Avaya Bets on Google Gemini to Power Its Next Phase of Enterprise AI

In Today’s edition:

1. Avaya Goes All-In on AI With Google Workspace, Gemini Partnership

2. PMNA TUTORIAL: Build a Lightweight Approval Workflow for PM Decisions Using Make.com

3. Gmail to Let Users Change Their Email Addresses While Keeping Data

4. TOOL REVIEW: Dessix.io Turns AI Into a True Thinking Partner for Complex Workspace Activity

5. Exciting Career Opportunities for Product and Project Management Professionals

Reading time: 4 minutes

HEADLINE NEWS

Avaya Goes All-In on AI With Google Workspace, Gemini Partnership

Avaya has announced a strategic shift by adopting Google Gemini Enterprise as its core AI platform and integrating Google Workspace for collaboration, signaling a move away from building proprietary AI infrastructure. This partnership highlights how enterprise vendors are leaning on hyperscale AI ecosystems to drive innovation, simplify tech stacks, and boost productivity.

• Avaya will use Google Gemini Enterprise as the foundation for its internal AI capabilities, focusing on “agentic AI” that can automate workflows.

• Google Workspace becomes the standard collaboration suite for Avaya employees, embedding AI into daily productivity tools.

• The move prioritises platform consolidation, reducing complexity in Avaya’s technology infrastructure.

• This partnership raises practical questions for tech buyers about how vendor ecosystem choices affect interoperability and future product roadmaps.

• Avaya believes leveraging Google’s AI will accelerate its innovation cycles and enhance employee experience, potentially translating into better customer solutions.

For project managers, this development is a clear example of how strategic tool consolidation and AI integration can reduce fragmentation, speed up workflows, and improve cross-team collaboration. Choosing platforms that embed AI deeply into communication and productivity tools can help teams automate routine tasks, surface insights faster, and maintain alignment across complex projects. As AI becomes more central to enterprise systems, PMs should evaluate not only feature sets but also long-term ecosystem support when selecting technology partners. Read More

PMNA TUTORIAL: Build a Lightweight Approval Workflow for PM Decisions Using Make.com

Approval requests often slow projects down because decisions are scattered across Slack, email, and meetings. This workflow shows how project and product managers can use Make.com, Notion, and Slack to centralize approvals, reduce back-and-forth, and create a clear audit trail. The result is faster decisions with full visibility and accountability.

You’ll learn to:

• Create a Notion approval database to capture and track decision requests

• Set up a Make.com scenario to watch for new or pending approvals

• Filter requests to ensure only pending items trigger the workflow

• Send structured approval messages to Slack automatically

• Store the Slack message ID back in Notion for tracking

• Monitor Slack replies for APPROVE or REJECT responses

• Route decisions and update approval status and timestamps in Notion

• Notify the requester automatically once a decision is made

Why it matters:

This lightweight approval workflow removes friction from PM decision-making while keeping stakeholders aligned. By automating approvals and logging decisions centrally, teams gain speed, clarity, and accountability without adding new tools. It’s a simple automation that scales easily as projects and teams grow.

FULL TUTORIAL HERE

Gmail to Let Users Change Their Email Addresses While Keeping Data

Google is introducing a highly anticipated update to Gmail that finally allows users to change their @gmail.com email address without having to create a new account — a major departure from its long-standing policy of locking users into their original email handles. This feature preserves all existing data and service access, keeping inboxes, files, and linked apps intact while giving users greater control over their digital identity.

• Gmail users can now replace their primary email address while keeping the same Google account and data intact.

• After changing, the old Gmail address stays active as an alias that continues to receive email.

• You can sign in with either the new or old address on Gmail and other Google services.

• The feature is rolling out gradually and may not be available to all users yet. 

• There are limits: changes can only be made once every 12 months, with a maximum of three changes per account.

For project managers, this Gmail change update matters because email addresses often serve as primary identifiers across project tools, calendars, collaboration platforms, and communication threads. Being able to update an outdated or unprofessional email without disrupting linked services can reduce administrative friction, protect professional branding, and streamline onboarding processes when team roles change. It also highlights how platform vendors are increasingly prioritizing user flexibility — prompting PMs to stay alert to how such account-level features can impact project workflows and access control across distributed teams. Read more

Dessix.io Turns AI Into a True Thinking Partner for Complex Knowledge Work

Dessix.io is an AI-powered thinking workspace designed to help individuals and teams capture ideas, organize information, and collaborate with AI in a deeply contextual way. Unlike traditional note-taking or AI chat tools, Dessix focuses on shared context, allowing AI to understand exactly what you’re working on and assist as a true thinking partner. It positions itself as an “AI thinking operating system” for complex knowledge work.

• Shared Context Engine: AI works directly from what you see and focus on, eliminating repetitive explanations and lost context.

• Block-Based Knowledge Structure: Information is broken into flexible, reusable blocks that mirror how humans think and organize ideas.

• Capture-to-Think Workflow: Instantly capture web content, notes, and documents and turn them into structured, AI-ready context.

• AI-Assisted Collaborative Thinking: Explore ideas, test assumptions, and branch thoughts with AI that adapts to your current focus.

• Multi-Window & Parallel Workspaces: Work on multiple ideas or documents at once while keeping AI aware of each active context.

For project managers, Dessix.io is especially valuable because it helps manage complex information, shifting requirements, and fragmented inputs without losing clarity. By keeping all project context visible and shared with AI, PMs can synthesize research, stakeholder input, and planning materials faster and with fewer misunderstandings. Ultimately, Dessix supports better decision-making, reduced cognitive overload, and more structured thinking across the entire project lifecycle.

TOOL LINK

Exciting Career Opportunities for Product and Project Management Professionals

• Product Manager @ Comcentric

  📍 Charlotte, NC.

• Project Manager @ IQVIA

  📍 Durham, NC.

• Product Owner @ Govcio LLC

  📍 Fort Bragg, NC.

• Product Owner @ Q2ebanking

  📍 Charlotte, NC.

• Associate Project Manager @ Hitachi

  📍 North Carolina.

THAT’S A WRAP