Featured launch: Work offline in the new Gmail |
Simple to use Admin preview for Google Sites automatic conversion tool Gmail will now remind you to respond Changes to embedded content on classic Google Sites |
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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, June 4, 2018
Announced May 8th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: We can guarantee you’ll want to work on the go, but we can’t guarantee you’ll have Wi-Fi. Fortunately, native offline capabilities in the new Gmail make it possible to work without interruption—even when you don’t have an internet connection. Starting in May, people using the new Gmail in a Chrome browser (v61 or higher) can search, write, delete, and archive up to 90 days of messages, even when they’re offline.
Enable Gmail offline for your domain
To get started, enable Gmail offline for your domain in the Admin console (the feature is disabled by default).
If you want offline content deleted for your users when they sign out of their Google accounts, check the Force deletion of offline data on log out of Google account box. This will prevent your users from keeping content on their local devices when they log out.
Turn on Gmail offline for your account
Once you’ve enabled Gmail offline for your domain, individuals who are using the new Gmail can turn it on from the Offline tab in their settings (the feature is disabled by default).
They can also choose whether to keep offline data on their computers or have it removed when they log out.
Uninstall the Gmail Offline Chrome app
We previously announced that we’re moving Chrome apps, like Gmail Offline, to the web. The Gmail Offline Chrome app will stop working in the future, so we recommend that users uninstall it and begin using the native offline feature as soon as possible.
Enable the new Gmail
These new native offline capabilities are only available to customers participating in the new Gmail Early Adopter Program (EAP). To opt in to the EAP and enable the new Gmail for your domain, follow the instructions in the Help Center.
For more information on Gmail offline, please visit the Help Center.
Work together
Announced on May 31st, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: We’re introducing new features to provide more insight and help you collaborate through Activity dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. This will help make the data in Activity dashboard:
Email collaborators through Activity dashboard
In just a few clicks, users can pick recipients, customize, and send a follow-up email with the link to the file. Users can:
See our Help Center for detailed instructions on how to send emails through Activity dashboard.
See viewing patterns over time
A popular request from our users is to have more insight into patterns around viewing data on files. So we’re adding a chart showing how many viewers have visited the file over time. You can adjust the date range, and hover over specific data points for more details.
Use our Help Center to find out more about how to understand the data in Activity dashboard.
Announced on May 24th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: When joining a meeting, having the right context is important. That’s why we’ve added some new features to the Hangouts Meet TV display, such as a more informative home screen, screensaver, and custom wallpapers, to quickly orient users.
Home screen interface
Just like when using the remote control, the agenda for the room will now be shown on the in-room display, even when a Hangouts Meet touchscreen is plugged in. This confirms to users what meeting they’re about to join, as well as previews what’s to come in that room. We’ve also moved some features, such as the clock and Meet logo, to the top of the screen for all room TV displays.
The Hangouts Meet home screen shown on the TV display when the Hangouts Meet touchscreen is plugged in.
Screensaver and wallpaper
With this launch, we’re also adding a new Meet screensaver. When your Chromebox or Chromebase for Meetings, or Hangouts Meet Hardware device goes idle for an extended period, we’ll display a screensaver with the Meet logo.
Finally, in Hangouts Meet, you can now display custom wallpapers on in-room TV displays instead of the default Meet images. After uploading the images in the Admin console for the appropriate organizational unit (OU), these wallpapers will be shown on the associated Chromebox or Chromebase for Meetings, or Hangouts Meet Hardware devices, regardless of whether the devices are using classic Hangouts or Hangouts Meet.
More information on these settings and where to update them can be found in the Help Center.
Announced on May 17th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: As we continue to add new features to the overall Jamboard experience, the latest Jamboard release helps people more clearly and effectively get their message out.
White color brushes
Users can now draw brush strokes, use handwriting/shape recognition, and autodraw tools in an all new white color.
Bluetooth conferencing devices compatibility
Users can now connect and use Bluetooth Conferencing (speaker and microphone combined) devices to the Jamboard. A full list of supported devices can be found in the Help Center.
For a full list of new features and improvements from this month’s release, check out the What’s New in Jamboard page in the Help Center.
Announced on May 9th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
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 four additional countries (with more to come!):
For a complete list of currently supported countries, visit this Help Center article.
Announced on May 29th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: In March 2017, we announced Hangouts Meet, the next generation in enterprise video meetings. After continued positive feedback from our customers who have begun using Meet, starting May 29th, we enabled Hangouts Meet for all G Suite domains that are automatically upgrading on Google’s recommended schedule. This means that all newly created Google Calendar events will contain Meet video meeting details. Previously created meetings will not be impacted with this change.
