# Self-Service Tool Management

Ask your employee for a tool the same way you'd ask a coworker. It checks what it already has, searches the catalog for the rest, adds and turns tools on, and hands you a connection link when a real login is needed, all inside the conversation you're already having.

Every Sistava employee can manage its own toolset in chat. Ask what tools it has, ask it to find a specific one, or ask it to add and turn one on, and it handles the request directly instead of pointing you to a settings screen.

Tools belong to the team, so once one employee adds or connects a tool, every teammate on that team can use it. The employee always tells you plainly what changed: what got added, what's now on, and what still needs your OAuth login to finish connecting.

For apps that require a real account (Gmail, Slack, Notion, and similar), the employee gets you a connection link right in the chat. For tools with no login step, like Web Search or Image Generator, turning them on is the whole job, there's nothing further to connect.

The difference from doing this in the Tools tab is the number of steps, not the outcome. Adding a tool from the catalog, turning it on, and starting its OAuth flow are three separate clicks in the workspace UI. Asked for in chat, a request like "connect Gmail" resolves to one call that does all three: if the team doesn't hold the tool yet, it adds it, enables it, and opens the connection link in the same reply.

## What you can ask for

List my employee's tools and their connection status. Search the catalog for a tool by name or by category, like "email" or "docs". Add a tool to the team. Turn a tool on or off. Get a connection link for an app that needs login. Or ask the employee to start learning from a tool's data once it's connected.

The employee reports status honestly: which tools are ready, which are waiting on a login, and which still need to be added before they can be used. A search checks the same global catalog the Tools tab draws from, so results include tools no one on your team has ever touched, each marked as already yours and on, already yours but off, or not added yet, with the most actionable ones surfaced first.

## Where the boundary sits

Employees can add, enable, and disable tools, and can request OAuth connections. They cannot remove a tool from the team entirely or disconnect an account, those stay admin actions in the Tools tab so a login can't be pulled out from under a teammate mid-task by accident. Built-in system tools, like task management and schedule management, aren't part of this at all: they're assigned automatically to every employee and were never something to add or search for.

Learning from a connected tool's data is gated separately: the employee proposes it, and it still needs your explicit approval before it starts pulling in data, the same approval flow used everywhere else the platform touches your information. That's a different switch from a tool's own approval mode, which decides whether every use of a tool pauses for your sign-off; self-service management only changes which tools exist and whether they're on, never how cautiously they're used once connected.

## What happens at the edges

Asking to connect several apps at once, for example Gmail, Calendar, and Notion together, comes back as one result per app: each gets its own link so a typo or an unavailable integration on one app never costs the other two theirs. Only a single-app connect opens the login page automatically; a multi-app request hands back links to click instead of throwing three browser tabs at you at once.

If the connection service itself is down, the employee reports that plainly and asks you to try again rather than pretending the tool connected. A search that matches nothing suggests trying a different term or searching by category instead of app name. And an app that isn't connected yet doesn't block work: the employee produces the equivalent output as a Drive draft, an email or a report, and mentions the missing connection once rather than repeating itself every turn.

## How It Works

**One chat request, the full add-enable-connect path in a single step**

When you ask for a tool, the employee first checks its team's existing tools and the shared catalog. If the tool isn't already on the team, asking to connect it adds it, turns it on, and starts the OAuth flow in one move, instead of making you ask three separate times.

Enabling and disabling a tool is a reversible switch: a disabled tool stays on the team's list and can be turned back on any time, nothing is removed. Only an admin can fully remove a tool from the team.

You can also ask for several tools at once, for example Gmail, Calendar, and Notion together. The employee returns one connection link per app, clearly labeled, so you can click through each in turn instead of running the request three times.

## Use Cases

### Getting a new employee ready for email

You hire an employee and want it handling email right away. Ask it to connect Gmail; it adds the tool, enables it, and sends you a connection link in the same reply.

### Finding the right tool without knowing its exact name

You know you need something for scheduling but not the exact tool name. Ask your employee to search for "calendar" and it returns matching catalog tools with their current status on your team.

### Connecting several apps in one go

You want Gmail, Google Calendar, and Notion all set up together. Ask for all three at once and the employee returns one clearly labeled connection link per app instead of making you ask three times.

## FAQ

### Do I have to set up tools manually before my employee can use them?

No. Ask for what you need in chat, for example "connect Gmail", and the employee adds the tool, turns it on, and sends you the login link in the same reply if one is needed.

### If I disable a tool, do I lose my setup?

No. Disabling just turns the tool off; it stays assigned to the team with its configuration intact, and can be re-enabled at any time without redoing the connection.

### Does adding a tool for one employee give it to the whole team?

Yes. Tools are owned by the team, not the individual employee, so once one employee adds or connects a tool, every teammate on that team can use it.

### Can my employee remove a tool or disconnect my account on its own?

No. Employees can add and toggle tools, but removing a tool from the team or disconnecting an account is reserved for an admin, done from the Tools tab.

