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

- The G Suite Team

October 3, 2016

Note: On September 29, 2016, "Google Apps for Work" was renamed as “G Suite.” Original references to the names "Google Apps" or "Google Apps for Work" may have been updated to reflect this change.

Featured launch: Google Apps for Work is now G Suite

A new name that better reflects our mission

What’s new: All around the world, business is filling up with busyness. Employees today are more plugged-in than ever before, but technology too often gets in the way of turning ideas into game changers. For businesses, sharing and communicating has gotten complicated and often happens in silos. The bigger the company, the bigger the challenge.

But what if technology lived up to its promise for us at work? What if it helped us cut through the noise so we could work together to focus on what matters?

We created Google Apps for Work ten years ago (back when it was Google Apps for Your Domain) to do just that—to help people everywhere work and innovate together, so businesses can move faster and go bigger.

On September 29th, 2016, along with the announcement of Google Cloud, we introduced a new name for Google Apps for Work that better reflects this mission: G Suite.

G Suite is a set of intelligent apps—Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Hangouts, and more—designed to bring people together, with real-time collaboration built in from the start. And there’s a lot more on the way.  Because we believe that when organizations break down silos, connect people and empower them to work together, we get the speed, agility and impact needed to compete in today’s market.

So in the spirit of teamwork, we partnered with some of our favorite illustrators from around the world to bring our ideas to life with their iconic creativity.

“All together now” by Matt Blease

“Great ideas happen outside the office” by Josh Cochran

“Meet face to face from any place” by Jean Jullien

With G Suite, information can flow freely between devices, apps, people, and teams, so great ideas never get left in the margins again. Imagine the future for your business, if this was how it could be...

Click here to watch video on YouTube

Special thanks to artists Jean Jullien, Matt Blease, Chris DeLorenzo, Tomi Um, Jan Buchzcik, Josh Cochran, Xarly Rodriguez.

Work anywhere

Introducing the Google Trips app

What’s new: To help reduce the hassle and help travelers enjoy their hard-earned vacations, we introduced a new mobile app to help you instantly plan each day of your trip with just a few taps of your finger: Google Trips.

Google Trips is a personalized tour guide in your pocket. Each trip contains key categories of information, including day plans, reservations, things to do, food and drink, and more, so you have everything you need at your fingertips.

The Google Trips app is available for G Suite customers on both Android and iOS. Depending on your Admin console setting for opting in to new services, access to the app was either be automatically enabled*, or can be enabled manually. You will also be able to control access to the app in the Admin console under Apps > Additional Google Services.

*Note: the app will be defaulted off for G Suite for Education customers.

Download the Google Trips app from Google Play or the App Store and check out the announcement on the Official Google blog to learn more.

Find the right file with Quick Access in Drive

What’s new: This month, we launched Quick Access in Drive, which shaves 50 percent off the average time it takes to get to the right file by eliminating the need to search for it. It uses machine learning to intelligently predict the files you need before you’ve even typed anything.

Quick Access predictions are based on an understanding of your Drive activity, as well as your interaction with colleagues and your workday patterns such as recurring team meetings or regular reviews of forecasting spreadsheets.

Quick Access is now available globally for G Suite customers on Android. Give it a try, and file away the time you save for more productive activities.

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

View deleted files with the latest Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps

What’s new: The newest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android make it possible to retrieve trashed files you unexpectedly need or accidentally delete. Simply select Trash from the navigation menu in your Docs, Sheets, or Slides app, and you’ll be given the option to restore or permanently delete any files that you’ve trashed.

Visit Google Play to download the latest Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android and check out the new functionality.

Simple to use 

Improving the deduplication flow when uploading to Google Drive

What’s new: A common use case for Google Drive users is to download a file from their Drive to modify it locally, and then to re-upload the new version. In the past, this would result in duplicate files (the original and the new one), and users would have trouble finding the latest version. With this launch, we’ve introduced a change in Drive to deduplicate files which were uploaded in this way.

How it works: When users upload files that have the same filename as an existing file, they’ll be deduplicated, and the old file will be in revision history. This is so that if any mistakes are made, users can get back to the previous version. Similarly, uploaded folders will be merged with folders of the same name.

