Google Workspace Updates

Include captions with a Google Meet video recording

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

What’s changingIf you’re using captions in Google Meet, you now have the option to include those captions in a meeting recording. Including captions in your meeting recordings can help make them more useful and accessible for meeting participants.

Note that to record a meeting, the feature must be enabled by your admin and you have to be:

The meeting host.

Part of the host’s organization. Note that if host management is on, you’ll need to be a meeting co-host to use this feature.

Promoted to a co-host if you are outside the meeting hosts's organization.

A teacher or co-teacher for meetings created through Google Classroom.

Getting started

Admins: Meeting recordings must be enabled to use this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning recording on or off for Google Meet.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using captions in a meeting and recording a video meeting.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) February 8, 2023

Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 1, 2023

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers

Resources

Expanding the power of Google Sheets with localized formatting and improved CSV imports

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

What’s changingWe’re introducing updates to improve the overall Google Sheets experience for users around the world.
First, Sheets will now automatically use regional-specific decimal separators based on your spreadsheet's locale. For example, in France, it is more common to use commas as decimal separators. Starting today, when using a keyboard with a number pad, you can use the decimal key to insert the regional-specific decimal separator in Sheets.

Second, we’re making it easier to import CSV files into Sheets. Previously, if you used commas (,) as your decimal separators and semicolons (;) as your text separators, you had to choose a custom delimiter and type ";" for the import to properly split text to columns. Starting today, Sheets will autodetect semicolons (;) as a way to separate text into columns.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting a spreadsheet’s location & calculation settings, formatting numbers in a spreadsheet and importing data sets & spreadsheets.

Rollout pace Sheets Locale:

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 7, 2023

Semicolon autodetect in Sheets:

This feature is available now for all users.

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Google Help: Format numbers in a spreadsheet
Google Help: Import data sets & spreadsheets
Google Help: Set a spreadsheet’s location & calculation settings

Expanding SIP Link for Google Voice to Latin America

Monday, February 6, 2023

What’s changingIn October 2022, we announced the ability for Google Voice Standard and Premier customers to connect a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk with Voice. SIP Link allows phone numbers (PSTN services) from local carriers to be used for Google Voice through a secure set of certified Session Border Controllers (SBCs), such as Audiocodes, Cisco, Oracle, and Ribbon. For more information, check out our original announcement.Beginning today, we’re launching Voice to the following countries in Latin America by expanding SIP Link availability:

Argentina

Colombia

Chile

Brazil

Mexico

Customers in these countries will need to purchase the new SIP Link Standard or SIP Link Premier licenses to set up SIP Link.

Getting started

Admins: Once you’ve configured your SIP trunks and uploaded new phone numbers, you can assign them to your users, desk phones, auto-attendants, and ring groups. Visit the Help Center to learn more about SIP Link requirements.
End users: There is no end user action required.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) February 6, 2023

Availability

Customers in Latin American Countries will need to purchase SIP Link Standard or SIP Link Premier licenses to set up SIP Link.
Customers in all other supported countries will need to purchase Voice Standard or Voice Premier licenses to set up SIP Link.

Resources

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - February 3, 2023

Friday, February 3, 2023

3 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.

In-line replies for email notifications in Google Classroom

We’re making Classroom email notifications more functional and easier to use. With in-line replies for comments, teachers and students will be able to easily stay up to date and respond to communication within Classroom. Public and private comment notifications will have the freshest information, like the latest comment threads, and you can now easily respond to comments within the email itself. This will enable teachers to quickly reply to their students without having to switch back and forth between their email and Classroom. | Rollout to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains began January 30, 2023 and is expected to be completed by February 20, 2023. | Learn more.

Expanding color options in Google Slides, Docs, Sheets and Drawings

In Google Slides, Docs, Sheets and Drawings, you can now select colors in the color palette tool by using RGBA values. In addition, you can also customize colors by using an eyedropper tool and selecting any color on your screen within the color palette. | Rolling out to Rapid Release domains now; launch to Scheduled Release domains planned for February 15, 2023. | Learn more.

More ways to work with BigQuery data in Google Sheets

We’re expanding your ability to access, analyze, visualize, and share billions of rows of BigQuery data from Google Sheets:

Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts only. Not available to legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.

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.

Google Sheets adds powerful new functions for advanced analysis

We announced 11 additional functions that will introduce new concepts, provide you with more efficient functions, and help with more advanced analysis | Learn more.

Explore Looker data using Connected Sheets

We added the ability to interactively explore modeled data from Looker, Google Cloud’s modern business intelligence platform, using Connected Sheets. | Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as users with personal Google Accounts only. | Learn more.

Completed rollouts

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

Rapid Release Domains:

Scheduled Release Domains:

Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:

[Weekly Recap] Display space names when granting access to files

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

Explore Looker data using Connected Sheets

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

What’s changingWe’re adding the ability to interactively explore modeled data from Looker, Google Cloud’s modern business intelligence platform, using Connected Sheets. This brings connectivity between the familiar interface of Google Sheets and the 50+ data sources available within Looker’s open ecosystem, including BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Snowflake, and Redshift.
From a single source of truth, you can analyze data using pivot tables, charts, formulas, and other integrated data sources. Additionally, with this live connection, access is secured and your data will stay up to date.

