick example

Say you want one assistant to handle your work calendar and email, and a second, more relaxed one to help with personal errands and reminders. You'd create both, give each a name and a personality that fits, and set whichever one you use most often as your primary assistant. From there, just talk to whichever one fits the task — or let your primary assistant handle it if you don't specify. See Working with tasks for more on how your assistant takes on requests, or Supervision for how much you want it checking in with you before it acts.