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-The Google Apps Team

November 2, 2015

Featured Launch: Expanded identity services with SAML and OIDC to connect apps securely

Manage multiple SAML and OIDC-based cloud services and custom apps with Google Apps Single Sign-On

What’s new: Businesses today are investing in numerous cloud applications to provide the simple, secure, and customized experience for their employees that comes with moving to the cloud. Each application, however, can require its own set of user IDs and passwords, creating a huge amount of overhead and complexity for both admins and employees alike.

To help simplify this experience, we’re enhancing our OpenID Connect (OIDC) Identity Provider support that can already be used with many SaaS apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, and adding support for SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language) for more than 15 popular SaaS providers, including Salesforce, Workday and Dropbox. We’re also making it easy for admins to add new custom SAML and custom OIDC app integrations.

These new features allow admins to greatly reduce the time investment with managing multiple cloud applications, and allow employees to use their Google Apps credentials as their single login for all of the tools they need.

These single sign-on options help address the growing demand for a central cloud-based identity service. Check out our Identity whitepaper for a complete overview and the Help Center for more information on SAML apps set-up details and features, and a full list of pre-integrated cloud applications.

Work anywhere

Flexible editing and sharing with the latest version of the Google Drive iOS app

Request access to files with the Google Drive Android app

New formatting options and more in the Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps

What’s new: The latest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps include several new features that make it easier to work on your mobile device. You can now:

• View more content at one time in Sheets - Now, when you scroll down or zoom in on a spreadsheet, we’ll hide your toolbars and headers so that you can see more of your content on the screen at one time. To bring those toolbars and headers back, simply scroll up or zoom out.

• View existing filters in Sheets - If you apply filters to your data in Sheets on the web, those filters will now appear in the Sheets Android app as well (previously, you might not have known that you were viewing filtered content).

• Paste only values, formatting, and more in Sheets - Already available in Sheets on the web, the Paste special feature in the Sheets Android app allows you to copy content and then paste only the associated values, formatting, formula, data validation, or conditional formatting. You can also paste everything but borders or paste your content in a transposed order.

• Hyperlink text and shapes in Slides - You can now insert new and edit existing links in your presentations directly from the Slides Android app toolbar and context menu.

• Use superscripts and subscripts in Docs and Slides - Create superscript and subscript text in the Docs and Slides Android apps using the text formatting palette.

Download the latest Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps on Google Play. For more information, check out the Help Center:

• Edit spreadsheets on Android
• Edit documents on your phone or tablet
• Edit presentations on your phone or tablet
• Add a link to a document

Business ready

New domain management features in the Admin SDK

What’s new: To provide developers and administrators with more fine-grained control, the Google Apps Admin SDK now includes new domain management features. These new APIs let you programmatically manage domains for your Google Apps account, similar to other RESTful resources like Users, Groups, etc., providing a superset of the domain management capabilities available on the Domains page in the Admin console today.

Change your primary domain

The Customers API gives enterprise developers and administrators the ability to swap the current primary domain with a selected secondary domain for a Google Apps installation. The “change primary” operation is essentially transparent to the user, but users moved to the secondary domain will be subject to certain restrictions (refer to this Help Center article for details). Customers who want to rebrand their business with a new primary domain can follow this up by renaming users from the old (now secondary) to the new (now primary) domain using the Users API.

Add and remove domains and aliases

The Domains API lets developers create tools for administrators to add and remove domains, similar to the functionality available on the Domains page in the Admin console. In addition, the API lets you programmatically add aliases for any domain, primary or secondary, but aliases for secondary domains can only be added via the API.

For more information, check out the Help Center: Rename a user  |  Limitations with multiple domains

Updated version of Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook®

An updated version of Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook® (GAMMO) is now available:

What’s New: 

• Click-To-Run editions of Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016 are now supported.

• Windows 10 is now supported.

• Migrates email using the Gmail API.

• Removed deprecated 2-legged OAuth command line options -- google_consumer_key and --google_consumer_secret.

• Support Service Account authentication to migrate on behalf of a user from command line using --service_account_json_path option. See Run migration from command line for details.

• Optionally collect and report crash data.

What's Fixed:

• Email migration is more resilient to throttling and network or server failures with improved retries with exponential backoff.

• Empty email folders on the source are migrated as labels to Gmail.

• Messages in Outlook’s Deleted Items now are correctly migrated to Trash.

• GAMMO now allows graceful cancellation of a running migration.

• Other minor UI issues.

For more information, check out the Help Center.

Programmatic role management with the Roles API

What’s new: In a Google Apps domain, admin role management (i.e. create, assign, and update admin roles) is a critical function for super admins that helps them distribute admin responsibilities in a more secure manner. Until now, this functionality was only available via the Admin console UI.

This is what Role management looks like in the Admin console, but now you can also

do this programmatically with the Roles API.

The launch of the Roles API (one of the Admin SDK Directory APIs) enables developers to build admin tools that can perform role management programmatically.

This new API will be useful to admins who have built internal admin tools using the Admin SDK and to developers of third-party admin tools. Both can now use the Roles API to provide selective access to Delegated Admins (DAs) to specific admin capabilities within third-party applications.

Here are some examples of use cases where the Roles API can be leveraged:

• A third-party user management app that relies on the Admin SDK to perform various user-related operations can now use the Roles API to selectively show the capabilities of user management DAs, such as creating/deleting users and resetting passwords.

• A mobile device management (MDM) app developer looking to build a tool for access by Mobile Management DAs can use the Roles API to determine the privileges of the logged-in DA and selectively display MDM-related admin functionality.

• Admins (or admin tools) can now programmatically create reports on admin role assignments which can help super admins better manage access to DAs.

For more information and to get started, check out the Roles API documentation.

Setting up company-owned devices now easier with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

What’s new: Do you purchase and give your employees Android phones and tablets to use at work? If so, our updated EMM solution now makes it easier for those employees to get their devices up and running, while also affording you complete management control.

How it works: For organizations that have enabled Android for Work, a new option in the Admin console (Device management > Mobile > Device management settings) is now available to manage company-owned devices running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).

When you enable that option, an employee who adds a work account to a new device will be asked if the organization owns that device. Once confirmed, the Google Apps Device Policy app will automatically install and complete the steps necessary to provision the device and the user’s work account. That employee will then be ready to go—they can easily find approved mobile apps in the Google Play for Work store, and they’ll be signed in to any Google applications (like Gmail and Drive).

Once set up, an employee’s company-owned device will be governed by full device management (MDM) and application management (MAM) capabilities, meaning you’ll be able to require passwords, remotely wipe company information, and approve apps to be used at work. Furthermore, you’ll now be able to restrict select wireless and network settings (like mobile network, WiFi, and VPN), sharing settings (like screen capture and USB file transfer), user/account creation, and the ability to factory reset the device. Support for company-owned devices can be enabled at the domain or OU level.

In addition to the changes outlined above, which apply to company-owned Android devices running 6.0 (Marshmallow), we’ve streamlined the account setup flow for user-owned devices running 4.4 (KitKat) and 5.x (Lollipop). Employees with these devices no longer need to manually install the Google Apps Device Policy app from the Play for Work store to set up their devices; instead, the Device Policy app will be automatically installed and activated.

For more information:

• Set up device owner on company-owned devices
• Configure mobile device settings

Learn more about Google Apps 

Google Apps Learning Center available in four new languages

What’s new: The revamped Google Apps Learning Center we launched in June is now available in Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese-Brazil, and French. Check out our localized guides for new users and customers transitioning from competitor products, product cheat sheets, Tips Library, and Top 10 lists of use cases!

To change the language, just scroll to the bottom of the page and click Change language in the footer.

Or, share the following localized site links with your organization:

English: learn.googleapps.com

Japanese: learn-ja.googleapps.com

Spanish: learn-es.googleapps.com

Portuguese-Brazil: learn-ptbr.googleapps.com

French: learn-fr.googleapps.com

Google for Work Connect (GWC): The official community for Apps Admins

You are invited to join a two-day customer-led Meetup at the Googleplex! Join us to share best practices and insights with the Google for Work team. Learn more.

Google Apps for all: The Apps Show on YouTube, every Tuesday, 11am PST

What’s New for Apps Admins videos

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We’d really appreciate your thoughts on how we can make this work best for you.