Uploaded files, Google Drive and connectors

In January, an HR operations lead exported the employee handbook as a PDF and uploaded it to her project’s knowledge. The policy team edits that handbook almost every week. In March, parental leave and the remote-work allowance changed. Two employees sent back answers with the old allowance: Claude was quoting the January PDF word for word.

Claude did not get it wrong. It read exactly what it had.

A snapshot or a living document

There are two ways to give Claude a document, and they behave differently:

	What it is	When it changes
Uploaded file	A copy of the document at the moment you uploaded it	Never, until someone replaces it by hand
Google Doc added from Drive	A link to the original document	It syncs with the latest version

If the document changes often and lives in Google Docs, add it from Drive and remove the uploaded copy. That way nobody has to remember to update anything.

Two details the exam can use:

• In a shared project, the option to add files from Drive is not available; it only works in private projects. In a shared project, keeping the uploaded files up to date is someone’s job (we cover that in the next lesson).
• When reading a Drive file, Claude takes the text; images inside the document are not processed.

Connectors: what Claude sees and what it does not

A connector gives Claude access to an external tool, such as Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Drive, to look up information when a request needs it: finding the latest thread with a customer, pulling a pricing sheet, checking the week’s calendar.

The key is permissions:

• Each person connects their own account. Claude sees only the mail, calendar and files of that account.
• It respects the permissions that already exist in Google. Nobody sees through Claude anything they could not open before. A junior rep cannot read a manager’s mail through Claude.
• It retrieves the minimum needed, only when the request requires it.
• In Gmail, it sees attachment details (such as the file name), not their content. A contract that only exists as an attachment in an old email is not covered: it has to be saved to Drive or uploaded.

Who enables and who approves

On Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner (or Primary Owner) has to enable the connectors for the organization before each person can connect their account.

Actions with an outside effect (sending, replying to or forwarding an email, sharing or moving files) require per-action approval by default: Claude prepares the action and the person confirms each one. The Owner decides whether members can skip that approval. Claude does not write to a customer “on its own initiative.”

The typical traps

• Uploading a new PDF every week next to the old ones “to keep the history”: Claude may use any of them.
• Adding an instruction like “always use the latest version” instead of changing the source.
• Asking Claude whether its copy is up to date: it has no way of knowing.
• Believing a connector opens access to the whole team’s mail or folders.
• Believing that once Gmail is enabled, Claude sends emails by itself.
• Assuming Drive files sync in a shared project.

On the exam

If the scenario shows answers with old data and the original document is a Google Doc that is edited often, look for the option that replaces the uploaded file with the document from Drive (if the project is private and the connectors are enabled). If it asks how the connectors behave, the correct statements are “only what the person could already see” and “the Owner enables them and sets the approvals.” Be wary of options that promise to read attachments, sync in shared projects or act without approval.