To help you better track the full breadth of G Suite launches, including those that aren’t announced on the G Suite Updates blog, check out the What’s new in G Suite page in the Help Center.

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

- The G Suite Team, February 1, 2018

Featured launch: Security center for G Suite

Security analytics and best practices from Google

What’s new: We want to make it easy for you to manage your organization’s data security. A big part of this is making sure you and your admins can access a bird’s eye view of your security—and, more importantly, that you can take action based on timely insights.

With this launch, we introduced the security center for G Suite, a tool that brings together security analytics, actionable insights and best practice recommendations from Google to empower you to protect your organization, data and users.

With the security center, key executives and admins can do things like:

1. See a snapshot of important security metrics in one place. Get insights into suspicious device activity, visibility into how spam and malware are targeting users within your organization and metrics to demonstrate security effectiveness—all in a unified dashboard.

2. Stay ahead of potential threats. Admins can now examine security analytics to flag threats. For example, your team can have visibility into which users are being targeted by phishing so that you can head off potential attacks, or when Google Drive files trigger DLP rules, you have a heads up to avoid risking data exfiltration.

3. Reduce risk by adopting security health recommendations. Security health analyzes your existing security posture and gives you customized advice to secure your users and data. These recommendations cover issues ranging from how your data is stored, to how your files are shared, as well as recommendations on mobility and communications settings.

Get started

More than 3.5 million organizations rely on G Suite to collaborate securely. If you’re a G Suite Enterprise customer, you can now access the security center within the Admin console. These instructions can help admins get started and here are some security best practices to keep in mind.

If you’re new to G Suite, learn more about about how you can collaborate, store and communicate securely. 

Work together

Improved accessibility for Google Sheets, Slides, and Drawings

What’s new: We want to make sure our products work well for everyone. That’s why, as part of our ongoing accessibility initiatives, we’ve launched new features for Google Sheets, Slides, and Drawings. Specifically, we’ve added Braille support in Google Sheets, and screen magnifier support in Google Slides and Drawings.

Use Google Sheets with Braille displays

You can already use Braille displays to read and edit text in Docs, Slides and Drawings. Now we’ve added Braille support to Sheets as well. You can use a Braille display to read and edit cell contents as well as navigate between cells in a sheet. At the moment, Braille support in Sheets is only available on Chrome OS with the ChromeVox screen reader. We’re working to add support for other platforms and screen readers.

See our Help Center to find out how to use a Braille display with Sheets.

Use screen magnifiers with Google Slides and Drawings

We recently added screen magnifier support to Docs and Sheets. Now screen magnifiers also work with Slides and Drawings.

You can use screen magnifiers with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings on Mac and Chrome OS devices.

See our Help Center to learn how to use screen magnifiers with Google Docs editors.

Dial into Hangouts Meet from nine additional markets

What’s new: In October 2017, we announced the rollout of international Hangouts Meet dial-in phone numbers for G Suite Enterprise domains. This option helps your team to stay connected, wherever they are. We’ve added this functionality for nine additional countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Romania, Switzerland and Turkey.

The current list of included countries (with more to come!) is:

Check out the Help Center for more information on joining a video meeting.

View your Slack activity from within Google Drive

What’s new: Never miss an important update, on either Slack or Google Drive. We’ve added activity events to allow you to see, in Drive, when a file is shared or discussed from within Slack. Two types of actions are logged as events: someone sharing a file stored in Google Drive, and someone commenting—within Slack—on a Google Drive file that has been shared in Slack.

In these events, you will see information about when the action occurred, who did it, and where it happened. The events in the activity logs are private to only those who have access to both the document, as well as the Slack channel or team where the document was shared or discussed.

This launch follows the previously announced Drive integration with Slack, where we added the ability to see notifications in Slack of activity happening in Google Drive. In order to take advantage of this feature, install the Google Drive integration.

Whether you’re trying to stay on top of Slack discussions, know what’s being collaborated on, or a new team member catching up on prior discussions, these event logs help you keep track of what’s happening to your files in both locations.

We’re also launching international language support for our Google Drive integration. If you use Slack in French, Spanish, German or Japanese, the Google Drive bot will send messages and respond to you in your preferred language.

Check out the Help Center for information on how to see Google Drive activity in Slack.

Simple to use

New Google Calendar web UI now default option for those on automatic rollout

What’s new: In October 2017, we announced a new user interface (UI) for Google Calendar on the web. As a reminder, admins have several options for how their users will transition to this new UI.

