Working With Google Drive and Sera

Handing a document to Sera should take one action. This article covers the ways to do it, which file types she can read the words out of, the limits worth knowing, and what to do when something cannot be read.

Four ways to hand Sera a file

All four end in the same place, so use whichever is closest to what you are already doing.

1. Share it with the capture address. In Drive, click Share and add your capture address (for example capture@yourorg.com) as a Viewer. This works for a single file or a whole folder.
2. Put it in the org Shared Drive. The capture identity is already an Organizer there, so anything you place in it is readable immediately. No sharing step, no waiting.
3. Paste a link into an email to the capture address. If you are writing an email anyway, a Drive link in the body is enough. Sera opens the linked document and reads it as part of the message.
4. Attach it to an email. Attachments are read directly from the email.

The habit worth building: if it belongs to the organization, put it in the Shared Drive. Then the sharing step disappears entirely for everything you do afterward.

What Sera can read the words out of

| You share | What Sera gets | |---|---| | Google Doc | The full text | | Google Sheet | Every tab, labeled | | Google Slides | Slide text and speaker notes | | PDF | The full text | | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument | The full text | | Plain text, Markdown, CSV, JSON, HTML | The full text | | Google Drive shortcut | Followed to the real file, then read as above | | Folder | Every file inside it, each as its own record |

And what she cannot:

• Video and audio are not transcribed. A recording is filed as a named record with a link, so it is findable, but the words are not extracted. If you want the content in the hub, share the transcript rather than the recording. For Google Meet, the transcript and the notes are separate files from the recording, and those are read in full.
• A scanned PDF has no text layer. A photographed or scanned page is an image in a PDF wrapper. Sera will say she could not read it rather than pretend it was empty.

Sharing a folder

Sharing a folder is a good way to hand over a body of work, and each file inside becomes its own record rather than one lump.

Three limits worth knowing:

• Sera opens the folder and one level of sub-folders. This covers the common case where a tool such as Granola, Zoom, or Fathom creates one sub-folder per meeting.
• Up to 50 files per share.
• Anything deeper than one level, or beyond the 50, is reported rather than skipped silently. The record will say what was not opened, so you can share those parts directly.

Re-sharing is always safe. Sera recognizes a file already in the hub and will not create a duplicate, so if you are unsure whether something was picked up, just share it again.

When Sera says she could not read something

You will sometimes see a record saying a file could not be read. This is deliberate. A document that cannot be read is recorded as a visible, named gap rather than quietly omitted, because a missing record looks exactly like a document that was never important.

The record names the file and the reason. In order of likelihood:

1. The capture address was never given access. This is the usual cause. Share the file with it and the content is picked up on the next pass.
2. The file is a scanned image. It needs to be run through OCR, or the original text version shared instead.
3. It is a video or audio file. Share the transcript instead.

Why organizational files belong in a Shared Drive

When an organizational file lives in someone's personal Drive, only that person and the people they shared it with can open it. That causes three recurring problems:

1. Sera cannot reach it unless it is shared with the capture address specifically.
2. Other members cannot find it. It does not appear in shared spaces, so people ask around or recreate it.
3. It is lost when the owner leaves. If that person closes or changes their Google account, the file goes with them.

A Shared Drive is owned by the organization rather than an individual, so files there survive staff changes and are visible to every member.

To move an existing file, use Move to or Organize and pick a Shared Drive folder. Moving a file into a Shared Drive changes its owner to the drive, which is the point: ownership belongs to the organization. You stay listed as the uploader and keep full access.

The Google Meet exception

Google Meet saves recordings, transcripts, and notes to the meeting organizer's personal Drive, not to a Shared Drive. That is Google's behavior and it cannot be configured away.

So Meet assets need one deliberate step. Either share them with the capture address, or grant the one-time access request Sera sends to your administrator. Once granted, later meetings from the same organizer flow through without further prompting.

A starting folder taxonomy

Structure helps people and Sera find things. This is a suggestion to start from, not a mandate:

• Governance Docs for charters, policies, and canon material.
• Meeting Assets for transcripts and notes.
• Marketing for campaigns and messaging.
• Finance for budgets and financial reports.
• Templates for reusable role cards, charters, and onboarding guides.
• Brand Assets for logos, palette, fonts, and guidelines.

The short version

Share it with the capture address, or put it in the Shared Drive. Documents of every common kind are read in full. Recordings need their transcript instead. Folders bring their contents plus one level down. Re-sharing is safe. And if something could not be read, Sera says so plainly, names it, and tells you what would fix it.

Key points

Four ways to hand Sera a file, all equivalent: share it with the capture address, put it in the org Shared Drive (already accessible, no sharing step), paste a link into an email to the capture address, or attach it. Sera reads the words out of Google Docs, Sheets (every tab), Slides (including speaker notes), PDFs, Word and Office files, and plain text, Markdown, CSV, JSON and HTML files. She cannot transcribe video or audio, and cannot read a scanned PDF that has no text layer; both are filed as a named record with a link so nothing disappears. Sharing a folder ingests the files inside it plus one level of sub-folders, up to 50 files per share; anything deeper is reported as not opened, so share those directly. Drive shortcuts are followed to the file they point at. Re-sharing something already in the hub does not create a duplicate, so re-sharing is always safe. If Sera could not read a file she says so in the record, names the file, and says what to do about it; the usual cause is that the capture address was never given access. Store organizational files in a Shared Drive so they survive people leaving and need no per-file sharing.