6.3 – Create Shared Notebooks for Your Team Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson introduces the shared notebook feature in Google NotebookLM Plus and its usefulness for team collaboration. When working with research, reports, or content that needs input from several contributors, enabling shared notebooks lets everyone work from the same up-to-date information. Unlike simply sending files back and forth, shared notebooks keep conversations, source files, and notes all in one place for the team.

NotebookLM Plus expands on sharing options you may know from Google Docs or Sheets. You can grant access using an email invite, adjust whether a user can only view or also edit, and include a custom welcome note. It’s also possible to limit invitations to just chat conversations or open the full notebook to collaborators, depending on the need. Recipients get clear email invitations, and a visual icon helps you quickly spot which notebooks are actively shared.

For anyone whose work depends on efficient group access to research or idea tracking—such as distributed teams, research groups, or content creators—these options make NotebookLM Plus especially useful. In workplaces, schools, or editorial projects, sharing gives everyone clarity and a shared starting point for contributing.

Who This Is For

Whether you’re part of a business, school, or content operation, this lesson focuses on boosting team collaboration and knowledge sharing in NotebookLM Plus.

• Team leads who need to centralize research for easy group access
• Academic groups or research assistants sharing ongoing studies
• Editors and writers working together on projects or reports
• Project managers organizing distributed team contributions
• Marketing or analytics professionals sharing summarized findings
• Anyone responsible for onboarding new contributors to ongoing work

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Shared notebooks make it easy to manage group research projects or collective reports from a single location. You’d use this when introducing new team members or when several people need to update, revise, or comment on the same information without duplication or manual tracking.

For example, a marketing manager might create a research notebook, share it with the team as editors, and include a welcome note with instructions. Later, if a contractor needs temporary viewing rights, those can be set quickly. If project directions update, the sharing can be revoked or edited—all while keeping the latest work available to those who need it.

This lesson helps you move from isolated files to a smooth, shared workflow where permissions are easy to manage and everyone works from consistent data.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Before, collaborating across a team meant emailing files or copying notes between systems—opening the door to version confusion, lost feedback, or information silos. With NotebookLM Plus's sharing options, permissions are clear and easy to adjust, and the central notebook always shows the current state of research or drafts.

Shared access is quicker and less error-prone compared to manually syncing document versions. If you need to remove someone or change their role, you can do it instantly through the sharing settings—no need to re-send copies or clarify which document is current.

For teams in editorial, research, or analytics roles, this saves time, ensures the right people see the right content, and prevents confusion. Real-time collaboration also makes reviewing, commenting, and updating ongoing work straightforward—especially with multiple contributors joining or leaving projects at different stages.

Practice Exercise

Try setting up and managing shared notebooks to see how this supports collaboration:

1. Create a sample research notebook in NotebookLM Plus with mock data or notes.
2. Use the share option to invite a teammate by email. Assign them an editor role, and include a short welcome message suggesting a task (e.g., “Please update the summary section.”).
3. After your teammate views or edits the notebook, adjust their permissions to viewer only—or remove them from the access list altogether.

Did switching roles or removing access feel clear and immediate? Compare this to your previous process for team collaboration on shared research or documents.

Course Context Recap

This lesson focused on setting up and managing shared notebooks in NotebookLM Plus. Earlier lessons introduced the basics of notebook creation and permission settings, while upcoming lessons will explore analytics and tracking activity within shared projects.

Keep going to learn how to monitor engagement and usage with NotebookLM Plus analytics, and see how these features create a more connected, productive team environment. Continue the course to build your full skillset in managing collaborative AI-powered research.