Connecting Orion

This chapter also covers the channels where Orion serves your public, which are different ones: the WhatsApp service number and Instagram direct messages. There, the person writing is not you — it is whoever reached out to your business.

The channels: WhatsApp, Telegram and voice

The channel is where you talk to Orion. There are three ways in, and you can use more than one at the same time:

WhatsApp

the main channel. That is where it sends you the morning brief, tells you what is stuck, and takes your requests through the day. You can start on it without connecting anything — see Starting without connecting anything, just below.

Telegram

an alternative to WhatsApp, with a bot that is yours (more on this below).

Voice in the mobile app

a spoken conversation in real time, no typing. It is part of the plans that include voice — see which ones at orionworkers.com/pricing.

Besides those three, the "Ask Orion" chat follows you on every page of the web dashboard — same conversation, same agent. It does not count as a channel for the free trial: the 7-day clock starts with the first of the three above.

The 7-day free trial starts with your first channel

The 7 days, no card needed, start counting from the first channel you connect: WhatsApp authorized, Telegram linked, the first voice session, or the code you send to the Orion contact (below) — whichever happens first. It does not have to be WhatsApp. Through the Orion contact, the trial plan follows who you are: say you are a MEI and you try Orion MEI; otherwise, Orion WhatsApp — and you can say it later: the trial switches to Orion MEI.

Until August 14, 2026 there was a second path: a courtesy channel that unlocked on its own once the organization showed it was using the method. It has been withdrawn. Today the Orion channel is a subscription, with the 7-day trial as the way in; the Y Managers free period covers the panel seats, not the channel.

Starting without connecting anything

There is a shorter way in: talking to Orion without connecting anything. You have a conversation with a contact called Orion, saved in your address book like any other. It does not enter your WhatsApp and does not see any of your conversations.

There are two ways, and the easiest one never leaves the conversation:

Through the conversation itself (recommended). Send the Orion contact the e-mail of your account — just the e-mail, nothing else. A 6-digit code arrives in that inbox; type the 6 digits in the conversation and you're connected. The code lasts 10 minutes; if it doesn't arrive, check spam or send the e-mail again.

No account yet? You can start there too. Send your email to the Orion contact even without an account: it creates your account on the spot, connects this phone and emails you a link. Click that link when you can — that's how you confirm the address and, later, sign in to the panel without a password. You never have to go through the website to get started.

Were you a customer and your subscription ended? Send your e-mail the same way. The 6-digit code will not go out while the plan is stopped — but Orion answers right there with one month's price and a Pix payment link (plus the copy-and-paste code). As soon as the payment clears, it tells you in the conversation; then just send your e-mail again and the number connects on the spot. You do not need to go to the website to come back.

Through the dashboard. Open Orion → WhatsApp and click "Start now". The screen shows an eight-character code, valid for 10 minutes; tap "Open WhatsApp with the code" — the conversation opens with the code already typed, just send it.

⚠️ Never send codes generated by WhatsApp itself. WhatsApp's own "Linked devices" screen also produces an 8-character code — that code grants access to your WhatsApp and must never be sent to anyone, not even Orion. Orion codes come either from the dashboard (8 letters) or from your e-mail (6 digits).

The phone that completes either path becomes recognized as yours, and from there it is a normal conversation. That counts as your first channel: it is what starts the 7 days.

What this path does not do. It is deliberately smaller, and worth knowing before you judge the product by it:

• The morning brief and the alerts do arrive — but if you have not written for more than a day, the message comes in short form, and the full text arrives once you reply. That is a WhatsApp rule about who speaks first, not a limitation of Orion.
• Scheduled reminders ("remind me every Monday") are not part of this path. For the same reason as above, a reminder at a set time could not arrive in full — so Orion tells you right away instead of creating a reminder that would fail. Plans from Telegram up include free-form reminders at any time.
• You can send audio, photos and files. Audio is understood (transcribed on the spot); photos and files are stored and read. Replies always come as text — Orion does not send audio or images back yet.
• Groups do not work. It talks to you, one to one.
• It talks only to you. This path does not serve your customers — that is what the service number, described further below, is for.

This is the fastest way to find out whether Orion helps you; connecting a number shows the whole product. You can start with one and switch to the other — Orion stays the same, with everything you have already talked about.

