Architecture Review Is Friday and the Deck Is Blank. Make Gemini Notebook Show You the Outline First.

At a glance

• Load the design doc, the decision records and the incident write-up into one Gemini Notebook as Google Drive sources.
• Turn on outline review before Gemini Notebook renders anything, then send all of your corrections in one pass.
• Select Proceed only when the outline matches what you will defend in the room, then fix single slides with Revise.

The architecture review is Friday. The design doc is solid, but turning twelve pages, three decision records and last month's incident write-up into a deck is the part nobody wants. A one-shot deck is fast, but if the order is wrong or the rollback plan is missing, you rebuild it by hand.

Who gets it: Google's 21 October 2026 Workspace Updates post lists this review flow for all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers and personal Google accounts, rolling out over up to 15 days from 16 October 2026.

Why it matters

On Wednesday 21 October 2026, the Google Workspace Updates blog said Gemini Notebook can now walk you through a step-by-step creation flow for Slide Decks and Video Overviews instead of jumping straight to a final output. With the Review toggle on, you preview the slide deck outline in the Studio panel and give written feedback before the deck is generated.

That matters for technical decks, because the outline is where the argument lives. Our view: it is much cheaper to say "move the rollback plan before the cost slide" to an outline than to a finished deck. Google's Help page also says that once you select Proceed, you cannot refine the outline further, so the review step is your one real checkpoint.

How to get an architecture review outline you can defend

1. Open Gemini Notebook and create a notebook for the review. You need edit access to generate a deck.
2. On the left, select Add sources and import the design doc, decision records and incident write-up from Google Drive. Help says Drive sources sync every few minutes, so late edits to the doc still reach the notebook.
3. In the Studio panel, select Slide Deck. Choose a format, output language, length and the sources to use.
4. Describe the deck you want. The block below is our example; swap in your own audience and sections.
5. Turn on Review outline notes, then select Generate now. Do not pick Generate later, because Help says that schedules a deck without an outline.
6. When the outline is ready, select Review next to it in the Studio panel. Add all of your feedback at once, then select Proceed.
7. After the deck renders, select Revise at the top to fix individual slides. Help says your edits group under Pending Changes until you select Generate revised deck.
8. Use the three dots menu next to the deck to download a PDF or PowerPoint file.

Describe the deck:
Architecture review for staff engineers, 10 slides. Problem, current design, proposed design, the two rejected alternatives from the decision records, migration plan, rollback plan, open risks. Plain diagrams, no marketing tone. Use only the selected sources.

Outline feedback (send in one message):
Move the rollback plan directly after the migration plan.
Add one slide on what the October incident taught us, citing the incident write-up.
Cut the summary slide at the end and replace it with three questions for reviewers.

From chat instead, ask Gemini Notebook for a slide deck, adjust the cards it returns, turn on Review outline before final rendering, and select Generate.

Gotchas

• Rollout and access: the rollout is gradual, with no admin control, so a missing Review toggle may just mean it has not reached you yet (our reading). One undated Help page still says co-creation is only for Google AI Ultra subscribers; the newer Workspace Updates post and Google's 19 October blog describe broad availability.
• One shot at the outline: after Proceed, the outline is locked.
• Revisions ignore sources: Help says Revise does not take sources into account, and each revision creates an entirely new deck that counts against a quota. Get facts right at the outline stage.
• Accuracy: Google says slide decks are AI generated and may contain visual or factual inaccuracies. Check every number against the design doc.

Sources:

• Gain more creative control over Slide Decks and Video Overviews in Gemini Notebook
• How to shape your slides and videos with Gemini Notebook
• Generate Slide Decks in Gemini Notebook
• Add or discover new sources for your notebook
• Turn Gemini Notebook on or off for users (admin access to Gemini Notebook in general, not the review flow)

Recommended AI prompt

Copy this paragraph into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, or whatever AI you use.