As of January 15th, we’ve auto-upgraded all users whose domains are set to the automatic (default) rollout option.

In this phase, users will still have the option to opt out of the new UI until February 28th, 2018, when all users will be fully upgraded.

Please note, any individual users who had manually opted out of the new web UI previously will not be upgraded until February 5th.

Additionally, while this opt-out phase does not impact domains whose admins have selected a manual rollout, users in these domains will still be upgraded to the new UI on February 28th, 2018, with no option to opt out.

More Information

Help Center: Control access to the new Calendar (admin-facing)

Help Center: Learn what's new in Google Calendar (user-facing)

Search within a folder in Google Drive

What’s new: You can now search for content in a specific folder in Google Drive. Select the drop-down in the search bar and choose the folder you want from the Location menu, or right-click on a folder and search within that folder. Only folders that are within your My Drive or within Team Drives can be searched; if you have a folder that is shared with you, first add the folder to your My Drive.

Learn more about finding files in Drive in the Help Center.

More menu improvements in Google Docs and Slides

What’s new: Based on usage data and your feedback, we’ve made some changes to the menus and toolbars in Google Docs and Slides on the web. These are similar to some previous changes we made and will make it easier to find certain items. Among other things, these changes include:

To add a line or page break in Docs:

• Before: Insert > Page break or Column break
• After: Insert > Break > Page break or Column break
• See Help Center for more details: Add, edit, or remove a link, bookmark, or page break.

To add Alt text to a shape in Docs or Slides:

• Before: Select shape > Format > Alt text. This option will be removed from the menu.
• After: Right click on shape > Alt text. This is the new way to add alt text to a shape.
• See Help Center for more details: Make your document or presentation accessible.

To change a shape in Slides:

• Before: Select shape > Format > Change shape. This option will be removed from the menu.
• After: Right click on shape > Change shape. This is the new way to change a shape.

The HTML view in Slides is being removed from the menu.

• Before: View > HTML
• After: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P
• See Help Center for more details: Make your document or presentation accessible.

These changes will only affect the visual menu. All options will still be available via keyboard shortcuts and the search box in the Help menu.

Publish sites to a specific audience in the new Google Sites

What’s new: Some sites aren’t for everyone. That’s why we’ve made it possible to specify exactly who can view your content in the new Google Sites.

To publish your site to a specific audience, select the “Share with others” icon and change the Published settings to “Specific people can view when published.” Next, add the individuals you want in the “Invite people” box and select “Can view published.”

This feature is available now on the web; it will roll out in the Google Drive Android and iOS apps over the coming weeks. For more info on publishing in the new Google Sites, visit the Help Center.

Business ready

Install Gmail Add-ons for your entire domain

What’s new: We recently launched Gmail Add-ons, which allow you to work with your favorite business apps—directly from Gmail. To make it super easy for users to access these helpful tools, we’ve now made it possible for G Suite admins to install Gmail Add-ons for their entire domains. To install an Add-on, click the Settings gear icon in Gmail and select “Get add-ons.” For additional info, see the Help Center.

In addition, we’re making it easier for developers to design Gmail Add-ons specifically for their organizations. Developers in your domain will notice two changes:

• They’ll be able to install Gmail Add-ons for their own G Suite accounts before they’re published, to aid in the development process. Previously, this was limited to their personal Gmail accounts.

• They’ll be able to publish Gmail Add-ons to users in their own G Suite domains. In addition, they'll be able to publish to the general public, after requesting and receiving publication permission.

Stay tuned to the G Suite Developers Blog to learn more about these two developer capabilities.

These new features make it easier for users to take advantage of Gmail Add-ons and breeze through their email-related action items—without ever leaving Gmail.

More Information

G Suite Marketplace: Gmail Add-ons

Help Center: Install Marketplace apps

Delegate additional Gmail privileges to users

What’s new: Managing the secure and efficient flow of email is critical to any organization’s success, but it can be a massive undertaking for a G Suite admin. To make this effort a bit easier, we’re introducing three new Gmail privileges that G Suite super admins can grant to other users—without needing to give them super admin status: (1) Email Log Search, (2) Access Admin Quarantine, and (3) Access Restricted Quarantines.

Email Log Search

This privilege grants a user access to Gmail’s Email Log Search feature, which makes it easy to track message delivery, view the impact of certain policies on email flow, and identify the IP addresses of connecting servers.

Access Admin Quarantine

G Suite admins can configure policies and settings to quarantine certain email messages, helping to prevent spam, minimize data loss, and protect confidential information. This privilege gives a user access to the Admin Quarantine, where they can allow or prohibit those messages from being delivered. Note that this privilege won’t allow a user to view or change any Admin Quarantine settings.

Access Restricted Quarantines

This privilege also gives a user access to the Admin Quarantine, but only to those quarantines for which they’re part of the quarantine reviewers group. Note that this privilege, like the one above, won’t allow a user to access any Admin Quarantine settings.

Super administrators can delegate these privileges to users by clicking CREATE A NEW ROLE in the Admin roles section of the Admin console and then selecting Services > Gmail and the specific privilege from the Privileges menu.

More Information

Help Center: About Email Log Search

Help Center: Set up and manage admin quarantines

Help Center: Create custom administrator roles

New navigation menu for Admin console

What’s new: We’ve launched a new side navigation menu which will make it easier to see, find, and directly navigate to the information and settings in your Admin console. This change has several advantages, including:

Easily scan more logical menu options

We’ve grouped menu options based on how our customers use them to create a logical multi-layered menu. This makes the menu shorter and more scannable, helping you find things quickly.

Quickly find what you’re looking for

You can hover and click through the menu to drill down directly to the pages you want to see—so you’ll spend less time browsing, and more time doing.

Streamlined menu removes clutter for delegated admins

Delegated admins now only see the menu items they have access to with their level of administrative privileges. This makes their menu streamlined and simpler to use.

To learn more about the Admin console and how to use it, visit the Help Center.

Hangouts Meet metrics in Reports API; tablet support now available

What’s new: Hangouts Meet helps you connect with your team from anywhere with easy-to-join video calls. We’ve introduced new features to help you and your teams maximize how they collaborate.

Hangouts Meet metrics added to G Suite Reports API

To help you better understand Hangouts Meet usage within your domain, we’re introducing more than 50 new metrics in the Reports API Customer Usage report. These new metrics provide details on the duration, size, and device-specific characteristics of the Meet calls across your organization.

This will give you insights on how to improve your organization’s collaboration and productivity with Meet. You can learn more about the new metrics and how you can use them here.

All Hangouts-related metrics that were previously provided under the Google+ metrics group have been migrated to a newly introduced metrics group called Meet. You can learn more about the migration to the new Meet metrics here.

Hangouts Meet supported on tablets

You can now use Hangouts Meet on your Android and iOS tablets. This will help your team members join meetings from any of their devices.

More Information

Reports API: Customer Usage Metrics

Reports API: Customer Usage – Google Hangouts Meet Metrics

Reports API: Customer Usage - Google Hangouts Meet Metrics Migration Guide

Help Center: Download the Meet mobile app

Upcoming change to setup flow for company-owned Android devices

What’s new: As a G Suite admin, you can use Google Mobile Management to manage, secure, and monitor mobile devices in your organization. Additionally, if you provide your employees with devices, you can apply policies that regulate app installation, network settings, security options, and more.

If you have Advanced management enabled, you can set up Android devices* your company owns in one of two ways. (1) You can add devices in the Admin console, automatically assigning their ownership to your organization, or (2) you can allow individual users to assign ownership of their devices to your organization when they set them up. If you choose the second option, those users will see changes to their setup flow starting on February 12th, 2018. (*These devices must be running Android 6.0 or higher.)

Currently, when a user with a brand new Android device (or one that’s recently been factory reset) adds their G Suite account to that device before adding their personal account, they have to check a box to assign device ownership to their organization. (If they add their personal account first, then they’re prompted to set up a work profile when they add their G Suite account later on.) We’ve learned that some users skip checking the box to assign device ownership, even if their phone is company-owned, resulting in a fragmented management experience.

Current setup screen

To encourage more users to make the correct selection, we’re changing the language and option on this screen. Starting on February 12th, 2018, users will be asked if they own the device they’re setting up. Unless they explicitly state that they own the device personally, ownership will be auto-assigned to your organization. Again, this will only occur when a user adds their G Suite account to a device before adding their personal account.

New setup screen

We hope this will result in fewer company-owned devices that are incorrectly set up and an improved mobile management experience. Note that this change does not apply to G Suite for Education customers.

Jamboard now a core G Suite service

What’s new: Last year, we introduced Jamboard, a collaborative digital whiteboard device with accompanying mobile and web applications, designed to take creativity and collaboration to the next level.

