This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.



The Google Drive preview feature is a way to quickly preview files you’d typically open in Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, or photo editors. Available in Gmail, Inbox, and Google Drive, previewing a file is a useful and fast experience and works across a wide range of files. Starting this week, we’re rolling out some improvements to the preview feature to make it simpler and easier to use:

  • Cleaner interface: Buttons and toolbars stay out of the way when you’re not using them.

  • Spreadsheet zooming support: If you preview Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, or other spreadsheet files in Drive, you can now zoom in and out to inspect specific cells. This complements earlier launched improvements where we added support for frozen rows and columns, and the ability to switch between sheets.
  • Simpler zooming for Microsoft and OpenOffice document files: Zoom buttons are now easier to find and make images and documents larger than you could before.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in 2 weeks

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center

Earlier this year, we launched contact importing from a wide variety of supported mail and contact sources in the new Google Contacts preview. A popular request from Google Apps users has been the ability to import mail in addition to contacts from additional sources. Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re adding two more: Gmail and Rediffmail.

These secure user-initiated migrations can now be enabled from the Admin console and are powered by ShuttleCloud.  If you have already enabled User email uploads from the Admin console, then this feature is already available for your end-users.

Once enabled, the user will see a new section in their Gmail settings to Import mail and contacts. Users will then follow the prompts to migrate their email and contacts.
Note: If you import multiple times, the migration service will handle contact and mail duplicates seamlessly.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in 2 weeks

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Import email and contacts


Check out the latest "What's New in Google Apps" newsletter [pdf] for a roundup of all Apps launches from July 2016.


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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We are pleased to announce that we are adding new Hangouts metrics to the Reports API (part of the Admin SDK). These new metrics can be used to track video calls by platform. The new metrics that are being added are listed below:

  • gplus.num_video_calls_android
  • gplus.num_video_calls_cfm
  • gplus.num_video_calls_ios
  • gplus.num_video_calls_web
  • gplus.total_video_call_minutes_android
  • gplus.total_video_call_minutes_cfm
  • gplus.total_video_call_minutes_ios
  • gplus.total_video_call_minutes_web
  • gplus.num_video_conferences_android
  • gplus.num_video_conferences_cfm
  • gplus.num_video_conferences_ios
  • gplus.num_video_conferences_mobile
  • gplus.num_video_conferences_web

In addition, Apps admins may notice a change in numbers for Google+ active users. A number of Google+ components and integrations (Hangouts, YouTube Comments, and Photos, for example) have been unbundled from the core Google+ product. The new metrics reflect users of Google+ only. Google+ activity metrics that are impacted with this change are below:
  • gplus.num_1day_active_users
  • gplus.num_7day_active_users
  • gplus.num_30day_active_users
The above changes will be rolled out starting today to all Google Apps domains. To find out more on these new metrics, check our updated developer documentation.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Google Apps Admin SDK
Updated Developer Documentation

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
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Google offers useful and simple-to-use security features such as 2-Step Verification and Single Sign-On in order to protect users who connect to their accounts on multiple devices. One equally important component in keeping users secure is educating them on what’s happening with their accounts in real-time.

That’s why today, we’re pleased to release a new feature that notifies Android users of security events on their account: Android notifications for newly added devices.

Here’s how it works

When users add a new device to their account, native Android notifications will tell the user about the newly added device or security event.

If the activity looks suspicious, the user can choose to “Review Account Activity,” and find out what device was added, from what location, and other important information. If the activity is expected, the user can dismiss it as any other notification.
Benefits

Now users are quickly notified on multiple devices when a new device has been added. This increases transparency to the user of what actions they've performed and allows them to flag any suspicious activity they may be seeing on the device. We’ve also found that with Android notifications, users are up to four times as likely to review the information as compared to email notifications.

We hope you find this security feature as useful as we do!


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 14 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates