Connections is where Brief's reach is decided. Everything Brief knows comes from what is connected here, which makes this the screen to check first when a briefing looks thin.
Three groups sit on it. Accounts holds every provider connection Brief syncs from: Google, Microsoft, Zoom, Todoist and Slack. Messaging is where you link your phone for WhatsApp — see Connecting Brief to WhatsApp. Agent tools is where you connect MCP servers, so their tools sit alongside Brief's own in chat.
This article is about operating the screen. For what each of those five accounts brings in and what Brief takes from it, see Supported sources and what Brief syncs.
Reading an account card
Each connected account gets a card, and it reads from the top down. The header carries the provider, the address, whether it is your primary account, and when it last synced. Sync underneath reports each capability separately — Email, Calendar, Contacts, Chat, Tasks — because one account syncs all of them independently. Configuration is where a Google or Microsoft account offers Manage calendars.
Permissions is the section worth understanding, and it works the opposite way round to how it looks. Every row is a permission Brief does not have, with a Grant access button beside it, and Grant all access at the foot when more than one is outstanding. Grant them all and the section disappears: a card with no Permissions section is one where Brief already has everything it asked for.
Brief describes each permission in the account's own terms:
- Read your email — "Read your email to summarize and surface what matters."
- Compose Email — "Draft replies and new messages on your behalf." Google only.
- Send — "Send the messages you approve." Microsoft only, and separate from drafting on purpose.
- Calendar — "See your schedule and add or update events."
- Contacts — "Recognize the people you work with and add or update contacts."
- Tasks — "Track your to-dos and create or update tasks."
- Chat — "Bring chat conversations into your briefings and send messages you approve."
- Directory — "Search your organization's directory to find people and their contact details."
No single card shows all eight. Signing in already grants read-only access to your mail, calendar and contacts, so Read your email is usually satisfied from the start and rarely appears; composing is a Google permission and sending is a Microsoft one, so no account can be asked for both. The Calendar and Contacts rows you do see are asking for the write half — adding and updating, not merely seeing.
What is left on the card is the specific, named gap between what Brief can reach and what you have asked it to do. A Chat row still sitting there is the reason chat is not in your briefings, however much of it you do — and the button beside it is the fix.
Connecting another account
Connect another account lists the five you can add — Google, Microsoft, Zoom, Todoist and Slack — each with its own Connect button and a line naming what it brings in. Brief supports several at once, including several from the same provider.
Which accounts you connect is the strongest noise control Brief has, and whether to connect a second account from the same provider is the decision that matters most. See Tuning your daily brief for why.
Manage calendars
An account with several calendars gets a Manage calendars dialog, so you choose which ones Brief reads rather than taking all of them. Brief starts with the account's primary calendar and nothing else; every other one is a checkbox here, saved as you tick it.
This is the fix in both directions. A birthdays calendar or a shared team roster produces events that look schedulable and are not, so leave those off. A team calendar carrying real meetings is the opposite case, and Brief will not see it until you turn it on.
For which calendars are worth enabling, and what to do about a calendar that lives on another account, see Email, contacts, and calendar best practices.
When a card looks wrong
The token beside the account name summarises; the Sync row underneath is the fuller answer, one entry per capability, worst first. Four states turn up there:
- Active — syncing normally.
- Syncing — a sync is running right now.
- Pending — nothing has reported yet. A freshly connected account reads this way, and so does one that never got started.
- Error — Brief holds the connection but a sync is failing.
An account whose access has been withdrawn is a different matter, and the card says so outright: it reads Needs reconnection and grows a Reconnect button. That usually means consent was revoked on the provider's side — in a Google or Microsoft security screen, sometimes by an admin — and nothing in Brief did it. Reconnecting re-asks for consent. If your admin tightened third-party access, that shows up here. See If Google blocks your sign-in or If Microsoft blocks your sign-in.
Because Sync reports per capability, the card can be honest about a partial failure. Email in error while Calendar is still active is a real and ordinary state, and no single word could describe it.
Removing an account
Each card offers removal, and Brief confirms with Remove this account? before doing it.
Removing stops the sync. For what happens to the data Brief already built from that account, see Account and data control.