One phone, one Orion. The same handset is never linked to two accounts at once. Changed phones? Ask for a new code in the dashboard and send it from the new one: the previous one stops answering immediately, and everything moves across.

If you already have a number connected, I ask before switching. Connecting a new handset doesn't only change where you talk to me — it changes where I send: summaries, reminders and alerts start arriving on the new phone. So anyone who already has their own number connected gets a warning naming the number that would be replaced, and the switch only happens if you reply SWITCH. Tested from another phone without meaning to change anything? Just ignore the message. Anyone without a connected number skips this step — they connect straight away.

Which number to use (read this before you scan)

You have two options, and they give Orion different powers.

Option A — a number dedicated to Orion. A SIM/number that is Orion's alone. You talk to Orion the way you would talk to any contact in your list. That number can take on a public role: Orion serves whoever writes to it — answers questions, triages, books appointments — with a persona separate from the one it uses with you, and escalates to you whatever needs a human. It sees nothing of your personal WhatsApp: the only thing there is what you send it.

Option B — your own number. Orion moves into your WhatsApp, in the chat with yourself ("Message yourself"). Its replies come with the prefix *✨ Orion:* — that is how you tell what is it from what is you. In this mode the public role is locked off**, and the page says so: the number is yours, and Orion will not reply to your contacts.

What your own number switches on in exchange is the automatic relationship radar. It is worth knowing exactly what that means:

• It records who you talked to and when, and uses that to tell you who is going cold and to create contacts in the CRM on its own.
• From the messages you send in 1:1 conversations, it extracts the text; for the contacts you chose to track closely, it keeps a short summary (up to 280 characters) of what you sent, building the history of the relationship.
• It does not reply to your friends, family or customers, and does not mark your messages as read — this is enforced in code, it is not just a promise.
• What other people send you, it does not reply to — and what gets recorded changed on August 12, 2026. A message that arrives from a third party on your number still goes unanswered: it does not become a turn of the artificial intelligence, and it decides nothing on top of it. What gets kept depends on who the contact is: for the people you marked to track closely, it keeps a short summary of what they wrote to you as well (before, only what you wrote went into the history); for the other contacts already in your CRM, only the record that there was contact that day, with nothing of the content; and from someone who is not in your CRM, nothing is kept — a message from a stranger neither creates a contact nor leaves a trace.
• If you ask, it reads any conversation of yours. "Summarize my conversation with Ricardo" pulls up to 30 messages from that chat; an export by date range can pull up to 1000. You are the one who orders the reading, and what it reads goes into the context of that conversation with it.

On the first connection in your-own-number mode, it sends a privacy notice in the chat. The Connection page also has the link "How Orion handles your WhatsApp privacy", available at any time.

In short

want an assistant that also serves your customers? Dedicated number. Want the automatic relationship radar over your real life on WhatsApp? Your own number.

Connecting WhatsApp

1. In the dashboard, open Orion → WhatsApp (the page is called Connection).
2. Click "Connect & start 7-day free trial" — or "Connect WhatsApp", if you already have a plan.
3. The QR code appears in seconds. On your phone: WhatsApp → Linked devices → Link a device, then scan. The screen updates on its own once you scan.
4. Prefer it without a QR? Click "Link with a code instead", give the number, and type the displayed code into WhatsApp → Linked devices → Link a device → "Link with phone number instead".

One real limit on the code: WhatsApp restricts how often codes can be issued, and that restriction applies to the whole account, not just to you. That is why the dashboard issues one code on demand and offers no "try again" button — if it does not come, use the QR, or reload the page later.

As soon as the connection closes, Orion sends the first message and introduces itself. That is where the setup Orion runs itself picks up.

Telegram: the bot is yours

Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram works with a bot that you create and own. On the Orion → Telegram page, the path has three steps:

1. In Telegram, talk to @BotFather and create a bot. It gives you back a token (something like 123456:ABC…).
2. Paste the token into the dashboard and choose a PIN of your own.
3. Send that PIN to your bot, inside Telegram. That is how the system confirms that the person who pasted the token is you.

Once that is done, the dashboard shows the bot's name and the status "connected". The Telegram channel is part of the paid plans and also of Orion BYOK, which is free and runs on your own organization's AI key — see them all at orionworkers.com/pricing.

Additional service numbers

If you want a separate number to serve the public — reception, support — today it comes in through one path only: the official WhatsApp API (Meta), in the "WhatsApp service numbers" block on the same Connection page (the block was called "Additional WhatsApp numbers" until August 11, 2026). The old QR path was withdrawn on August 5, 2026, and with it went the sales prospecting number option: additional numbers exist today only in the customer service role.

Each additional number is a billed item on your plan, and the dashboard refuses the connection before the pop-up even opens if the organization has no active subscription.

Before you start, get this ready:

• Your business's Facebook. You sign in with it, and the WhatsApp account created stays in your name. The number and the conversations are yours; the platform only receives permission to use them.
• A free number. It must not already be in use on WhatsApp. If it is, delete its WhatsApp account first — otherwise the connection fails.
• How to receive the code. You will receive a code to prove the number is yours. On a landline or a virtual number, ask for it by phone call: SMS never arrives on that kind of line.
• A payment method on the WhatsApp account. Without it, WhatsApp blocks sending even with everything else in place.
• Business verification (optional at first). It unlocks higher limits and requires company documents. You can start without it, on lower limits.

And the limits that are WhatsApp's, not ours — worth reading before you click:

• Connecting does not switch the number on right away. WhatsApp reviews the account first. It usually takes a few hours and can take up to 24. During that time the number shows as Under review and cannot send or receive yet.
• 24-hour window. Free-form replies are allowed for up to 24h after the customer's last message. Outside that window, only pre-approved message templates go out.
• The number becomes a business line. It stops working in the regular WhatsApp app on a phone.
• A daily limit that scales. Business-initiated conversations start with a low cap that rises automatically as the number delivers with quality.

Once active, the number gets a Public role button, where you set the role, the tone, the conversation flow, and what it must never do. The fullest use of a service number is booking for your clients — see Your clients.

Instagram service

Instagram is the second channel where Orion serves your public — the first is the WhatsApp service number, just above. The idea is the same: the person writing there is not you, it is whoever reached out to your business.

It lives at Orion → Instagram in the dashboard, and it is included in every plan at no extra cost. The one exception is the Y Managers seat. The tokens the service uses come out of that account's own allowance.

The account must be professional — business or creator. A personal account does not receive messages through this path, and the dashboard refuses the connection saying so, instead of letting you find out through silence. You switch it in the Instagram app, under Settings → Account type.

These are two decisions, not one. Connecting gives Orion the right to receive the account's messages. Answering is the second switch, and it starts off. While it is off, messages arrive and are recorded, but nobody is answered — the Turn on replies button is what starts the service. This is deliberate: a freshly connected account should not start talking to real customers without someone saying yes.

One Instagram account per company. The channel is a company service line, and what arrives through it is accessible to the other members of the organization — as with a service number. To change accounts, disconnect the current one and connect the new one.

The public role is per account. Under Public role you set role, tone, script and limits for Instagram alone — they can differ from what applies on WhatsApp. Until you set anything, the account answers with the main number's role, and the screen says so and shows which one. Clearing the fields and saving returns the account to that inheritance.

When you answer from the app, Orion goes quiet. It notices that a person took over that conversation and steps aside for six hours, so the two of you don't answer the same customer twice. After those six hours, if the last word is still the customer's, Orion reads the conversation and decides whether to reply — and deciding not to reply is a legitimate outcome, when your answer already settled it.

The 24-hour window is Instagram's rule, not ours. After 24 hours without a new message from the person, Instagram no longer allows writing to them. Orion does not try and does not pretend it replied: the conversation stays on record, and the notice is there for whoever looks.

Disconnecting stops the service immediately and erases the account's credential. The conversation history stays — it is yours.

Connect your assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Grok)

You can connect the assistant you already use every day — Claude, ChatGPT or Grok — to what Orion knows about your operation. Ask it there, "what did we agree with this client in June?", and the answer comes from here.

The direction matters, and it is the opposite of Integrations: there Orion uses third-party tools; here an outside assistant consults Orion.

