Read Their Journal
Every employee keeps a daily journal, a running log of what it did, decided, and got stuck on. You never have to ask for it, and you never have to re-read the chat to know what happened.
TL;DR
Every employee writes a dated journal entry after real work: what was asked, what it delivered, and the outcome. You read it from the employee's Drive tab, one file per day, tagged by category. Nothing to configure, it starts on hire.
How It Works
The employee keeps one journal file per day, named by date. Throughout a work session it appends short, timestamped entries to that day's file, it never rewrites or removes an earlier entry, so the file reads as a chronological record of the day.
Each entry carries:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Timestamp | The time the entry was written, in the employee's local time |
| Category | task_completed, observation, decision, blocker, learning, or handoff |
| Content | What was asked, what was delivered, and the result |
For a quick action the employee logs one line. For real work, it logs what was asked, what it produced, and where things stand, so you can scan the day without opening the chat transcript.
Today's journal is loaded automatically into the employee's own working memory on every turn, so it always knows what it already did today, even across separate conversations.
Where to Find It
| Location | What you see | How to get there |
|---|---|---|
| Employee's Drive tab | That employee's journal files, one per day, inside the Journal folder | Workspace, select the employee, click Drive |
| Team's Drive tab | Every team member's own journal files, grouped by member | Workspace, select the team, click Drive |
| Organization's Drive tab | Every employee's journal files across the company | Workspace, click Organization, click Drive |
Open a day's file to read it like any document. Files are sorted newest first.
What You Can Do
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Read a day's entries | Open the employee's Drive tab, pick a date under Journal |
| Edit an entry | Open the file and edit the text directly, same as any other document |
| Ask for a note | Tell the employee "make a note about this" and it logs a dated entry |
| Ask what happened | Ask the employee "what did you do yesterday?", it checks its journal before answering |
| Check a teammate's work | Ask a team member to look up another member's journal entries, it can search across the team |
How to Set It Up
Nothing to do. Every employee journals by default from hire, it is a standing responsibility, not an optional skill you turn on.
Tips & Tricks
- Review weekly. Open the Journal folder in Drive to see what an employee accomplished without reading every chat message
- Use it for handoffs. A "handoff" entry gives the next person (or you) the context needed to pick up work cleanly
- Ask "what did you do last week?" instead of scrolling chat history, the employee checks its journal files before answering
- Compare with Activity. The journal is the employee's own written summary of a day. The Work/Activity tab is the raw, step-by-step trace of what actually ran. Use the journal to scan, use Activity to investigate
Good to Know
- One file per day. The journal groups by calendar day, not by individual task, so a busy day's file can hold several entries
- Written during work, not after. The employee logs as it goes, not in one batch at the end of the day
- Visible to teammates. Other members of the same employee's team can look up its journal entries when they need context, teammates on a different team cannot
- You always see everything. As the employer, every employee's journal is visible to you from its Drive tab, there is no private mode from you
- Nothing is deleted automatically. Entries stay in the file, editing a day's file changes what is shown, it does not remove history from storage
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does the employee journal automatically, or do I have to ask? A: Automatically. Every employee writes journal entries as part of finishing real work. You never have to remind it.
Q: Can I edit a journal entry? A: Yes. Open the day's file from the Drive tab and edit the text directly, the same way you would edit any other document there.
Q: What are the six categories? A: task_completed (finished work), observation (something noticed), decision (a choice made), blocker (something stuck), learning (a lesson learned), and handoff (work passed to someone else).
Q: Can teammates read each other's journals? A: Members of the same team can look up each other's journal entries when they need context on shared work. Employees on different teams cannot see each other's journals.
Q: Do scheduled or automated tasks get journaled the same way? A: Yes. Any real work the employee does, whether triggered by you in chat or by a schedule, gets logged the same way.