Google Workspace Updates

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - September 22, 2023

Friday, September 22, 2023

New updates There are no new updates to share this week. Please see below for a recap of published announcements.

Previous announcements

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Find and install third-party add-ons directly within Google Meet You can now find, install, and use third-party applications all without having to leave Google Meet. | Learn more about third-party add-ons for Google Meet.
Add Google Groups to spaces in Google Chat We’re introducing the ability for space managers and users with the permission to manage members to add Google Groups to a space. With this update, the group members are automatically added to a space and any changes to the group's membership, such as adding and removing members, are also automatically reflected in the space. | Learn more about Google Groups in spaces.
Collaborate more seamlessly with live pointers in Google Slides To boost collaboration in Google Slides, we’re introducing live pointers, a new feature that allows you and your colleagues to see each other’s mouse pointers in real-time. With this update, co-creators can easily point out specific text or visual elements within a Slide in order to highlight important information and content. | Learn more about live pointers in Slides.
Pair your video tile in Google Meet to improve accessibility for users with language interpreters We’re introducing tile pairing for Google Meet, which will allow you to pair your video tile with another meeting participant's tile. Once you pair your tile, other meeting participants will see both tiles shown next to each other. Both pairing partners will have their borders outlined in blue when speaking. Tile pairing will be indicated in the meeting captions as well. | Learn more about pairing tiles in Google Meet.
Differentiate messages better with additional modernizations in Google Chat We’re introducing message bubbles to enable users to more easily differentiate incoming versus outgoing messages in the Chat message stream. | Learn more about message bubbles in Chat.
Turn Q&As on or off for Google Meet livestream viewers Earlier this year, we announced that meeting hosts can now enable Q&A and poll features, which previously were only offered in traditional Meet meetings. Beginning this week, meeting hosts can turn Q&A on and off for livestreams. | Learn more about Q&As in Google Meet.
Additional improvements for monitoring Google Meet hardware issues in the Admin consoleRecently, we announced the ability to detect and monitor several additional Google Meet hardware issues from the Admin console. Now that ChromeOS M108 has rolled out to Meet hardware devices, we’re sharing an update on the rollout of some of those features. | Learn more about improvements for monitoring Google Meet hardware issues.

Completed rollouts

The features below completed their rollouts to Rapid Release domains, Scheduled Release domains, or both. Please refer to the original blog posts for additional details.

Rapid Release Domains:
Insert links in the Google Sheets app on iOS
Scheduled Release Domains:
Add annotations to your presentations in Google Slides
Google Voice users can manage incoming calls across individuals and groups
Get started with smart canvas in Google Sheets
View speaker notes while co-presenting Google Slides in Google Meet
Import and convert sensitive Excel files into client-side encrypted Google Sheets
Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:
AppSheet Core licenses will be included by default for more Google Workspace editions, along with a new Admin security setting
View & compare script versions with Apps Script project history
See message view counts in Google Chat spaces (mobile)
Expanding branding and customization capabilities to Google Sites
Updated zoom capabilities across Google Docs, Slides and Drawings
Find and install third-party add-ons directly within Google Meet
Add an organizational unit as an attribute in your external directory (open beta)

For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).

Additional improvements for monitoring Google Meet hardware issues in the Admin console

Friday, September 22, 2023

What’s changingRecently, we announced the ability to detect and monitor several additional Google Meet hardware issues from the Admin console. Now that ChromeOS M108 has rolled out to Meet hardware devices, we’re sharing an update on the rollout of some of those features, including new options to fine tune your alerts:

Missing display issues began rolling out in the Admin console on September 21 and may take up to 10 days to go into effect on all domains.

You will be able to select which specific peripheral issue types you want to be alerted about from a new Admin console setting that also began rolling out on September 21 and may take up to 10 days to go into effect on all domains. If you don’t want to receive display alerts (or any other type of peripheral issues), you can opt out using the new setting. Note that the setting can be modified as soon as it appears in your Admin console, but it won’t actually go into effect until October 11.

Unless you’ve turned them off using the aforementioned setting, you will begin seeing email alerts for missing display issues beginning October 11. Note that it may take up to 10 days for settings to go into effect on all domains.