You can expect these changes to take effect over the course of June. If at any time you decide you want your users to schedule new meetings with classic Hangouts instead of Meet during this transition period, you can do so in the Admin console under Apps > G Suite > Google Hangouts > Meet Settings and unselecting “New meeting experience.”
Additionally, to ensure your domain has a seamless transition to Meet, we've added Meet compatibility with Firefox (starting on version 60). Unlike in classic Hangouts, Meet uses native WebRTC protocols so that it does not require any downloads or plugins when using Meet in Firefox.
To learn more about these changes, review the details of the transition plan and the differences between classic Hangouts video calls and Meet in the Help Center. You can also refer to our Meet deployment guide for materials to communicate these changes to your users.
Announced on May 30th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: There are many reasons why you’d need to make an edit to a meeting, and we’re now making it easier to communicate those changes. Going forward, when you change or delete an existing meeting, you’ll see a dialog box where you can enter a message for other guests of the meeting.
After you send the message, other guests will see your message in the email they receive alerting them to the updated meeting details.
Announced on May 30th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: In August 2017, we announced a feature that made it even easier to join a Google Calendar meeting using a CalDAV-based third-party calendaring client. We’ve heard from you that this functionality is helpful and you’d like to see it expanded to more calendaring clients. That’s why now, whenever someone uses G Suite Sync for Microsoft Outlook, Google Sync, or a third-party Android client that relies on Calendar Provider to access an event on Google Calendar, we’ll add automatically generated text to the event’s description. This text will include instructions on how to join the event through Meet or Hangouts.
With this launch, people using Google Calendar clients that don’t display meeting instructions natively (e.g., Samsung S Planner) no longer need to go to Google Calendar on the web to join their meetings.
Simple to use
Announced on May 22nd, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: We’re introducing a tool that makes it fast and easy to move a site created in classic Sites to the new Google Sites interface. This will be available to admins from May 22nd, and will start to become available to end users who own eligible sites on June 19th.
The new Google Sites makes it easy for anyone to create functional and attractive sites. However, our users told us that it was time-consuming to manually move sites they had previously created in classic Sites into new Sites. This is why we developed this simple site conversion tool.
Classic site owners can use the tool to automatically create a draft of their site in the new Google Sites. This new draft site will have the updated look and feel of new Sites, and contain the content from the classic site. Starting the process will not affect the original site, so owners can review and edit the draft in the new Google Sites interface. When the new site is ready to go live, it can either be published to the URL of the classic site (to replace the original site and automatically redirect viewers), or published to a new URL.
The tool will currently work on some but not all sites. To see if the tool will work on a site, the site owner should open the classic site at sites.google.com and look for:
If the banner and link are not available, the site is not eligible for conversion with the tool yet. This can be for several reasons, but is usually because it uses some features the conversion tool does not support yet. We’re working to make the tool work on more sites. When the site becomes eligible, the banner and link described above will appear.
The admin preview of the tool will roll out to admins in all domains by the end of May. Use our Help Center to find out more about how to convert a classic site to a new site and what to expect when you convert a site.
Note: If new Sites is disabled for a domain, users will not see the banner and will not have access to the tool.
This admin preview period can help you to evaluate how you want to use the new Google Sites in your organization, and support your change management efforts with your users.
Announced on May 29th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: We’re making it possible to copy a site created in the new Google Sites. Sometimes you want to work on a new site, but you don’t want to start from scratch. By copying an existing site, you can save time by reducing duplicate work and avoiding manual copying of existing sites.
You might want to copy a site to:
To make a copy, open the site in the new Google Sites, click the More menu > Duplicate site.
See our Help Center for more details on how to copy a site.
Announced on May 14th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: When your inbox is flooded with emails, some will inevitably slip through the cracks. Luckily, the new Gmail can help. It will now “nudge” users to reply to emails they may have missed and to follow up on emails for which they haven’t received a response.
Nudging is on by default for users with the new Gmail enabled, but they can turn it off from their Gmail settings menu if they choose.
We hope this AI-powered feature helps you stay on top of your email and prioritize your work.
Announced on May 25th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: We're upgrading how HTML boxes work on classic Sites. This will improve performance and security, but it may also change the look and feel of some embedded elements. Site editors may want to make some simple adjustments so embedded elements appear the way they want them to. Note that this only affects sites managed in classic Sites. Sites managed in new Sites are not affected.
Upgraded HTML boxes may change visual appearance
When boxes are upgraded, you may notice some visual changes to the embedded element. Visual changes could include:
Due to these changes, site editors may want to check embedded content still appears as desired. If needed, site editors can:
If an editor wants to revert back to the legacy embedded element appearance, they can check the “Use legacy html embed” option. The embedded element will then appear the same as before until the automatic upgrade on June 30th (see below).