How to connect

The simple path is signing in with your account. In your assistant, add a connector pointing at the address the panel shows under Orion → Integrations, and nothing else. It opens an Orion sign-in; you sign in as usual, see what is being asked for, and approve. Nothing to copy or store. The authorization lasts 90 days and you can revoke it whenever you like, on that same screen.

When you approve you answer two questions — and both start at the smallest scope:

• How far can it read? "The organization only" (the default) or "also my personal layer".
• Can it write? Unticked by default, and it is a choice separate from reach: you can keep reading to the organization only and still allow writing. When the reach is the organization’s, the screen warns you about the shared-key risk before you tick it.

If you would rather use a key — or if your assistant cannot do that sign-in — the same block lets you create one. Name the connection, copy the key right away (it appears once; after that we keep only a fingerprint of it) and paste the address into your assistant. A key lasts 90 days, you can hold up to five at a time, and revoking cuts access immediately.

What it can then see

From the organization: the pipeline snapshot, the revenue forecast for open deals, the open deals themselves and the people due for contact today; the deliverables and tasks, each with its progress and the original deadline alongside the replanned one; each team's delivery plans and the people's work plans, with cycles, reports and assessments; the dashboard, the teams and who is on each; and what is waiting on you — approvals, assessments, signatures and anything an AI worker wants decided.

And the decision record: what was decided, why, the context, the lessons and the deviations from the method. That is what separates an assistant that opines from one that checks what was already agreed before proposing. A decision later replaced is not presented as current.

Long lists come in pages and always state the total: if there are 245 deliverables and it showed 50, it knows 195 are missing and can ask for the rest.

Choosing "also my personal layer", it further reaches the conversation and decision history with each contact, your personal list (the one in the panel, which is yours and is not the organization's work) and the detail of work plans — which carry per-person assessments. With "the organization only", those stay out.

What it can change, if you allow it

With write permission it opens and updates deliverables, creates, updates and deletes tasks, records decisions, keeps your personal list and operates inside a plan — opens a draft work plan, adds and adjusts activities, records a cycle report and a progress note.

What it does not do through this connection, and why:

• Make a pact — sign, assess, appeal or close a plan early. On the record a signature is yours; an outside assistant does not sign in your name.
• Send — message, e-mail, invitation. That lives inside Orion, where the send confirmation and recipient guards are.
• Create a CRM contact — a record about another person is created inside Orion, where the deduplication and organization-scope rules apply.
• Delete work that has moved — a task with progress is not deleted through conversation, because removing a line silently changes the deliverable's progress. Zero the progress first, and then it is a deliberate act.

Two guarantees that always hold. It stays limited to what you can do under your role: if you cannot create a task in the panel, neither can it. And every act is recorded as coming from that assistant, with your name as the person who authorized it — which is why, if you allow writing on a key other people may use, whatever they have it create or change is recorded under your name. The screen warns you before you tick it.

It sees exactly what you see in the panel: nothing that was already outside your view appears through this path. And reading depends on an active plan — if the subscription lapses, the connection stops answering.

Ready-made questions

The assistant also receives a set of ready-made questions — in Claude they show up as slash commands, and you pick them, never the model. They save you from having to work out what is worth asking: prepare for a meeting with a client, close the week, "why did we decide that?", the state of a deliverable, "are we late?". With the personal layer you also get "what do I have today", and with write permission, "record a decision we just made".

The list respects what your connection reaches: a question the assistant could not answer with the scope you granted simply does not appear.

When new capabilities appear

The assistant caches the list of things it can do at the moment it connects. When Orion gains a capability, whoever was already connected keeps seeing the old list until reconnecting. Replies then carry a notice. To update it, remove the connector and add it again — reconnecting or starting a new conversation does not refresh the list: the assistant keeps the contract from the moment it was installed, and reconnecting only redoes the sign-in.

Where to paste it, in each assistant

The path differs per product and they change often. The summary below is the essentials; the complete, current instructions always live in each product's own documentation.