### What if I ask my employee to connect several apps at once?

It returns one connection link per app in the same reply, clearly labeled, instead of making you ask three separate times. Only a single-app request opens the login page automatically.

## Where Self-Service Tool Management fits

Self-Service Tool Management is part of Things they can do out of the box.

Every AI employee ships with built-in abilities that work out of the box. Search the live web for real-time information, scrape and crawl any website for structured data, and generate images directly in conversation. No plugins to install, no APIs to configure.

- [Things they can do out of the box](/en/features/capabilities): Research, create, and extract without plugins.

## Read the guide

- [Guide: Self-Service Tool Management](/en/guide/equip/tools)

## More in Capabilities

- [Web Search](/en/features/capabilities/web_search): Every AI employee can search the live internet for current information and answer with sources, no setup required. It runs automatically whenever the employee needs something it does not already know, such as a competitor update, a price, or a recent news item. Results are cited titles, snippets, and URLs, synthesized into a plain answer inside the chat.
- [Web Scraping](/en/features/capabilities/web_scraping): Give any employee a URL and they read the full page: article, blog post, documentation, competitor page, pricing table, whatever is public. They return clean text with the ads, navigation, and boilerplate stripped out, ready to summarize, compare, or act on. It is enabled for every employee at hire, costs no credits, and works on JavaScript-heavy pages without any setup on your side.
- [Image Generation](/en/features/capabilities/image_generation): Ask any employee to create an image and it builds a detailed prompt, generates it with an OpenAI image model, and saves the result to Drive with a persistent link. Use it for logos, social graphics, illustrations, diagrams, or landing page visuals, described in plain language. No setup required: every employee can generate images at hire, with a Model, Quality, and Shape default you can adjust per tool.
- [Code Interpreter](/en/features/capabilities/code_interpreter): Code Interpreter is on our roadmap: a sandboxed Python environment your AI employee will use to run scripts, crunch numbers, and transform data files on request. Instead of describing a calculation in words, you'll be able to ask for the actual computation and get back a checked result, not a guess. It is not available yet.
- [Video](/en/features/capabilities/video_generation): Hand your employee a prompt and get back a short, ready-to-post video clip, filed straight into your Drive. Built for social cuts, ad concepts, and quick product demos. Editing your own footage is coming next.
- [B2B Marketplace](/en/features/capabilities/b2b_marketplace): A network of real, vetted businesses living inside Sistava. Ask any AI employee to find a vendor, a partner, or a service provider, and it checks this network first, before it ever touches the open internet. Get listed yourself and the same network works the other way: visitors, customers, and other businesses' AI employees can discover and recommend you.
- [Document Editor](/en/features/capabilities/document_editor): Ask an employee for a spreadsheet, a report, a slide deck, or a data export, and get back a real .xlsx, .docx, .pptx, .csv, or .pdf file, not a wall of text pasted into chat. It can also revise a file you already gave it through the same chat-and-Drive workflow, keeping the work you did not ask to change intact whenever the format supports it. For PowerPoint, it can turn a brief into native slides with layouts, charts, images, shapes, tables, and speaker notes. PDFs can be polished reports or colorful, fully designed pages with professional print typography. Included with every employee on every plan, nothing extra to connect or unlock.
- [Premium Prospect Database](/en/features/capabilities/pdl_prospect_database): Find real people to sell to and reveal their verified work email and phone, pulled from a premium database of over a billion professionals worldwide. Filter by role, seniority, industry, company size, and location to build a targeted list, then have your employee save the best prospects straight into your CRM. A premium add-on on paid plans; on the free plan your employee researches prospects on the open web.
- [Send an Employee to Your Meeting](/en/features/capabilities/meeting_attender): Share a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams link and your employee joins the call as a named participant. It listens, keeps a full speaker-tagged transcript, and speaks up out loud when you address it by name. When the call ends, the transcript lands in Drive and a summary shows up in chat.
- [Get a Live Meeting Transcript](/en/features/capabilities/meeting_live_transcript): Your AI employee joins a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams call and captures a full transcript as people speak, tagged by speaker and timestamped. Ask for it mid-call, ask for it after, or just ask what someone said ten minutes ago. When the meeting ends the transcript is saved to your employee's Drive automatically.
- [Meeting Summary](/en/features/capabilities/meeting_summary): When a meeting your employee attended ends, it writes a summary and drops it in chat automatically: what got decided, who owns what, and the action items. No need to ask for a recap, it is already waiting when you check in.
- [Document Text Extraction](/en/features/capabilities/text_extraction): When you attach a document to a chat message or upload it for training, your employee turns it into readable text on its own. PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, OpenDocument files, RTF, and plain text or data files all come through automatically, tables included, with no conversion step for you to run first.

## Explore

- [Every feature](/en/features)
- [Hire an AI employee](/en/market)
- [Pricing](/en/pricing)