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

We’re making a range of updates that will make PDFs converted into Google Docs better. Specifically, you may notice improvements in: 
  • Image imports, including the image itself and text wrapping related to images. 
  • Text styles and formatting, such as importing underline and strikethrough, background color, and more fonts. 
  • Layout conversion, including support for multi-column layouts, custom page sizes, tables with borders, and improved content ordering.
Importing PDFs into Google Docs now supports more formatting options.

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers 

Resources 

Read More

What’s changing

Starting December 3, 2020, we’ll make three changes to how group conversations work in Google Chat:
  • Add and change members. You’ll be able to add and change members of new group conversations.
  • Different Google Vault retention policy. If you have a Vault retention policy set, the updated group conversations will respect a different retention policy.
  • Compatibility with classic Hangouts. Group conversations in Hangouts will begin to appear in Google Chat over the coming weeks.
See below for more information on each of these updates.

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

As we announced earlier this year, starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat. To ensure a smooth transition, we will help automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations and saved history. These changes further ensure compatibility between classic Hangouts and Chat to make migrating your users as seamless as possible.

Additional details

Updated group conversations
When a new member is added to a group conversation, all members will see a message announcing the new member. The new member will be able to see the entire conversation, even messages sent before they entered, allowing them to catch up easily.



If you have a group conversation created before December 3, you can easily create an updated conversation with the same people using the “Start a new chat” option in the conversation settings menu.


History and retention settings
While end users can toggle history on and off at the conversation level, admins can control whether to keep chat history for users in their organization. They can set the default and also let users change their history setting for each conversation.

Note that these updated group conversations will also respect a different retention policy in Vault. If you set custom Chat retention rules in Google Vault, the scope of coverage will change. Rules set for “All Chat Spaces” (previously known as “All Rooms”) will apply to existing chat rooms, plus updated group messages and group messages that synchronize between Chat and Hangouts. Visit the Help Center for more details.

Compatibility with classic Hangouts
Group conversations in Hangouts—beginning with conversations, followed by message history—will begin to appear in Google Chat over the coming weeks. This will allow your users to move from Hangouts to Chat without losing context. In addition, 1:1 messages, updated group conversations, and unthreaded rooms from Chat will begin to appear in Hangouts (Note: this change will only be available for users with Hangouts enabled).

Getting started

  • Admins: We recommend you review your existing retention rules and evaluate if you need to change them to retain only the message data you want. You can also visit the Help Center to learn more about turning history in Chat on or off for your organization.
  • End users: Membership in these updated group conversations will be editable by default starting December 3, 2020.

Rollout pace

Updated group conversations
Compatibility with classic Hangouts

Availability

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

Resources

Read More

Quick launch summary 

We previously launched Google Meet attendance reports for education meetings. We’re now making several enhancements to provide more access, control, and visibility into meetings and live stream reports. Specifically, we’re adding: 
  • Live streaming viewership data. Attendance reports will now include data on live streaming viewers in a separate tab. Live stream data will include total viewer count and viewers over the course of the live stream. 
  • Admin control over attendance tracking. Admins can choose whether an organizational unit can use the attendance tracking feature or not. 
  • New settings to control report creation. Meeting organizers who are not in Education domains can choose whether a report is created for the meeting via in-meeting settings or from the Calendar event before the meeting starts. Meeting organizers at Education domains will continue to automatically receive attendance reports for meetings with five or more participants. 
  • In-call viewer count for live stream events. Live stream hosts and meeting attendees (not live stream viewers) will now see a count of the total number of live stream participants when joining via Meet from a desktop or computer. 
  • Attendance reports for more customers. We are making attendance reports available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers. Previously, they were only available to Enterprise for Education customers. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: 
    • Attendance and live stream reports will be available by default for your users, but you can make them unavailable to your domain or specific OUs and groups. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing attendance reports for your organization. 
    • In-call viewer count for live streams will be ON by default and can’t be turned off. Visit our Help Center to learn more about live streaming a video meeting. 
  • End users: 
    • Users in Enterprise for Education domains: Meeting organizers will continue to receive reports automatically for meetings with five or more participants. 
    • Users in other domains: Attendance reports will be OFF by default, but meeting organizers can turn them ON for any meeting using the meeting settings during the call or the calendar event before the call. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to turn attendance reports on or off in Google Meet. 
    • All users: In-call viewer count for live streams will be ON by default and can’t be turned off. Visit our Help Center to learn more about live streaming a video meeting.