Monitoring Google Meet hardware issues, like devices going offline or missing cameras, is crucial to ensuring a smooth meeting experience for your users. We hope this update continues to make it easier and faster for admins to be alerted of issues in their fleet and quickly remedy them. See our original announcement for more information.

Getting started

Admins:

To view these new issues, you can monitor the status of your peripherals in the Google Meet hardware Admin console.
Missing display alerts will begin being sent by email or SMS on or soon after October 11.
The new Peripheral issue types setting will go into effect on or soon after October 11. If you want to disable any specific peripheral issue types, be sure to change it ahead of this date.

Rollout

Missing display issues in the Admin console and peripheral issue type setting:

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 10 days for feature visibility) starting on September 21, 2023

Configurability of peripheral email alerts by issue type:

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 10 days for feature visibility) starting on October 11, 2023

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware devices

Resources

Turn Q&As on or off for Google Meet livestream viewers

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

What’s changing Earlier this year, we announced that meeting hosts can now enable Q&A and poll features, which previously were only offered in traditional Meet meetings. Beginning today, meeting hosts can turn Q&A on and off for livestreams.

We’ve also increased the limit of questions per meeting or livestream from 200 to 500.
Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using polls and Q&As in Google Meet.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 19, 2023

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Education Plus, and the Teaching and Learning upgrade customers

Resources

Differentiate messages better with additional modernizations in Google Chat

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

This announcement is part of Google Cloud Next ‘23. Visit the Workspace Blog to learn more about the new Google Chat.

What’s changinga modernized Google ChatGoogle’s Material Design 3
Currently, all messages in Chat are aligned the same regardless of the sender and displayed without any visual containers that separate messages into clear groups. With today’s update:

Each incoming message will have an independent message bubble aligned to one side with a solid color background
Each outgoing message will have an independent message bubble aligned to the other side with a different color background

Differentiate messages better with additional modernizations in Google Chat

Getting started

Admins and end users: No action required. You’ll automatically see these updates in your web and mobile experience over the next several weeks.

Rollout pace

Web:

Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 19, 2023
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on October 3, 2023

Android:

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 27, 2023

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Pair your video tile in Google Meet to improve accessibility for users with language interpreters

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

What’s changing Currently, there are a variety of features to help make meetings more inclusive and equitable, including screen reader support and live captions.

Today, we’re introducing tile pairing for Google Meet, which will allow you to pair your video tile with another meeting participant's tile. Once you pair your tile, other meeting participants will see both tiles shown next to each other. Both pairing partners will have their borders outlined in blue when speaking. Tile pairing will be indicated in the meeting captions as well.

Who’s impacted Admins and end users

Why it mattersTile pairing can help make meetings more accessible, specifically in situations where you want to ensure a sign-language or other language interpreter is visible during the meeting. You can also use this feature to pair speaker duos or presenters with co-presenters for a more dynamic presenting experience.

Additional details At this time, tile pairings will not be captured in meeting recordings. Also, tile pairing is not available in break out rooms at this time.

Getting started

Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be turned off at the OU level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Meet settings and accessibility in Google Meet.
End users:

Visit the Help Center to learn more about pairing tiles in Google Meet and accessibility in Google Meet.
If enabled by your admin, tile pairing will be available for all users. Find the user you would like to pair with in the participant list, click on the 3-dot menu and send a pairing request.
You’ll receive a notification with a choice to “accept” or “decline” the pairing.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Collaborate more seamlessly with live pointers in Google Slides

Monday, September 18, 2023

What’s changingTo boost collaboration in Google Slides, we’re introducing live pointers, a new feature that allows you and your colleagues to see each other’s mouse pointers in real-time.
With this update, co-creators can easily point out specific text or visual elements within a Slide in order to highlight important information and content.

Who’s impacted End users
Why it’s important Live pointers help to build connections when you're collaborating in real-time with others.
Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users:

This feature is OFF by default. To make your pointer visible to collaborators, go to View > Live pointers > show my pointer. You can also turn the feature on by using the pointer icon in the toolbar. Live pointers will remain visible across all slides until you turn them OFF.