To prevent the files from being deduplicated, click on “Keep as separate file” once it’s been uploaded.

Check out the Help Center for more information on uploading files and folders in Google Drive.

What you love about Google Search - now for Drive

What’s new: Innovation is critical for business success, so we're constantly trying to build tools that enable our customers to do more. With this launch, you can now use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other new and improved features in Drive search on web to find files easier and faster. You'll also see a couple of highly-requested Google Docs features that have been added based on your feedback (thank you!).

Search faster and with ease

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a fancy way of saying “search like you talk.” You can type things like “find my budget spreadsheet from last December” or “show me presentations from Anissa.” Drive will understand what you mean and give you the option to click for those specific search results. Drive NLP will get better with each query — so keep on searching. ;)

Get help with speling — er, spelling

When you're trying to find a doc fast, it's easy for typos to slip into your search. Drive now has a new autocorrect feature that suggests corrections to misspelled search terms — which can really help when your brain is moving faster than your fingers.

Enjoy other updates based on your feedback

We’ve also added a few small but mighty features in Google Docs to help you create your best work:

• You can now easily split your document into multiple columns in Docs. Just choose “Columns” in the “Format” drop-down menu when you need more formatting options to get your point across.
• We know that work happens in all types of file formats. So, when you open, convert and edit non-Google files in Docs, Sheets and Slides, we’ll now save a copy for you. Just view or download the non-Google source file in its original format directly from Revision History in Docs, Sheets and Slides on the web.

Note: These features are available now to customers on the Rapid release track, and will be available to customers on the Scheduled release track in early Oct.

Your emails, optimized for every screen with responsive design

What’s new: When you send emails, your recipients might read them on a computer, tablet, or phone—or more likely, all three. However your message might look different on all these devices. With this launch, you’ll be able to use CSS media queries with Gmail and Inbox by Gmail to ensure that your message is formatted the way you intended, whether it's viewed on a computer, a phone in portrait mode, or a tablet in landscape mode. You’ll be able to change styles based on width, rotation, and resolution, allowing for more responsive formatting to optimize your email for every device.

In discussions with email designers, these supported CSS rules were identified as the most useful media queries to support responsive design. This is just one part of an overall effort to expand CSS support in Gmail and to give email designers more control over how their messages are rendered. For example, the CSS below applies the color red when the screen width exceeds 500px.

You can find the full list of supported CSS rules in the developer documentation. We hope this reference helps you create more feature-rich, responsive email for users. Happy formatting!

Use regular expressions to search in Google Docs

What’s new: With this launch, you can now use “regular expressions” to more quickly and easily find what you’re looking for in Google Docs on the web, much like you can in Google Sheets. With regular expressions, you can search for patterns of text, lists of words, and more, instead of single words or phrases.

For instance, imagine you need to find all the US zip codes referenced in a lengthy document. To do so, you can simply search for [0-9]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?. This will identify any zip code in your document consisting of five numbers with an optional hyphen and four-digit add-on.

To use regular expressions in the Find and Replace function, type the expression into the Find box and check the "Match using regular expressions" box.

For more details, including info on those expressions that are supported in Docs, check out the Help Center.

Explore in Docs, Sheets and Slides makes work a breeze

What’s new: We built Google Docs to help you create your best work — from work, school or home, and everywhere in between. We know crafting presentations, projects and reports takes time and energy. That’s why with this launch we introduced Explore in Docs, Sheets and Slides to bring you insights, design tools and research recommendations so you can create better work, faster.

Explore uses Google smarts to help you create amazing presentations, spreadsheets and documents in a fraction of the time they used to take…so you can get on with what’s most important in your life. It’s like having a researcher, analyst and designer by your side.

Insights, instantly

Today’s updates to Explore in Sheets help you decipher your data easily, whether you’re new to spreadsheets or a formula pro. Just ask Explore — with words, not formulas — to get answers about your data. You can ask questions like “how many units were sold on Black Friday?,” “what are the top three items by sales price?,” or “what was the total cost of jackets last month?” Less time crunching numbers + crafting formulas = more time to find key insights and use them.