Example of a live stream attendance report 



Live stream viewer count is shown in the top left corner of the screen 

Rollout pace 

Live streaming data in reports: 
Settings to control report creation (non-Education organizations only): 
In-call viewer count for live streams: 

Availability 

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

Resources 

Roadmap 

Read More

Quick launch summary 

We’re making Office editing available on iOS. This feature brings the collaborative and assistive features of Google Workspace to your Microsoft Office files when you’re using your iOS device. Already available on the web and Android, it: 
  • Allows you to edit, comment, and collaborate on Microsoft Office files using Google Docs’, Sheets’, and Slides’ powerful real-time collaboration tools. 
  • Improves sharing options, improves sharing controls, and reduces the need to download and email file attachments. 
  • Streamlines workflows by reducing the need to convert file types. 

Office editing will replace Quickoffice (sometimes known as Office Compatibility Mode), which has more limited functionality and collaboration capabilities. See more about Office editing in our announcement for the feature on the web. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now for all users. 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers 
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

Read More

What’s changing 

Last year, we launched an open beta that enabled Cloud Identity admins to configure a session length (a.k.a. “reauth”) for Google Console and Cloud SDK. Now, we’re enhancing session length controls by allowing you to exempt specific applications from the reauth policy. We hope this will make it easier to roll out this feature in your domain. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins 


Why you’d use it 

The Google Cloud session control feature applies a session length to Google’s own GCP admin tools, as well as customer-owned and third-party applications that use the cloud-platform scope. When the configured session length expires, the application will require the user to reauthenticate to continue operating, analogous to what would happen if an admin revoked the refresh tokens for that application. The reauthentication requirement can help reduce unauthorized access to sensitive data. 

We heard your feedback that there are some scenarios that make it difficult to roll this out. For example, some applications do not gracefully handle the reauth scenario, causing confusing application crashes or stack traces. Some other applications are deployed for server-to-server use cases with user credentials instead of the recommended service account credential, in which case there is no user to periodically reauthenticate. Customers impacted by these scenarios are unable to roll out session controls to any applications as it will cause these apps to work improperly. 

This update allows you to add these apps to a trusted list, temporarily exempting the apps from session length constraints, while implementing session controls for all other GCP admin surfaces. 
The previous session control settings page in the Admin console 

The new session control settings page in the Admin console. Note the new “Exempt trusted apps” checkbox. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled manually using the “Exempt Trusted apps” setting. For more information on how to review the apps currently requiring cloud-platform scopes, and how to add those apps to the Trusted list, visit our Help Center. 
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits, and Cloud Identity customers

Resources 

Read More

What’s changing 

You can now find additional information about people within your organization, your Contacts, and people who email you in the Gmail side panel. This includes: 
  • Contact information, such as phone number and email address, 
  • Team and manager, 
  • Office and desk location, 
  • Whether you’ve received email from them before, and more. 
Additional information will appear in the Gmail side panel.



You can also add people to your contacts and send them an email or message. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 

Why you’d use it 

This feature expands upon information you can already view when hovering over a person’s name in Gmail. In the side panel, you can learn more about who the person you’re collaborating with is, what team they’re on, and whether you’ve interacted with them before. We hope this feature makes collaboration and connecting with key stakeholders easier. 

Additional details 

To maximize this feature, it’s helpful to have user data fully populated across Google Workspace apps. Workspace admins can populate this data in a few locations: 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources 

Read More

Quick launch summary

Last month, we launched breakout rooms in Google Meet to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers. We’re now making breakout rooms available to Google Workspace, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers.

In addition, we’re introducing the following new features to improve your experience in breakout rooms:
  • Ask for help: Participants can ask for help when they are in a breakout room, and the moderator can see the request from the moderator panel and join the breakout room.
  • Timer/countdown: The moderator can set up a timer for a breakout session. Participants will see a banner to keep track of how much more time they have in the breakout room. They’ll also be alerted when there are 30 seconds left so that they can wrap up the discussion and, when time is up, participants will be prompted to go back to the main call.
  • Additional supported participants: Dial-in phone participants can now be assigned to breakout rooms. Starting in two weeks, anonymous users will also be able to be added to breakout rooms.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be available by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using breakout rooms in Meet.

Rollout pace 

Availability

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

Resources

Roadmap

 

Read More

Quick launch summary

Video meeting participants can now let you know if they have a question or indicate that they would like to speak by raising their hand in Meet. In large meetings, this helps to increase participation while not disrupting the flow of the conversation and helps to prevent people from interrupting one another.

