Connected mailboxes and calendars
How to connect Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, what Standards reads, what each access level allows, and how to change it, disconnect and delete what was synced.
A mailbox or calendar connects to one person, or to the whole workspace. Standards asks Google or Microsoft for access only after you have read what the connection does and chosen to continue.
Connect
Connect from Settings › Integrations, or from the empty Mailbox or Meetings page. Standards first shows what it will access and what it does with it, for this provider and this level of access. Continue with Google or Continue with Microsoft opens the provider's consent page; Cancel closes the dialog and asks the provider nothing. The same step comes before every later request: reconnecting, authorizing sending, or authorizing writing.
An integration added under the workspace is read by every member, and Standards warns you before that step. One added from your own account is yours.
What Standards reads
| Connected | What is read and stored |
|---|---|
| Mailbox | Your messages: history, then new mail as it arrives. Standards stores their text and the names and types of their attachments; an attachment's content is fetched from the provider when someone opens it. |
| Calendar | Your events: title, time, guests, location, description and video link. They become meetings. |
Standards shows this data in the workspace, links it to the records whose email addresses match, and makes it searchable. A mailbox syncs every two minutes, or within seconds where the hosting platform has switched on provider push.
Where AI comes in
Standards does not sell your data and does not use it for ads.
AI providers process your mail automatically, without you asking:
- each new mail picked up by live sync goes to a model that files it into a category. This cannot be turned off;
- your mail text, history included, goes to an embedding provider for search by meaning, where the workspace has it on;
- important direct exchanges are read by memory, unless you turn that off for your own mailbox.
What is sent where and learning from mail give the details.
AI providers also process your mail and events whenever an agent works on them. The default assistant can read every mailbox and calendar you have connected, and any agent or routine granted one can read it too. Removing the grant from an agent or routine stops that one.
Access levels
Settings › Integrations shows each connection's level beside its address. Standards reads the level from what the provider actually granted.
| Level | Allows |
|---|---|
| Mailbox, Read only | Reading mail. Archiving and deleting stay in Standards. |
| Mailbox, Read and send | Reading mail and sending from this address. |
| Mailbox, Read and write | Reading mail and changing it at the provider: read state, archive, trash. |
| Mailbox, Read, write, send | All of the above. |
| Calendar, Read only | Reading events. |
| Calendar, Read and write | Reading events, and creating, changing and deleting them. |
Asking Outlook to send also asks to change mail, because Microsoft's large attachments go through a draft. Gmail's write access depends on the deployment: see Mailbox.
Change the access
Open the connection's ⋯ menu in Settings › Integrations:
- Authorize sending asks a read-only mailbox for sending, on the same account.
- Authorize writing asks a read-only calendar for writing.
- Reconnect asks again for what the connection already holds, when the provider's grant has lapsed.
To lower a level, delete the connection, remove Standards at the provider, then connect again: Google otherwise keeps what it already granted. To remove one agent's access, remove the grant from that agent.
Disconnect
Disconnect, in the ⋯ menu, stops syncing and stops Standards reaching the account. Nothing that was synced is removed: mail and meetings stay visible to the people who could see them, and the connection stays listed as disconnected, with its stored authorization, until you delete it.
Delete the connection and what it imported
Delete, in the same menu, removes the connection and its stored authorization for good. What it imported stays unless you ask otherwise:
- On a connection of your own, check Also remove the emails and meetings this account imported. Mail no other connected mailbox holds is deleted for everyone, and so are the meetings the calendar synced. A mail another connected mailbox also received stays, and so does a workspace meeting.
- On a connection made for the whole workspace, or one of your own carrying a shared mailbox, what it imported is the workspace's shared history. The box is not available to you, and nothing in Standards removes that history. Write to us to have it removed.
Deleting a mailbox or calendar connection gives the exact rules.
Some things stay after that removal:
- What memory already learned from your mail stays in memory pages until someone edits or removes it.
- A compact entry for each removed mail (subject, preview, addresses) can stay in the search index until the index is next rebuilt. Search no longer returns it.
- Deleting a mail in the Mailbox moves it to Deleted, and to the provider's trash where Standards writes to that mailbox. The copy in Standards stays; only the removal above deletes it for good.
Remove access at the provider
Neither Disconnect nor Delete cancels the grant at Google or Microsoft. To cancel it, remove Standards from the third-party access page of your Google account, or from the apps page of your Microsoft account.
Next steps
Read how the Mailbox works, or how Meetings come from your calendars.
Mailbox
Where the mailbox looks, how to archive, delete, restore and mark mail read from the list or the keyboard, how your signature is added to the mail you send, and what happens at Gmail and Outlook.
How to use the CLI
Install the standards CLI, log in to the hosted API, and script your workspace with JSON, table or CSV output.