Two stages to the upgrade
There will be two stages to these changes:
Announced on May 22nd, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: As part of our ongoing effort to make our products more accessible, we’re expanding support for Sheets on Windows computers via the latest versions of the JAWS and NVDA screen readers.
Earlier this year we launched Braille support in Google Sheets, and recently announced expanded support for Windows computers. Users with a Braille display will be able to read and edit cell contents, as well as navigate between cells in a sheet. This expanded Braille support will roll out to all users over the next two weeks. With these updates, Braille support on Sheets will be available on the following platforms:
Chrome OS
On Chrome OS, you can use ChromeVox with Chrome.
Windows
On Windows, you can use JAWS or NVDA with Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer. Please upgrade to a recent version of JAWS 2018 (2018.1803.24 or newer) or NVDA (NVDA 2018.1 or newer).
Mac
On Mac, you can use VoiceOver with Safari or Chrome, on Mac OS X Yosemite.
Note: This will only work with recent versions of these browsers and screen readers. To use the feature, make sure your screen reader software is up to date.
For more details on Braille support in Sheets, including detailed software requirements, see our Help Center article on how to use a Braille display to read and enter text.
Announced on May 9th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: We’ve made some updates to the look and feel of Google Drive on the web. There’s no change in functionality, but some icons and buttons have moved, and there’s a range of visual tweaks to align with Google’s latest material design principles. We built this new interface to create a responsive and efficient experience for Drive users, and to feel cohesive with other G Suite products, such as the recently redesigned Gmail.
Specific changes include:
Here’s a comparison of several screens in the old and the new interface:
Announced on May 11th, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: We introduced data export, a new feature to make it even easier to export and download a copy of your data securely from our G Suite services.
To initiate the process, in the Admin console, navigate to the Tools section of the right-side slideout menu and select “Data Export.”
Data from G Suite core services (for example, Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Docs) will be exported for all users in your organization. Once your export is complete, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to your archived data in Google Cloud Storage. For security purposes, the archived data will only be available to super admins of your domain. From there, your organization will be able to download your data in several formats.
Because your security comes first in everything we do, our data export feature enforces strict security controls:
Additionally, to further reduce risk, data export will be turned off by default for domains with more than 1,000 users. Admins in these domains will need to contact Google Cloud support to temporarily enable this feature.
You can find the link to your archive at any time in the Data Export tool by clicking “Access archive.” The data will be available in Google Cloud Storage for 30 days before it’s permanently deleted.
Admins can also enable end users to download their own individual data via the existing “Download your data” tool.
Announced on May 30th, 2018 Share with your organization - back to top - |
What’s new: This March, we announced several new features to help G Suite customers stay secure. Among those were new controls to help users safeguard highly sensitive content in Team Drives. These controls are now launching to all G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, and Nonprofit domains.
Admin controls started rolling out to all domains on May 30th. End user controls are launching to Rapid Release domains on June 4th and Scheduled Release domains in on June 18th. Initially the feature is only available for Google Drive on the web (drive.google.com). See below for more details.
User settings to safeguard Team Drive files
With this feature, users* can modify the settings for any Team Drive to specify whether the files in that Team Drive can be:
*To modify these settings, users must (1) be in the same domain as the Team Drive and (2) have full access to the Team Drive.
For more information on how to modify these settings, visit the Help Center.
Admin-controlled default settings for new Team Drives in an organization
To protect sensitive information across their organizations, G Suite admins can prescribe default settings for Team Drives newly created in their domains or in individual organizational units. None of these protections will be turned on by default. Defaults can be set to:
Note that unless Prevent full access members from modifying the Team Drive’s settings is checked, full access members are allowed to change a Team Drive's settings (from the defaults) after it's created.
For more information on selecting these default settings in the Admin console, visit the Help Center.
Additional info on protective settings
To reduce unintended data leakage, we encourage G Suite admins to begin using these settings in their domains today. Initially the controls are only available for Google Drive on the web (drive.google.com). For more information on Team Drives, visit the Help Center and Learning Center.
Announced on May 16th, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: Admin Quarantine helps your organization prevent spam, minimize data loss, and protect confidential information. G Suite admins can set up and manage quarantine policies to divert emails that pose a risk before they’re sent or delivered. They can then review those emails and take appropriate action to protect their organization and its data.
In response to your feedback, we’re making it easier to see why emails have been quarantined directly in the Admin Quarantine interface. This information will make it quicker to review emails and easier to identify the right action. Admins will be able to see:
Users with the “Access Admin Quarantine” or “Access restricted quarantines" admin privileges will have access to this new information in the Admin Quarantine.
For more information, please visit the Help Center.
Announced on May 22nd, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: G Suite admins can use Google Mobile Management to give their users secure access to work apps and data on their mobile devices. One way admins guarantee this security is by mandating that managed devices are protected with a password, and that that password meets certain requirements (e.g. number of characters, password strength, etc.).
