Google Workspace Updates

Enhancements to Google Voice

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

What’s changingWe continuously listen to customer feedback as we make refinements to Google Voice, and based on your feedback we’ve made the following enhancements:

Missed Call Reason: Now you can see why a call did not ring and what you can do to fix it by changing your settings. Just go to the Missed Call details section or the Voicemail section (in case you received a voicemail for the call), and take the recommended steps in settings such as turning off the Do Not Disturb or setting the device to receive incoming calls

Image showing how to easily find out why a call did not ring and correct it in Settings

Easily find out why a call did not ring and correct it in Settings

Call Drop Reason and Redial: Find out why a call dropped and easily redial. If the call dropped due to poor internet connectivity, you'll have the option to call using your mobile carrier network.

Image showing an example of why a call didn't connect

See the reason your call didn’t connect

Caller ID: Google Voice customers using iOS now have a setting that allows them to see their Google Voice number as the caller ID when a call comes in to a number linked to Google Voice. When this setting is on, you will see the number you linked to Google Voice as the caller ID.

Image showing how you can chose to see your Google Voice number as the caller’s number for calls to numbers you linked to Voice

You can chose to see your Google Voice number as the caller’s number for calls to numbers you linked to Voice

Delete multiple SMS messages at once: Now you can delete multiple SMS messages at one time to streamline your workflow - a capability frequently requested by our users. To use this feature, simply tap on the avatar on one or more SMS threads, and a trash bin will appear on the app bar above the messages allowing the message threads to be easily deleted.

Gif showing how to select multiple SMS messages and delete them at once

Select multiple SMS messages and delete them at once

Who’s impacted
End users
Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be OFF by default for the Caller ID feature and can be enabled by the user from within Settings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about changing the caller ID for incoming calls

Rollout pace

Missed Call Reason: Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting July 15.
Call Drop Reason and Redial: This feature is available now for all users.
Caller ID: This feature is available now for all iOS users.
Delete multiple SMS messages at once: This feature is available now for all users.

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers who subscribe to Google Voice, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.

Resources

Google Voice Help Center
Google Voice Help: Turn Voice notifications on or off
Google Workspace Learning Center: Get started with Voice: Manage call settings
Google Voice Help: Change caller ID for incoming calls

Workspace for Education Plus now syncs Google Classroom courses and rosters with Student Information Systems

Monday, July 26, 2021

What’s changingU.S. school districts with Google Workspace for Education Plus will be able to automatically set up Google Classroom courses and keep rosters in sync with their Student Information System (SIS). IT admins will do the setup via Clever, meaning teachers will no longer need to manually create classes and invite students to join them. Note that this will not overwrite Classroom courses that teachers create individually.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why you’d use it
This feature, created in partnership with Clever, improves the interoperability and integration between Google Classroom and most major SIS in the U.S. It saves teachers time with class setup and keeps Classroom classes and SIS rosters in sync with less manual and duplicative work.
Getting started

Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled in the Admin console under Classroom settings. After that, go to Clever, link to the Google Classroom rostering app & follow the setup wizard.

End users: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled by your admin. There is no end user setting for this feature. When your admin sets up rostering via Clever, teachers will receive an invite within Classroom to teach the class with the roster pre-populated.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on July 26, 2021

Availability

Available to Education Plus

Resources

Google Help: Set up SIS roster import

Roadmap

This feature was listed as an upcoming release.

Use dynamic security groups for group based policies

Monday, July 26, 2021

What’s changing Google Workspace admins can now use dynamic groups to manage policies for their users in the Admin console. Previously, it was only possible to apply these policies to static groups and OUs.
Workspace admins can use dynamic attribute-based groups to automate tasks such as "turn drive off for everyone in Europe through the Admin Console".

Who’s impacted

Admins

Why it’s important

This change gives admins greater control and flexibility when managing Workspace policies for users in their organization. For instance, rather than applying policies to a specific group which is updated manually at large, admins can apply policies to a dynamic group which stays up-to-date automatically.