We’ve also added new formatting suggestions to help make your data pop. Explore in Sheets is available on the web, Android and now on iOS, too!

Beauty, baked in

Crafting the perfect pitch deck or sharing your team’s story is hard enough without having to make it look great, too. Explore in Slides makes design polishing simple. As you work, Explore dynamically generates design suggestions, based on the content of your slide. Simply pick a recommendation and apply it with a single click — no cropping, resizing or reformatting required.

We’ve seen that people save over 30% of the time they would have spent on formatting when they use Explore. So even if design isn’t your style, rest assured you’ll have a beautiful presentation to be proud of. Instantly.

Research, made simple

Explore in Docs makes researching and writing reports on the go a whole lot easier. Whether you’re writing about mobile retail trends or planning your next team offsite, you’ll get instant suggestions based on the content in your document. We’ll automatically recommend related topics to learn about, images to insert and more content to check out in Docs on your Android, iPhone or the web.

We know that it’s helpful to refer to other content when writing an analysis, summary or proposal. That’s why we’ve also made it easy to find a related document from Drive or search Google, right in Explore. Less time spent switching between apps more time to polish your ideas.

We designed Explore in Docs, Sheets and Slides to make creating and working easy and most of all, fast — all backed by the power of Google. Let Explore save you time so you can focus on what matters most.

More Information

• Help Center: See and use suggested content in a document
• Help Center: See and use suggested charts and analysis in a spreadsheet
• Help Center: See and use suggested layouts in a presentation

Save time with smart scheduling in Google Calendar

What’s new: Some topics are best discussed in face-to-face meetings, but setting them up takes too much time. Whether you’re coordinating across time zones, hunting for a room, or just trying to find a time that works for more than a couple of people — it really adds up.

If you’re using G Suite, “Find a time” already lets you set up meetings much faster in Calendar on Android. With this launch, we’re bringing it to iOS and by the end of the year, the web. We’re also adding smart room booking, so you can easily find a place to meet as well.

Powered by Google’s machine intelligence, “Find a time” suggests meeting times and available rooms based on your preferences, which saves you lots of time and gets everyone together faster. Time and room suggestions are smart, too: They don’t just identify the first free slot in a grid, they also locate the next best slots as a back-up. For example, when Calendar doesn’t find availability for your preferred time, it then looks for conflicts across the group that are easier to resolve, such as recurring 1:1 meetings. And although “Find a time” makes smart suggestions, you're always in control — just tap the grid to pick a time that's a better fit.

Start saving time for the important things by downloading Google Calendar for Android or iOS (and look out for this update on the web soon).

Learn more in the Help Center.

Business ready

Manage suspended users’ Google Calendar on the web and via the Calendar API

What’s new: Many organizations put accounts of former employees into a suspended state for an extended period of time before deleting them. Previously, upon user suspension, the user’s Primary Calendar could no longer be read or edited by anyone in the organization, including super admins. As a result, it was not possible to edit or change ownership of Team Events or 1:1s that kept occupying space in others’ calendars or conference rooms, resulting in stale calendar events and poorly utilized meeting rooms.

With this change, super administrators can now manage suspended users’ data from both the Google Calendar web UI and the Google Calendar API. This will make it easier to identify and remove stale events when they are no longer useful, as well as move events to new owners when needed.

Please note: We’re currently working on similar functionality for deleted users.

Learn more in the Help Center.

Google+ is now a core G Suite service

What’s new: Starting on Sept 21, 2016, Google+ is now a core G Suite service when used within a domain, and will be included in existing G Suite agreements for most customers. This means that Google+ will have the same technical support and service level commitments as any other core service, like Gmail or Google Drive.

Going forward, domains using Google+ will receive the following benefits:

• Domain-restricted content and activity will be handled as specified in your G Suite agreement
• Google+ will be compliant with the terms, conditions and service levels defined in the G Suite Technical Support Services Guidelines and the G Suite Service Level Agreement
• Google+ will be added as a monitored service to the G Suite Status Dashboard (ASD)
• In the coming days, Google+ will be removed from the list of Additional Google Services and added to the list of G Suite services in the Admin console

To provide a service that is consistent with the protections of our G Suite agreement, the following changes will affect your domain’s current use of Google+:

• All web users on a computer will be automatically upgraded to the latest version of Google+, and will no longer have the option to switch back to the "classic" version
• Native mobile app versions of Google+ released prior to Sept 21, 2016 will no longer be fully supported, so users should ensure they have upgraded to the latest versions.

