To help reduce the hassle and help travelers enjoy their hard-earned vacations, today we’re introducing 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. Check out the announcement on the Official Google blog to learn more.

The Google Trips app will be available for Google Apps customers on both Android and iOS in the coming days. Depending on your Admin console setting for opting in to new services, access to the app will 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 Google Apps for Education customers.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release in the coming days. Please monitor the Google Apps release calendar for the specific availability date.

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information 
Download the Google Trips app for Android and iOS


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

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In an effort to ensure our customers are getting the best possible experience when using Chromebox for meetings (CFM), we are revisiting how ChromeOS updates are handled for CFM devices.

Today, CFM admins are able to manage ChromeOS updates by choosing to pin a ChromeOS version and enable/disable ChromeOS updates for their devices. Customers pinning the ChromeOS version or disabling auto-updates may not enjoy the benefits that new ChromeOS versions may bring them, including new features and security updates. This can result in a degraded user experience when using the Hangouts application on CFM devices.

To address this issue, we are rolling out a new feature in the Admin console―planned for October 12, 2016―that will allow the Hangouts application to update in tandem with ChromeOS. This will enable the Hangouts application to directly manage ChromeOS updates to ensure high reliability and stability for CFM devices.

When this feature launches, admins will not be able to configure the auto-update settings when the release channel is set to stable. However, they will still be able to configure the OS update scattering policy.

Our goal is to provide a superior experience that will delight your users with minimal admin intervention. We would love to hear your thoughts on this planned change. Please reach out to us at cfm-support@google.com.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launch to both Rapid release and Scheduled release planned for October 12, 2016

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI


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

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Many organizations put accounts of former employees into a suspended state for an extended period of time before deleting them. Until now, 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.

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. That’s why we’re introducing a change in Drive to deduplicate files which were uploaded in this way.
Once launched, 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.

Available on the web today for Rapid release users, we hope you enjoy the simpler way to update your files.


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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More information
Help Center

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

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


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

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