• Claude — under Customize → Connectors, click + then Add custom connector, paste the address and click Next. Claude may say it "couldn't determine the server settings" — that is expected, carry on. Leave Authentication alone: Orion asks for the sign-in itself when you connect. Only choose None if you are using the key path, since the key already travels inside the address. On Team and Enterprise plans the organization owner adds it first (Organization Settings → Connectors → Add → Custom → Web); each person then connects their own. The free plan allows a single custom connector. Docs: Anthropic support.
• ChatGPT — the feature lives in developer mode. Turn it on under Settings → Security and login → Developer mode (it warns about elevated risk: that is the mode that allows a not-yet-verified connector). Then open chatgpt.com/plugins, click + and paste the address into the URL field. For authentication choose OAuth; if you are on the key path, choose No authentication, since the key already travels in the address. The connector you create shows under Drafts, and that is where you switch individual tools on or off. Available on paid plans, on the web. Docs: OpenAI help centre.
• Grok — open grok.com/connectors, click New Connector, choose Custom and enter the server address. Docs: xAI docs.

All three have a single address field. Signing in with your account, the address is short and holds no secret:

https://mcp.orionworkers.com/mcp

On the key path the key travels inside the address — and then treat it like a password: whoever holds that address reads your operation. If it leaks, revoke it in the panel and create another; it takes one click.

What it is actually good for

• Prepare for a meeting without switching screens. "Before the Acme call: what have we agreed with them, what is still open, and what did we promise for this month?"
• Write a proposal with the right history. The assistant already knows the price you charged, what was discussed and what was left out — you stop pasting context by hand.
• Close the week. "Which deals are set to close this month and what do they add up to?" — the number comes from the same arithmetic the panel shows, not from an estimate.
• Let nobody go cold. "Who should I have contacted and haven't?"
• Answer an old question. "Why did we discount for this client back in June?" — the question no assistant without memory can answer.

Groups

The list of groups Orion appears in is split by channel: the WhatsApp ones are on the Connection page, below the numbers, in the WhatsApp groups block; the Telegram ones are at Orion → Telegram, in the Telegram groups block. Each group carries two independent decisions — one switches on and off, the other has three positions — and it is worth understanding the difference before you click:

Participation

authorizes Orion to reply there. The Authorize button shows up on the row of any group, on either channel, and asks for a confirmation before it takes effect — you are putting an artificial intelligence, and a record, inside a room full of people who signed nothing, and the deal is that you tell them. No group is authorized by default; you authorize them one by one, and only after a group is authorized do the reply policy and the group role field appear, where you write a persona just for that group. One difference worth knowing today: this switch really governs WhatsApp groups. In a Telegram group the authorization is saved, but it is not yet what decides whether the bot speaks — it replies when the message reaches it, with no reply policy and no tools in that turn. The category, right below, is another switch: what it decides about capture already applies on both channels.

Category (WhatsApp and Telegram): says what kind of group it is. There are three positions, and you pick one on the group's row:

• Regular (the default): nothing in the content is captured. If Orion takes part there, it answers from public knowledge only — the documents marked as visible to guests — and nothing from the group goes into the organization's library.
• 🏢 Internal work (company colleagues only): the content starts being captured and may be shared with other people in the company. In return, Orion uses the organization's internal knowledge there, documents can be filed in the library, and you work on the work plan right from there.
• 🤝 External work (clients, partners): the content is captured, including what the people from outside write. Orion uses only public knowledge, files something into the library only when you ask, and the work plan is not accessible from that group.

The category is not retroactive, you change or withdraw it whenever you want, and Orion itself writes in the group to say what changed — with a different text for each case. Withdrawing stops the capture from that moment on; what has already been captured stays stored. And on Telegram the capture is partial by default: with the bot's group privacy on (BotFather's default), only mentions and replies to the bot reach it.

One does not imply the other: a group can be captured without Orion replying in it, and it can reply without being captured. And undoing one does not undo the other — revoking participation does not remove the category, and the capture goes on. It is a big enough subject to have its own chapter — it is in The AI team, and the privacy part is in the security and privacy chapter.

The setup Orion runs itself

You do not need to configure anything in the dashboard. Right after you connect, Orion itself runs a four-step setup conversation, straight in the channel you just switched on.

1/4 · Personality 🧠 — in a single message, it asks: what your company does, what you want to be called and how it should sound (formal or casual), and whether there is anything it must never do. An example it gives itself: "I run a dental clinic. You can call me Dr. Paulo, speak professionally but in a friendly way. Never confirm appointments without my approval." It gives back a summary and asks for your OK before saving. If you already have a personality set, it shows the current one and asks whether you want to keep it or adjust it.