Engaging people is key to innovation, and many G Suite domains have found Google+ to be an invaluable tool that helps drive active engagement and cultivate innovative ideas from all levels of the organization. By making Google+ the newest core service for G Suite, Google+ will now provide the support and guaranteed SLAs that businesses need.

Notes:

• We will be updating several default settings for new domains going forward to help make content less publicly visible. These settings will not be changed for existing domains, but we recommend that you review them:

• Help Center: Set the default for profile discoverability

• Recommended setting: disabled/unchecked

• Help Center: Set a default sharing restriction for Google+ content

• Recommended setting: domain-restricted

• Help Center: Enable or disable Google+ profile name changes

• Recommended setting: disabled/unchecked

• While G Suite for Education domains will also receive the Google+ product changes outlined above, Google+ will remain a non-core service for these domains.

For more information - Admins: Manage Google+ for your G Suite team | Users: Learning Center and Transformation Gallery

Better Google Drive auditing and reporting in the Admin console and Reports API

What’s new: To help G Suite admins monitor and analyze their organizations’ Google Drive content, we offer audit logs in the Reports > Audit > Drive section of the Admin console, as well as via the Reports API. This launch brings the following improvements to that reporting, making it even more useful for you:

• If a user outside of your domain views or takes action on a document explicitly shared with them (as an individual or as part of a specific group), we will now show that event and that user’s details. Previously, this would be recorded as an anonymous user event.*
• If a user outside of your domain takes action on a document shared with the public via link sharing, we will now show that event in the audit logs as an anonymous user edit event. Previously, only anonymous user views were recorded.*

• In addition to the customer usage and user usage reports already in the Reports API, we will now show aggregated statistics around user behavior, like creating, editing, viewing, and trashing. These new metrics will only be accessible via the Reports API.

*Please note that the first two features above are only available to customers with G Suite Business (formerly Google Apps Unlimited) and G Suite for Education.

Check out the Help Center for more information on the Drive audit log.

Trial and purchase Chrome device management software directly

What’s new: If you’re a current G Suite customer, we’re making it easier than ever to set up Chrome device management for managing employee Chrome devices — directly from your Admin console. We’re also offering a free trial of Chrome device management for 60 days and up to 10 devices*.

With Chrome device management, you can manage and configure more than 200 features and settings for your Chrome device fleet (and you can buy devices from our Chrome Store). These settings provide added security for your employee and business data, tools for improved employee productivity, and time savings with easier device management.

As an administrator, Chrome device management lets you easily configure Chrome features for users, set up Chrome device access to Wi-Fi networks and VPNs, automatically install Chrome extensions and apps, and more. You can apply each setting to specific sets of users, devices, or to everyone in the organization. For example, you can configure a device to automatically connect to a specific network or restrict devices from a specific network.

You can also manage public session devices where multiple users can share the same Chrome device without the need to sign in with a username and password. For example, you can use public sessions to configure Chrome devices for use as kiosks, loaner devices, shared computers or any other work-related purpose in which users don't need to sign in.

For more details and instructions, check out the Help Center article about Chrome device management trials and subscriptions.

 *Notes:

• The trial is only available to customers in the U.S. and Canada.
• Currently the trial is only available if you haven’t already purchased a Chrome device management license. It's also only for annual Chrome device management licenses so is not relevant for Education customers.

Learn more about G Suite

New Transformation Gallery features

Google Cloud Connect (GCC): The official community for G Suite Admins

From the G Suite on YouTube, every Tuesday, 11am PST

What’s New for G Suite Admins videos

Thanks for checking out our newsletter!

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

Note: On September 29, 2016, "Google Apps for Work" was renamed as “G Suite.” Original references to the names "Google Apps" or "Google Apps for Work" may have been updated to reflect this change.