Further, this reduces manual work for Admins and helps improve security by relying on external source of truth systems for user attributes.

Getting started

Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning customizing service settings with configuration groups and managing membership automatically with dynamic groups.
End users: No action required.

Rollout pace

This feature is available now.

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Cloud Identity Premium customers
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Alert Center enrichment with VirusTotal threat context now generally available

Monday, July 26, 2021

What’s changing Earlier this year, we pre-announced an integration between the Alert Center and VirusTotal. Currently, the Google Workspace Alert Center provides admins with actionable, real-time alerts and insights regarding security-related activity in their domain. With the VirusTotal (now part of Google Cloud) integration, admins have the ability to dig into their alerts at a deeper level.

When an Alert Center notification contains a supported VirusTotal entity, such as a domain, file attachment hash, or IP address, the VirusTotal report enrichment widget (VT Augment) is available directly in the Alert Center. For paid VirusTotal subscribers, an enhanced version of the report will automatically populate.

The Standard version of VirusTotal reports includes the following:

Observable identification—Identifiers and characteristics allowing you to reference the threat and share it with other analysts (for example, file hashes).
Threat reputation—Maliciousness assessments coming from 70+ security vendors, including antivirus solutions, security companies, network blocklists, and more.
Threat time spread—Key dates that enable you to understand when a given threat was first observed in-the-wild and how long it’s been active.
Domain/IP Whois lookup—Registrar and registrant details for domains, as well as ownership and network range information for IP addresses.
Domain and server security-relevant metadata—HTTPS certificates for web servers, DNS resolution records, and web server HTTP headers.

The Enhanced version of VirusTotal reports includes additional features such as:

Multi-angular detection—Additional threat analysis coming from crowdsourced rule matches and community scoring (for example: YARA, Sigma, and IDS rules).
Related indicators of compromise (IOCs)—Examples of IOCs include a network infrastructure distributing a malware file, servers acting as a command-and-control for a given threat, malicious URLs seen under a given domain, domains seen behind a given IP address, and more.
Interactive threat graph—Graphical format that maps out entire threat campaigns by visualizing the relationships between IOCs.
Security-relevant metadata—Includes software publisher information, identification of malicious macros in documents, popularity ranks for domains, domain content categorization, and more.
In-the-wild details—Geographical and time-spread details for threats, common attacker deception techniques, and more, through VirusTotal submission metadata.
Suspicious attribute pivoting—Clickable details in VirusTotal reports, allowing you to explore the global VirusTotal dataset for other threats that share the same properties.

Visit the Help Center and learn more about using VirusTotal security threat context and reputation reports from the Alert Center to power improved threat identification, expedited investigations & decision making, enhanced threat remediation, and proactive defense.

Who’s impacted

Admins

Why it’s important

The VirusTotal integration provides an added layer of investigation on top of existing alerts, empowering admins to take deeper look into threats and potential abuse, helping them better protect their organization and data.

Additional details

VirusTotal provides an investigation layer on top of alerts but isn’t being used directly for detection or alerting. No customer information is shared from Google to VirusTotal unless an admin clicks to retrieve a VirusTotal report for a specific entity.

The VirusTotal report has two versions: Standard and Enhanced. Standard reports are displayed for admins who have the alert center privilege. The Enhanced version is automatically shown for paid VirusTotal subscribers who have an active virustotal.com login session with their VT Enterprise user account.

For existing VT Enterprise customers, viewing VirusTotal reports within the alert center does NOT use any of your VT Enterprise quota. If an admin opens the VirusTotal website to do more research from the Alert Center, that would count towards standard quota usage in the same way as directly visiting virustotal.com.

Getting started

Admins: VirusTotal reports are available to administrators who have the Alert Center privilege. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using VirusTotal reports in the Alert Center.
End users: There is no end user impact.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) beginning on July 26, 2021.