2/4 · Contact 📇 — your mobile number with area code and your best email. It uses the email to send you reports and to include you on calendar invitations.

3/4 · Google 🔗 — it sends a link to connect your Google account. The details are in Google and Microsoft 365, below.

4/4 · Automatic routines ⏰ — it proposes three daily routines already adapted to what you told it about your business (for example, a summary of the calendar at 8am and an end-of-day review at 6pm). You answer "1 and 3", describe them your own way, or answer skip.

At the end, if Orion is on a dedicated number, it may ask whether you want it to serve your customers too — that is optional, and answering no leaves everything as it is.

The setup commands

skip

skips the current step. You can pick it up later.

later

pauses everything for 3 days. It also works with "not now", "pause", "stop".

setup or continue: picks up where you left off, at any time.

If you stop halfway, it gives you a gentle nudge now and then — never between 9pm and 8am in your local time, and at most three times; after that it stops and waits for you to call. It does not press.

Language

Orion speaks Portuguese, English and Spanish. The starting language comes from your time zone: time zones in Portuguese-speaking countries (and an unknown time zone) start in Portuguese; the rest start in English. After that it mirrors the language you write in — if you write in Spanish, it answers in Spanish.

If you write several messages in a row in a language different from the saved one, it asks once whether you also want to change the language of the messages it sends on its own (reminders, briefs). And you can pin it whenever you want: "talk to me in Portuguese".

Google and Microsoft 365

Connecting one of these two accounts is what most increases what Orion can do. You can connect both, one, or neither — nothing here is required.

Google

Two ways, pick the easier one: through the link Orion sends in step 3/4 of the setup, or through the dashboard, at Orion → Google → "Connect Google". Authorize on the Google screen and the page refreshes on its own.

Three limits worth making clear from the start, because they explain almost every "why couldn't it do it?":

It does not read your Gmail inbox. The permission requested is send, not read. For Orion to read what arrives, use the email forwarding described below.

In Drive, it only sees what it created itself. That is the minimum scope (drive.file). If you ask "list my Drive files", only the files Orion created come back — your older documents it does not see, does not open and does not edit. When it tries, that is exactly what it answers.

It does not grant access to anyone. When it creates a document or spreadsheet, Orion gives you back the link; sharing it with someone else is up to you. (In OneDrive, on the Microsoft side, it can generate a sharing link — the asymmetry is real.)

The page itself sums up the permissions requested: your email address, Calendar, Gmail send, Drive files it creates, and read-only Contacts.

Microsoft 365

If your company lives in Outlook and Teams, this is your chapter. Open Orion → Microsoft 365 and click "Connect Microsoft 365". A Microsoft window opens; after you authorize, close it — the page refreshes on its own.

On most accounts this is one click and needs no IT admin. If your company has turned off per-user consent, the Microsoft screen will say "Approval required". In that case, click "Generate admin link" on the same page: the link comes already copied, you send it to IT, and their approval unblocks the whole organization at once.

And the limits, which here are different from Google's:

It reads your Outlook inbox — directly, with no forwarding. Connecting Microsoft 365 grants email read access. It is more power and it is also less privacy than the Google side; the choice is yours, and disconnecting is one button on the same page.

Teams channel messages are not accessed. It reads and writes in 1:1 conversations and in group chats. Team channels (those tabs inside a team) would require an admin permission that the product deliberately does not request.

Personal Microsoft accounts do not work. The connection is built for corporate/educational accounts (work or school).

If a new feature asks you to reconnect, reconnect. The permissions for files, drafts, OneNote and To Do were added on July 28, 2026. Anyone who authorized before that keeps email, calendar and Teams working normally, but the new features will answer by asking for a reconnection — which is the same button as the first time.

About sending things on your behalf

This is worth stating precisely, because it is a point where the promise and the behavior have to match.

When Orion is about to fire off a send to a third party (email, WhatsApp, Teams message, calendar invitation with external guests), there is an automatic hold: the system holds the send, shows you a draft field by field — "Send confirmation — nothing has been sent yet" — and only sends after your yes. That draft is assembled by the system itself, not narrated by the model, and your yes is bound to that exact text: change one comma and you have to confirm again.