To raise your hand in Meet, click on the “Raise Hand” button on the bottom bar during the meeting. Once the button is pressed, it will change to a “Lower Hand” button, which can be clicked to lower your hand.
Raise and lower your hand in Meet

When a participant raises their hand, the meeting’s moderator will see a hand icon in their video preview. If the moderator is presenting in another tab, they’ll get a sound notification when someone raises their hand.

The moderator will also be able to see all raised hands in the order they were raised in the meeting participant list panel to help them address questions accordingly. The moderator can lower a specific person’s hand or lower all hands.

Moderator view of raised hands


Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using hand raising in Meet.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus well as G Suite Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers
  • Not available to Workspace Business Starter as well as G Suite Basic customers. Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Roadmap

Read More

What’s changing

We’re enabling support for multiple Microsoft Exchange endpoints so Google Calendar users can view calendar availability for Exchange users across multiple Exchange environments within Calendar Interop. Calendar Interop is a feature that lets you sync events and availability between Google Calendar and Exchange (both on-premises and Exchange Online).

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

If your organization has multiple subsidiaries, or if you want to share calendar availability between trusted external partners, you can now add their Exchange server endpoint as an additional endpoint in the Calendar Interop tool. Each new endpoint must have a unique domain.

Getting started

  • Admins: The new setting update can be found in the Admin console at Apps > Workspace > Calendar > Calendar Interop management. Visit our Help Center to learn more about setting up Exchange calendar availability sharing in the Admin console.
  • End users: Once an additional Exchange endpoint is added, end users should be able to view calendar availability within a few hours.

Rollout pace

Availability

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

Resources

Read More

Quick launch summary

You can now pin a direct message or a room in Google Chat. This keeps that conversation at the top of your list view in Chat in Gmail. You can access pinned conversations from the left-hand navigation menu, making them quick and easy to find.



Getting started


Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

Read More

Quick launch summary

You can now schedule meetings in Calendar directly from Chat conversations. You’ll see a new icon in the conversation’s compose bar.



Clicking on the icon will start a draft calendar event with the attendees from the chat. You can then customize the invite (including attendees) before sending it to guests.

On mobile, the draft event will open in the Calendar app.


On the web, the draft event will open in the side panel.



This feature is currently rolling out to Chat in the Android Gmail app as well as the Chat Android mobile app and will begin rolling out to the Chat in Gmail on the web and Chat iOS app in the coming weeks.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be ON by default for all domains with Calendar enabled.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers

 

Read More

What’s changing

In Google Calendar, when you’re using a work profile on a device with Android 11 and up, you can now see your personal and work calendars together.

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

Android work profile makes it easy to separate your work and personal data on the same device. When it comes to your calendar events, however, it’s useful to be able to manage both work and personal events in a single place. That’s why we’ve added support for viewing your personal calendars in your work Calendar app. We’ve leveraged a new secure mechanism provided by Android 11 to continue to store personal and work calendar data separately with the same work profile privacy protection.

Additional details

Both admins and users must enable this feature before the experience will become available on a user’s work Calendar app.

Once enabled, you’ll be able to view your personal calendars alongside your work calendars in the work Calendar app, and quickly switch back to your personal Calendar app to make edits. Work events will not be shown on your personal Calendar app. Personal calendars on your work Calendar app will be invisible to coworkers and administrators, unless you share your personal calendars directly with your work account.

Getting started

Admins: This feature will be OFF by default. Cross-profile permissions can be enabled at the Google Workspace app level. Please reach out to your Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) provider to learn how. This setting is usually available on the Admin console provided by your EMM provider.

End users: If your organization allows it, you can enable the work Calendar app to display your personal calendars from the personal Calendar app. See the Help Center for instructions.

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits

Resources

Read More

Update
March 31, 2021: We've made some changes to the storage policy timeline. Please see this post for more information
Read More

Quick launch summary 

Permissions in Google Groups help control who can view, post, and moderate content in your groups, as well as determine who can manage members and other group settings. You can assign a set of permissions to users in your groups using roles—roles available by default include owner, manager, and member. 


With this launch, you can now create a custom role that allows admins to assign a specific set of viewing, posting, and moderation permissions for users within a given group. By adding this to new Groups, we hope to make it quicker and easier to manage group permissions at scale while ensuring all users have the right permissions for your groups. 