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals and Education Plus customers
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Enterprise Essentials, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Google Workspace Admin Help: Open VirusTotal reports from the Alert Center
Cloud Blog: Arming Google Workspace users and admins with advanced counter-abuse and threat-analysis capabilities
VirusTotal: Compliant, easy and actionable integration of VirusTotal in 3rd-party products - Welcome VT Augment
VirusTotal: Learn more about VT Enterprise
VirusTotal Guide
VirusTotal: Request a trial for Enhanced VirusTotal Alert Center reports
VirusTotal Support: How it works

Disabling File Transfer in Google Chat

Monday, July 26, 2021

What’s changingAdmins can now disable or limit file sharing for their users in Chat. Specifically, adminswill be able to specify controls within and outside their organization, and will be able to choose between restricting all files, allowing images only, or allowing all files.
Who’s impacted Admins and end users
Why it’s important Files often contain confidential information, and some organizations, particularly in regulated industries, need to control the flow of this information within and outside of their organization. With this launch, admins now have more ability to help manage sharing in specific scenarios.
Additional details These policies will have no impact on links. For example, sharing links to Google Drive files or giphy links will all continue to work. Emojis will also not be impacted.

Admins will have the option to enable this feature

Getting started

Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain our OU level. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to control file sharing in Chat.

End Users: If an admin has disabled file sharing, the upload button may be disabled or changed, and when possible we will provide text to explain the change. See images below for examples.

The file upload button may be disabled

If a user is only able to upload images, the file upload icon may change to an image icon.

Error messages will be displayed if a user attempts a restricted action

Policies will be also applied while using Google Chat on web and mobile platforms
Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: [Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard,Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Enterprise Essentials

Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Google Workspace Admin Help: Control file sharing in Chat

Improvements for braille mode in Google Docs provide a richer, more interactive experience

Monday, July 26, 2021

Quick launch summaryWe've improved how suggestions are announced in braille mode in Google Docs. This change makes it easier for users of assistive technology, including screen readers and refreshable braille displays, to interact with suggestions in documents.
You’ll now hear detailed suggestion information inline with the rest of the text — this includes whether the suggestion is an insertion or deletion, and the author of the suggestion.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled by the user by going to Tools > Accessibility settings > Turn on braille support. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to Use a braille display with Docs editors.

Additional details

Users should make sure to update to the latest versions of their assistive technologies and browsers to fully benefit from these improvements.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 26, 2021
Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on August 16, 2021

Availability

Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Frontline, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Nonprofits, Cloud Identity Free, Cloud Identity Premium

Resources

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - July 23, 2021

Friday, July 23, 2021

New updatesUnless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), 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), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers.Gmail now displays the latest emojis
Now you can see all the latest emojis in Gmail, with emojis now rendered in the latest Unicode standard 13.1.

Improved Tabular Data Handling for Gmail DLP
We are improving the way we handle Tabular data files like .csv or .xlsx to best account for the structure of these files. This will result in more accurate content scans. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise, Education Fundamentals, Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Plus customers. | Learn more.
Previous announcementsThe announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.Updates to Google Workspace Public Status Dashboard and service status alerts
We're introducing a new Public Status Dashboard experience for Google Workspace. As part of this update, we’re enhancing the functionality of the existing Apps outage alert system-defined rule, which provides email notifications regarding service disruptions or outages via the Public Status Dashboard. | Learn more.
Hangouts to Google Chat upgrade beginning August 16th, with option to opt-out
Beginning August 16, 2021, we will start upgrading users who have the “Chat and classic Hangouts” setting selected to “Chat preferred,” unless you explicitly opt out. Additionally, the “Chat and classic Hangouts'' setting will also be removed for all users in your domain unless you opt out of the upgrade. | Learn more.
Fundamental data regions now available to more Google Workspace customers
Data regions give you the ability to choose where covered data for select Google Workspace apps is stored at rest. We’re introducing a more limited version of data regions, known as Fundamental data regions, which will be available to Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Business Plus, Business Standard and Frontline customers. | Learn more.
Bulk convert Classic Sites to new Sites using the Classic Sites Manager
Beginning today, you can now bulk convert Classic Sites to new Sites using the Classic Sites Manager. | Learn more.

