The Problem
It would appear that agents that are added to a Gemini Enterprise app are very limited in their ability to interact with resources that are available to the Assistant (main agent entry point) in a Gemini Enterprise App. When I provision custom agents that i’ve developed to a Gemini Enterprise App, the only way you can interact with the provisioned agent is through @ mentioning the agent and then it’s scope of utility is limited; the agent doesn’t know about other agents, and has no access to tools or connectors. One very compelling reason for adding your own agents to a Gemini Enterprise app would be so that the agent(s) could take advantage of the connectors to put data into Drive or send emails, or collaborate with other agents. Otherwise the Gemini Enterprise app interface is just a Google-made UI that is basically equivalent to where the Gemini UI is at this point from a functionality standpoint, and it seems like for the moment you’re just better off building custom agents in the google-adk and using Cloud Run to host the UI.
Expected Capabilities for Gemini Enterprise “Agents”
I was under the impression agents added to a Gemini Enterprise app could
- interact directly with Data connectors that are provisioned to the App
- coordinate with the Assistant and share artifacts, such as reports they have generated.
- have some awareness of the other agents in the space
The documentation around Gemini Enterprise and this particular functionality seems non-existent.
Questions
- Does anyone know why my custom agents are unable to perform these 3 basic steps?
- Is there a way to change this default behavior, perhaps via the API?
- Is this slated to change in the future?
Steps Taken so far…
I have tried providing a very clear prompt for the Additional Instructions for the app, but that does not fix the issue. I’ve also built several agents with google-adk for python, registered the agents in the Agent Platform (formerly VertexAI) Regsitry, and then have added the agents to a Gemini Enterprise App.
I have also built a couple of agents using the BigQuery Agents builder and added them to Gemini Enterprise using their A2A card. Neither approach yields the desired functionality
Here’s an example of my custom agents, a mix of a2a and non-a2a, registered in Agent Platform, provisioned for an app in gemini enterprise
The agents are not part of the tool suite -
which leads to these kinds of silo’d interactions
But when you @ mention the agent, and ask it the same question and ask about Drive integration, here is the response:
I am the PADS Concierge. I can help you with questions about the PADS loan management system by looking up information about loans, documents, and Jira tickets.
I cannot interact with Google Drive. I can only access loan documents stored in the Egnyte file system.