Under the hood, the Jamboard service allows G Suite admins to manage their Jamboard devices, and enables G Suite users to interact with jam content on their phone, tablet, or on the web. Jamboard combines the same collaborative benefits of real-time co-editing as other G Suite applications like Google Docs with a blank canvas that allows ideas and projects to come to life. We’re excited to announce that starting today, the Jamboard service will become a core G Suite service.

What this means:

1. The Jamboard service is now covered under your existing G Suite agreement and offers the same technical support and service level commitments as any other core service.
2. The Jamboard service will be removed from the list of Additional Google Services and added to the list of core G Suite services in your Admin console.

Note that the Jamboard service is launching default ON, but will respect your setting for opting in to new services.

To learn more about how a Jamboard device (currently available in the US, UK, and Canada, with more countries coming soon) can pair with the Jamboard service for the best possible team collaboration and creativity experience, visit the Jamboard website.

Improved attachment compliance in Gmail

What’s new: As a G Suite administrator, one of your most important jobs is to keep your organization’s data from falling into the wrong hands. Gmail Data Loss Prevention (DLP) helps you do just that, by allowing you to scan and systematically take action on your users’ inbound and outbound email traffic. With this launch, we’re improving that capability, specifically in the area of attachment compliance.

Previously, when you specified a custom* file type to search for in Gmail attachments, we only scanned the message’s MIME header for the attachment’s filename extension. This meant that if a sender renamed their attachment’s extension, it might not be flagged. Now, if you check the “Also match files based on file format (supported types)” box, we’ll also scan the contents of the attachment to determine its file type (provide it’s one of several supported types).

This will improve attachment compliance and further prevent data loss in your organization. To learn more about setting up rules for attachment compliance, check out the Help Center.

*Note that this launch only applies to searches for custom file types; we already scan the content of an attachment to detect other file types (like Office documents, videos, and images).

Twenty-two third-party applications added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML apps catalog

What’s new: With Single-Sign-On (SSO), users can access all of their enterprise cloud applications—including the Admin console for admins—after signing in just one time. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and there are more than 800 applications with pre-integrated SSO support in our third-party apps catalog already.

We’ve now added SAML integration for 22 additional applications: 7geese, Accellion, Bime, Bugsnag, Canvas LMS, Honey, Humanity, Jitbit, Kintone, Knowbe4, Kudos, Looker, Meraki, Mingle, RemedyForce, Replicon, Rollbar, Signal FX, StatusPage, Weekdone, Wrike, and Zoho CRM.

You can find our full list of pre-integrated applications, as well as instructions for installing them, in the Help Center.

Note that apart from the pre-integrated SAML applications, G Suite also supports installing “Custom SAML Applications,” which means that admins can install any third-party application that supports SAML. The advantage of a pre-integrated app is that the installation is much easier.

You can learn more about installing Custom SAML Applications in this Help Center article.

Publish private apps to multiple organizations

What’s new: Businesses using Google Mobile Management and other Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) providers can publish Android apps customized for their workplace directly to their managed Google Play store, where their employees can easily access and install them. In some cases, these customers have set up multiple “organizations” within their domain (e.g. to serve different regions, for testing purposes, etc.), each of which needs access to the custom app. To meet this need, we made it possible to publish a single private app to up to 20 organizations. This has several advantages:

1. Developers can publish apps to domains other than their own (including developers with personal @gmail.com accounts).
2. Developers no longer need to be admins of the organizations they’re publishing to.
3. Businesses can more easily delegate app publishing to third-party developers.
4. Private app publishing remains secure, because the developer must have the target organization’s Organization ID and an admin must approve any apps targeted to their organization.

For more information, please see the Help Center.

Manage Android devices without the Google Apps Device Policy app

What’s new: Last year, we launched Basic Mobile Management for iOS—the ability to manage employees’ iOS devices, even if those employees don’t set up MDM agents or profiles. We’ve now brought this same feature to Android.

Now, G Suite admins can mandate basic security measures on the Android devices their employees bring to work, without requiring those employees to install the Google Apps Device Policy app on their devices. To do so, admins simply need to select “Basic” under Device management > Setup > Mobile Management > Enable Mobile Management in the Admin console.

When Basic Mobile Management is enabled, admins can:

• Enforce a device screen lock.*
• Wipe a corporate account (but not the entire device).
• View, search, and manage their device inventory.

Basic Mobile Management makes life easier for end users as well, because it allows them to access their corporate accounts without risking their personal data being wiped.

For more details, check out the Help Center.

*Please note that you can only enforce a screen lock on devices running Android L or earlier if those devices have the Google Apps Device Policy app installed. 

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