Block shares from another user in Google Drive

We’re adding the ability to block another user in Google Drive. If blocked, the user will not be able to share any Drive items with you, and items owned by the user will not be able to be shared with you or be shown when you’re browsing Google Drive. In addition, your files will not be available to the user you’ve blocked, even if you’ve previously shared items with them. | Learn more.

Select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection

Now you can select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection (such as moving the tabs together, deleting, duplicating, copying, coloring, or hiding). | Learn more.

Image placeholders make it easy to work as a team with images in Slides themes and layouts

Now when you create a theme in Slides, you can add image placeholders to your layouts. | Learn more.

Easily collaborate and share Slide presentations with side-by-side viewing in Google Chat

In Google Chat, you can now open and edit a Slide presentation in a side-by-side view. | Learn more.

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

Easily collaborate and share Slide presentations with side-by-side viewing in Google Chat

Friday, July 23, 2021

Quick launch summaryIn Google Chat, you can now open and edit a Slide presentation in a side-by-side view. By enabling you and your collaborators to directly edit presentations without leaving Chat, we hope to make it easier to transform your ideas into impact.

Image of how Chat users can open a Slide presentation by clicking on the preview thumbnail image in the chat stream.

Chat users can open a Slide presentation by clicking on the preview thumbnail image in the chat stream.
Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: Use this feature by clicking on the document preview thumbnail image in the chat stream. To open the presentation directly in Google Slides, click on the blue link in the chat conversation. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to Manage your files in Gmail rooms.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 21, 2021

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Google Help: Manage your files in Gmail rooms

Image placeholders make it easy to work as a team with images in Slides themes and layouts

Friday, July 23, 2021

Quick launch summaryNow when you create a theme in Slides, you can add image placeholders to your layouts. Slides editors can then easily replace these image placeholders with the desired images. This new feature should improve your team’s workflow efficiency, design quality, and ease of formatting.

Gif if how a user creates a slide from a layout that uses image placeholders, they can click directly on the placeholder, select a source for the upload, select the file, and the image is inserted.

When a user creates a slide from a layout that uses image placeholders, they can click directly on the placeholder, select a source for the upload, select the file, and the image is inserted.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to insert or delete images & videos.

Image placeholders can be inserted from the Theme Builder View through the Insert menu.
Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 15, 2021

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Update
[July 23, 2021]: This feature is also available to users with personal Google Accounts. This was not noted in the original post.
Quick launch summaryNow you can select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection (such as moving the tabs together, deleting, duplicating, copying, coloring, or hiding). Work in Google Sheets with confidence and make workflows faster as you perform basic actions on more than one sheet at a time.

GIF show how multiple tabs are selected in Sheets to be deleted together.

To select multiple tabs, press "Ctrl" to select individual tabs, "Shift" to select contiguous tabs.
Getting started

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 21, 2021

Availability

Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Frontline, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Nonprofits, Cloud Identity Free, Cloud Identity Premium. Also available to users with personal Google Accounts.

Resources

Google Help: Protect, hide, and edit sheets

Useful Links

Updates

Enhancements to Google Voice

Workspace for Education Plus now syncs Google Classroom courses and rosters with Student Information Systems

Use dynamic security groups for group based policies

Alert Center enrichment with VirusTotal threat context now generally available

Disabling File Transfer in Google Chat

Improvements for braille mode in Google Docs provide a richer, more interactive experience

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - July 23, 2021

Easily collaborate and share Slide presentations with side-by-side viewing in Google Chat

Image placeholders make it easy to work as a team with images in Slides themes and layouts

Select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection

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