This hold fires when the turn read external content before sending — an email, an attachment, a web page, a group message. It is a defense against planted instructions: what it has just read may be exactly what is asking for the send.

On a direct request from you, on a clean turn — "send an email to João saying we're set for Friday" —, there is no hold from the system: it resolves the contact and sends. And in voice conversation there is no hold at all, in any case.

In practice, the habit that works: when you want to review first, split it into two requests. "Write the email to João about the proposal, but don't send it yet." You read it, adjust it, and only then: "go ahead and send it."

Forwarded email

This is the optional step that most changes the routine of anyone who lives in the inbox. It exists because Orion does not read your Gmail — the permission it asks for on Google is send. Forwarding is what gives it the other side.

1. In the dashboard, open Orion → Emails and click Copy on the address field. It has the form [email protected].
2. In your provider (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo…), set up auto-forwarding to that address.
3. Gmail sends a confirmation email to the forwarded address — one you would never see. Orion confirms it on its own and tells you on WhatsApp: "✅ Your email is now connected."

From then on, the question that unlocks everything is simple: "anything important in my email?". It summarizes what arrived, sorts out what matters, reads the whole email when you ask, opens attachments (PDF, image, Word, Excel, CSV, text) and drafts replies. The reply goes out through the account you connected — Gmail, if Google is connected; Outlook, if it is Microsoft.

The Emails page shows what it has already received, with the counters for New, Skimmed, Read and Total.

If nothing arrives, it tells you. When Google is connected but no email has ever reached the agent's address, Orion notices — because not even the provider's confirmation showed up — and sends you a message explaining what is missing. It does this once and repeats at most one more time, a few days later. After that, it stops.

Corporate email can block it. Many Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 admins block external auto-forwarding. If that is your case, ask IT to allow "external auto-forwarding" — or connect a personal email.

On Microsoft 365 there is no forwarding. Anyone who connected Microsoft has already granted read permission: Orion reads Outlook directly, without this step. If you use both, forwarding still serves mailboxes that are not in Outlook.

Third-party tools

Beyond Google and Microsoft 365, Orion can use external tools from a platform-approved catalogue. They live under Orion → Integrations, and the principle is always the same: you supply the credential for your own account. These tools are not part of your plan — the account and whatever it costs are yours, and Orion simply learns to operate them in your conversations.

The catalogue is curated: only tools the platform has reviewed get in. You do not register addresses of your own.

Connecting takes three steps: paste the credential the tool gave you, click Connect, and the panel tests the connection right away. From then on each integration has Test connection, Pause and Remove — removing deletes the stored credential.

One detail that often goes unnoticed: connecting an integration does not hand it to your AI workers. Each worker needs you to tick, on the Governance page, which integrations it may use. Unticked ones stay blocked for that worker even while connected.

Invoicing

The catalogue includes a Brazilian tax-document integration covering service invoices (NFS-e), goods invoices (NF-e and NFC-e) and transport documents, plus cancellations and correction letters.

Before counting on it, three things need to be clear.

It requires a digital certificate. For any invoice to be issued by software, automatically, the Brazilian government requires an ICP-Brasil digital certificate (A1 or A3) — it is what signs the document on the company's behalf. This is not a requirement of our platform or of the integration: it applies to every tax software in the country, with no exception and no shortcut. The certificate is configured in your account with the tax tool, not here.

Without a certificate, the path is the government issuer. Anyone without a certificate — which is most sole traders — issues free of charge on the official NFS-e portal and app, signing in with a gov.br account. There is a simplified mode there that asks for two fields: the customer's tax ID and the amount. The gov.br login works for issuing on screen; it does not work for automatic issuing by software.

Orion never issues anything on its own. No invoice is generated in the background, by an automatic routine, or without you asking. And when the request comes from an AI worker rather than from you, issuing is treated as a financial action: it follows your organization's autonomy policy and is never waved through just because an approved work plan existed. Even so, the habit matters: an invoice is a legally binding document, and the amount, the customer and the type of service you dictate are the ones that reach it.

Tax responsibility is yours. Orion is not your accountant and does not choose your service's tax code — you set that once, in the tax tool or in the government issuer. An error in the code, the amount or the recipient is the responsibility of whoever issued the invoice.