You can hide collaborator pointers for the current session by going into present mode, or by going to View > Live pointers > show collaborator pointers.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about live pointers in Google Slides.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 18, 2023
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on October 3, 2023

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Google Help: View live pointers on Google Slides

Add Google Groups to spaces in Google Chat

Monday, September 18, 2023

What’s changingIn continuing our efforts to improve spaces in Google Chat, we’re introducing the ability for space managers and users with the permission to manage members to add Google Groups to a space. With this update, the group members are automatically added to a space and any changes to the group's membership, such as adding and removing members, are also automatically reflected in the space.

Add Google Groups to spaces in Google Chat

Who’s impacted Admins and end users
Why you’d use it This feature adds a Google Group to a space and continuously syncs membership from Groups to Chat, making membership management, especially adding or removing a large number of members, much easier.
Additional details

Memberships are updated from Groups to Chat, which means changes to the space membership will not be reflected in the group members list.
Some groups and their members may not be visible to all members in the space as group member visibility in spaces will respect the group’s member visibility settings set in Google Groups.
Group members can be promoted to space managers. Visit the Help Center to learn more about making someone a space manager.

Getting started

Admins:

By default, any space manager or user with permission to manage members can add groups to space.
To limit this feature so that only Google Group owners and managers can add groups to spaces, sign into the Admin console > go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Google Chat > select “Groups in Chat” > Choose who can add groups to spaces > click Save. Visit the Help Center to learn more about restricting who can add Google Groups to spaces.

End users:

Developers: For developers who are registered in the Workspace Developer Preview program, you will be able to modify your Chat App to also list Google Groups added to spaces using the Chat API.

Rollout pace

Admin controls:

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 18, 2023

Add Groups to spaces:

Availability

Available to all domain-verified Google Workspace customers

Resources

Find and install third-party add-ons directly within Google Meet

Monday, September 18, 2023

What’s changing You can now find, install, and use third-party applications all without having to leave Google Meet. At the top of the activities panel, you’ll see a “Featured add-ons” category — from here, it takes two clicks to install and begin using apps such as Confluence, Figma, Lucidspark, Miro, Polly and Read.ai in your meetings.

You can use the “Get add-ons” button to open the Google Workspace Marketplace to browse additional add-ons for Meet. Note that in some cases, admins may have pre-installed add-ons for you or have turned off access to certain add-ons.

Whether you’re leveraging the white boarding capabilities of Miro or Lucidspark, or using Figma to explore design possibilities in real time — you can do it all within Google Meet, without switching tabs or opening additional applications. Further, since these add-ons open directly in Meet, you can share your screen with all participants, even those who don’t have the add-on or are on an unsupported platform.

Additional details

The Miro-Meet integration is now available via the Miro add-on

In 2022, we announced the Miro integration within Google Meet — at that time, Miro would open in a separate tab with Google Meet in the sidebar. Beginning today, Miro will open directly in Meet, allowing you to leverage Miro’s rich capabilities designed for innovation without leaving Meet. With this update, users can access the Miro integration with Meet by installing the Miro add-on in the Google Workspace Marketplace. For more information about how the Miro experience is changing, see this Community forum post.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

Google Help: Use add ons with Google Meet
Google Admin Help: Install Marketplace apps in your domain
Google Admin Help: Manage Marketplace apps on your allowlist

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - September 15, 2023

Friday, September 15, 2023

4 New updates Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are available to all Google Workspace customers, and are fully launched or in the process of rolling out. Rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete if launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time. If not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete.

Insert links in the Google Sheets app on iOS devices

We’re adding the ability to insert a hyperlink into a cell in the Google Sheets iOS app by selecting a cell > clicking “+” in the top left corner > Insert > Link. If a cell contains a link, you’ll see options to edit or remove the link. | Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts. | Visit the Help Center to learn more about working with links & bookmarks.

Insert links in the Google Sheets app on iOS devices

Enhanced spam protection through automatic labeling of suspected spam messages in Google Voice

If you're using Google Voice, you're familiar with our suspected spam caller warnings. We're extending this feature to SMS messages on Android and iOS devices. You'll see these labels within the message, and you can either:

Confirm a suspected spam message, which causes future messages from that number to go directly into the spam folder.
Mark a labeled message as not spam, after which the suspected spam label is never displayed for that number again.