Many employees use their phones for both work and personal purposes, so we make it possible to separate the two on most Android devices by setting up work profiles. With this launch, admins will be able to mandate a password policy on just the apps within these work profiles, protecting corporate data while leaving users free to safeguard their personal apps however they see fit.
How it works
In the Admin console (under Device management > Password Settings), an admin can require their users to set a password on any managed device and specify certain requirements for that password. This password policy will apply to all managed devices in that admin’s domain.
If an admin wants to apply that password policy to work profiles only, they can navigate to Device management > Android Settings > Work Profile in the Admin console and check the box next to “Apply password settings only for the Work Profile.” This will apply the password policy to work profiles only on devices running Android 7.0 or higher. On all other managed devices in the domain, the password policy will be applied to the entire device.
For more information, visit the Help Center.
Announced on May 9th, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: In April, we introduced the new Gmail, including a feature called confidential mode, which helps you protect sensitive content in your emails by setting expiration dates or revoking access to previously sent messages. This feature is now launching to consumer Gmail users only. As previously announced, it will launch to G Suite users at a later time. As a G Suite admin, you can define rules to handle confidential mode messages sent from consumer users to G Suite users in your domain.
Create a compliance rule to block incoming messages and more
For detailed instructions on how to set up rules for content compliance in your domain, please see this Help Center article. Gmail confidential mode will be listed as an attribute under “Metadata match.”
Stay tuned to the G Suite Updates blog for more information when confidential mode launches to G Suite users.
Announced on May 15th, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
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 once. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and there are many applications with pre-integrated SSO support in our third-party apps catalog already.
Building on other recent launches (February 27th, March 12th, March 29th), we’re adding SAML integration for 12 additional applications:
Use our Help Center to see a full list of pre-integrated applications and instructions for installing them.
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.
Announced on May 2nd, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: When auto-provisioning is enabled for a supported third-party application, any users created, modified, or deleted in G Suite are automatically added, edited, or deleted in the third-party application as well. This feature is highly popular with admins, as it removes the overhead of managing users across multiple third-party SaaS applications.
We’ve heard continued positive feedback from admins, so we’re adding auto-provisioning support for six new applications:
Customers subscribed to G Suite Education, G Suite Business, and G Suite Enterprise editions can enable user auto-provisioning in all supported applications. Customers on G Suite Basic, G Suite Government, and G Suite Nonprofit can configure auto-provisioning for up to three applications from the supported list.
For more information on how to set up auto-provisioning, check out the Help Center.
Announced on May 29th, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: We built Calendar Interop to enable user availability lookups between Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange. Last summer, we introduced a wide array of improvements to the product, such as simplified setup and troubleshooting, real time updates, and support for both web and mobile. To help our customers improve the security of their coexistence setups, Calendar Interop will now use a restricted set of known IPs to communicate with Exchange servers.
By restricting Calendar Interop to this set of known IPs, G Suite customers can now block all incoming traffic (e.g., by setting up a firewall) to their on-premise Exchange servers, except for requests originating from Calendar Interop.
To see the list of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses that belong to Calendar Interop, check out this Help Center article.
Announced on May 22nd, 2018 Admin feature - back to top - |
What’s new: When changes are made within Google Calendar, it’s important that the available audit logs in the Admin console have the information you need to understand what happened. We have made it easier to do that for changes originating from a third-party system (such as Microsoft Exchange or IBM Notes). In these instances, the third-party system sends the user an email with an attached ICS file.
To help you better investigate situations like these, we’ve added new information to the audit logs, including:
To see all third-party-originated changes, filter activities by selecting “Gmail ICS Parser” in the API Kind field.
Below is an example of an audit log for an event invitation from Microsoft Exchange user john@exchange.altostrat.com sent to Google Calendar user jane@altostrat.com:
With this information, you’ll be able to investigate the change yourself, without having to rely on G Suite Support looking into it for you.
View these reports in the Admin console under Reports > Calendar.
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Sign in today: Cloud Connect is your one stop shop for resources to make your work with G Suite easier. Sign in today to discuss best practices, ask questions, and communicate with your peers and Googlers. Don’t miss out! Make sure you follow our Community Manager (Cloud Team), to get the weekly buzz. What’s new: In May, we continued our Editorial Calendar for Q1. We added new use cases to our growing catalog, covering topics like Focus on the user and all else will follow : My experiences with Design Thinking and the Gamification & Experiential Learning. | |
Join us in June for more use cases on your favorite Google Cloud products. |
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What’s new: The What’s New for G Suite Admins videos provide a recap of all of the features we've released in the past month that are relevant to G Suite Admins, so you can watch and share them whenever you want. How it works: Bookmark the playlist on YouTube and check back each month for updates. |
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