Note that custom roles were previously available in classic Groups. All custom roles created in classic Groups will continue to work and be available to use in new Groups as well. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers 

Resources 

Read More

Quick launch summary

Starting November 16, 2020, new rooms created in Google Chat will be unthreaded by default.

Today, conversations in rooms must be grouped into threads. This change introduces a simpler type of conversation, without threads—giving you greater flexibility in your discussions.

With the change later this month, when you create a new room, conversations will not use threads unless you turn on threading. (Note that you cannot change whether a room is threaded or unthreaded after it’s created.)




Additionally, unlike in threaded rooms, in unthreaded rooms you can toggle history on and off. A room history setting is available in the Admin console that allows admins to decide the default history setting for rooms within their organization that support the toggle.

Your existing rooms won't change—you can continue to participate in threaded rooms and create more.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be available by default. Admins can set a room history setting for unthreaded rooms.
  • End users: Unthreaded rooms will now be the default. You can turn on threaded replies when creating the room.

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

Read More

Quick launch summary 

You can now accept all pending knocks in bulk in Google Meet. Admitting participants or students all at once helps limit interruptions during the video call. Note, only the meeting organizer can see or approve requests to join a meeting. 

Admit all participants at once in Meet

Getting started 


Rollout pace 

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 4, 2020 
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 16, 2020 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

Read More

What’s changing 

We’re announcing new integrations with our BeyondCorp Alliance partners Check Point and Lookout. The integrations, initially available in beta, are built using the Devices API and enable customers to use third party signals in context-aware access decisions. 


Who’s impacted

Admins 


Why it’s important 

In the BeyondCorp security model, device inventory, state, and security posture are central to making context-aware access decisions. So far our context-aware access solution obtained these signals from first party (i.e. Google) sources, such as Endpoint Verification. However our vision has always been to help customers to fully leverage their existing investments in security tools and controls, add key functionality and signals to Google’s context-aware access to achieve superior access control security posture for our customers. The BeyondCorp Alliance is a group of partners that share our Zero Trust vision and who are committed to working with us to help our joint customers make it a reality. 


Today, we are excited to announce the first integrations (in beta) with our BeyondCorp Alliance partners Check Point and Lookout, to use third party signals in our context-aware access decisions. For example, the mobile threat defence system might detect malware on the device and notify Google about a reduced security assurance, and customer-defined access rules can reduce the level of access allowed from such devices, without impacting access for that user from other devices or for other users. The integrations are built using the new Devices API we announced earlier this year. The API was designed to be used by partners in the BeyondCorp Alliance to add device security metadata, and also by customers to manage their device fleet. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: Google customers who use Checkpoint or Lookout as their mobile threat defense solutions can benefit from the integration. Visit our Help Center for more information and to learn more about how to set up third-party partner integrations. You can also see blog posts by our partners to see more about how you can use Check Point or Lookout solutions as part of this integration. 
  • End users: No impact for end users. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium customers 
  • Not available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Standard, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources 

Read More

What’s changing 

Google for Education transformation reports are now available for K-12 G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers worldwide, at no additional cost. Note that transformation reports are only available in English at this time. 

The next reporting window will open on November 2, 2020. See below for more information on generating your transformation report. 


Who’s impacted

Admins 


Why you’d use it

The transformation report is a free tool designed to help quantify an organization’s Google for Education implementation across our products and programs. Semester-based reports track usage trends over time and make it easy to understand how your organization is using G Suite, Chromebooks, and progressing through Certification and Transformation programs. 

Based on survey responses and usage information, you’ll receive tailored recommendations and resources from Google for Education to help you drive more impact across your organization. 

To learn more about Google for Education transformation reports, see here. For a list of frequently asked questions, see here. 


Additional details 

November 2020 survey window 
G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education super admins must log in to the transformation report tool between November 2nd and November 20th to generate their report. 

If you log in within that time frame, but don’t take or share the survey, you’ll still receive a report—it will simply lack a valuable section of survey data, recommended next steps, and resources. 



Gather additional feedback from your users 
Super admins can share the transformation survey with key members of their leadership team to gather feedback on how their organization is doing in seven key areas. 

We created this email template for you to copy and paste when sharing the survey link with your team (see “Who should fill out the survey?” and “How can I communicate the value of the survey to my team?”). 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to K-12 Education and Enterprise for Education customers 
  • Not available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Nonprofits customers 

Resources 

Read More

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