Available to Voice Starter, Standard, and Premier customers, as well as users with personal accounts in the US. | Rolling out now to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains at an extended pace (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility).

Enhanced spam protection through automatic labeling of suspected spam messages in Google Voice

Birthday decorations for people cards

In Google Contacts and across various Google Workspace products, you’ll begin to notice birthday decorations when hovering over another user’s people card. This small change can have a big impact on building deeper connections with your colleagues and stakeholders. Birthday decorations will be displayed on your birthday if you’ve added your birthday to your Google Account profile and you’ve set the information to be visible to others. | Available now for all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts. | Visit the Help Center to learn more about your Google Account profile and what information others can see.

Add an organizational unit as an attribute in your external directory

When using Directory Sync, you can now place users from the Azure Active Directory or Active Directory to a specific organizational unit on the Google Workspace side. To do so, you’ll need to add an organizational unit as an attribute in your external directory. This makes it easier to sync users who will be mapped to different organizational units on the Google Workspace side. | Directory Sync is available as an open beta to all Google Workspace customers. | Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting up users to sync based on an organizational unit attribute.

Previous announcements

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Dual Display on Poly Studio X Series Makes Video Meetings More Productive

We are excited to announce dual display support for Google Meet on the Poly Studio X Series to help make video meetings more productive. With dual displays, you can see more meeting participants, presentations, and documents at once, which can help you stay focused and engaged in meetings. | Available to Google Workspace customers with Poly Studio X50, X52, and X70 devices only. | Learn more about Dual Display on Poly Studio X Series.

Completed rollouts

The features below completed their rollouts to Rapid Release domains, Scheduled Release domains, or both. Please refer to the original blog posts for additional details.

Rapid Release Domains:

Scheduled Release Domains:

A new look for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps on Android devices

Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:

For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).

Dual Display on Poly Studio X Series Makes Video Meetings More Productive

Monday, September 11, 2023

What’s changing We are excited to announce dual display support for Google Meet on the Poly Studio X Series to help make video meetings more productive. With dual displays, you can see more meeting participants, presentations, and documents at once, which can help you stay focused and engaged in meetings. With a single display, shared content takes over a majority of the screen and minimizes the view of meeting participants. Minimizing the view of participants can affect meeting engagement by limiting conversation between those who are in the room and those who are not.

During a video meeting with dual displays, the primary and secondary screens will show the view of all the participants in the meeting, including the view of the local room.

When a participant presents, the presentation will enlarge onto one screen display and the participant views will reflect on the other screen display.
Where supported, the controller or remote will also provide options like pinning participants, changing the layout of the participant tiles, and showing the meeting's chat history.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about Dual Displays.

Getting Started

Admins:

Google Meet on Poly Android appliances require Google Meet hardware licenses, please reach out to a Google Meet Hardware reseller.
Studio X Series appliances will need to be updated to Poly OS 4.01.

End Users: To use dual displays with the Poly Studio X Series of video bars, simply plug a second display into the device’s display port. The Poly Studio X Series will automatically recognize the second monitor and add it as a secondary display.

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers with Poly Studio X50, X52, and X70 devices.

Note: Poly Studio X30 only supports a single monitor. Poly Studio X50, X52, and X70 devices support dual display.

Rollout

This new feature is available now for compatible Poly Studio X Series devices running Poly OS 4.0.1 or higher.

Resources

Useful Links

Join the official community for Google Workspace administrators

In the Google Cloud Community, connect with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like yourself. Participate in product discussions, check out the Community Articles, and learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what's happening with Google Workspace.

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Learn about more Google Workspace launches

On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.

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Updates

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - September 22, 2023

Additional improvements for monitoring Google Meet hardware issues in the Admin console

Turn Q&As on or off for Google Meet livestream viewers

Differentiate messages better with additional modernizations in Google Chat

Pair your video tile in Google Meet to improve accessibility for users with language interpreters

Collaborate more seamlessly with live pointers in Google Slides

Add Google Groups to spaces in Google Chat

Find and install third-party add-ons directly within Google Meet

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - September 15, 2023

Dual Display on Poly Studio X Series Makes Video Meetings More Productive

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