Getting started

Admins:

In order for users to take advantage of this feature, make sure Connected Sheets for Looker is enabled in Looker's Admin menu.
Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Connected Sheets.

End users:

If enabled by your admin, follow these steps to explore Looker data using Connected Sheets:

In a Google Sheet navigate to “Data” > “Data connectors” > “Connect to Looker” > enter in the URL of a Looker instance, for example: https://example.looker.com. You will then need to authorize Sheets to access your Looker data. After you connect to an Explore, you can see the available data and continue your analysis in Google Sheets.
Visit the Help Center to learn more about Connected Sheets for Looker.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 1, 2023

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and Nonprofits
Not available legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Google Sheets adds powerful new functions for advanced analysis

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

What’s changingLast year, we launched Named functions, along with several powerful functions in Google Sheets, including LAMBDA and XLOOKUP.
Today, we’re excited to announce 11 additional functions that will introduce new concepts, provide you with more efficient functions, and help with more advanced analysis:

EPOCHTODATE: Converts a Unix epoch timestamp in seconds, milliseconds, or microseconds to a datetime in UTC.
MARGINOFERROR: Calculates the amount of random sampling error given a range of values and a confidence level.
TOROW: Transforms an array or range of cells into a single row.
TOCOL: Transforms an array or range of cells into a single column.
CHOOSEROWS: Creates a new array from the selected rows in the existing range.
CHOOSECOLS: Creates a new array from the selected columns in the existing range.
WRAPROWS: Wraps the provided row or column of cells by rows after a specified number of elements to form a new array.
WRAPCOLS: Wraps the provided row or column of cells by columns after a specified number of elements to form a new array.
VSTACK: Appends ranges vertically and in sequence to return a larger array.
HSTACK: Appends ranges horizontally and in sequence to return a larger array.
LET: Assigns name with the value_expression results and returns the result of the formula_expression. The formula_expression can use the names defined in the scope of the LET function. The value_expressions are evaluated only once in the LET function even if the following value_expressions or the formula_expression use them multiple times.

Who’s impacted End users

Why you’d use it In addition to providing advanced statistical calculations like margin of error, these functions provide new functionality in the form of:

Powerful new ways to manipulate and work with arrays using TOROW, TOCOL, WRAPROWS, WRAPCOLS, CHOOSEROWS, CHOOSECOLS, VSTACK, and HSTACK.
Converting Unix EPOCH dates to readable formats without the need for manual calculations using EPOCHTODATE.
More efficient and simpler to read complex formulas that use LET to assign names to calculation results.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: In Google Sheets, all functions can be inserted using the function autocomplete after pressing the equal symbol, using the insert menu, or the function dropdown in the toolbar.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 1, 2023

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Google Workspace Updates Blog: Adding more flexibility to functions in Sheets

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - January 27, 2023

Friday, January 27, 2023

2 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.

Rollout update for the new Gmail user interface

Beginning today, the new Gmail user interface is rolling out for scheduled release domains, with anticipated completion by February 3, 2023. This will become the standard experience for Gmail, with no option to revert to the original UI. For more information, see our previous announcement.

Display space names when granting access to files

When sharing a Google Drive file to a space in Google Chat, you will now see the space name and associated image if you are a member of the space. If you are not a member of the space, but would still like to share a file to that space, the space name will show as “Private Space.”

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.

Check availability across multiple calendars when using appointment schedules on Google Calendar

We’ve introduced the ability to check and see a visual preview of multiple calendars when setting up your appointment schedules. Your booking page will show you as unavailable when you’re busy based on the calendars you choose. | Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits customers only. | Learn more.

Easily share access to presented content in Google Meet with all attendees

We’ve made two improvements which will make file sharing in Google Meet even easier. First, you can now share access to the content you’re presenting in a meeting with attendees, including everyone on the Calendar guest list, directly from Meet. Second, whenever you paste a link into the meeting chat, you’ll be prompted with the file access dialog — from here you can adjust access as needed and choose to attach the file to the calendar event. | Learn more.

Improved membership management for spaces

We’ve introduced a new fullscreen experience for managing members in a space that replaces the current "View members" and “Add people and apps” options in Google Chat. | Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Frontline customers only. | Learn more.

Completed rollouts

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

Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:

New in-meeting reactions for Google Meet (Web)
New beta to move folders from My Drive to shared drives now available (Update to user roles)
New built-in interoperability between Google Meet and Zoom (Admin setting & Meet interop on Zoom Rooms)
[Weekly Recap] Set and share personal pronouns across Google Workspace products
For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).

Improved membership management for spaces

Thursday, January 26, 2023

What’s changingWe’re introducing a new fullscreen experience for managing members in a space that replaces the current "View members" and “Add people and apps” options in Google Chat.

Upon clicking the new “Manage members” option, you can view a list of those added and invited to the space, in addition to space settings. From there you can add or remove members and update settings. In addition, you can manage Chat apps or integrations by using a newly added “Apps & integrations” option in the space menu.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

This simplification makes the process of viewing and organizing space membership much easier.

Additional details

This update is currently available on web only and will become available on mobile later this quarter.

Getting started

To manage members of a space, click the space header and then select “Manage Members” to view, add or remove members from the member list.
You can change the access setting of a space by selecting the “Space settings” option below “Manage Members”
Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding or removing people from a space or group and getting started with apps in Google Chat.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Frontline customers
Not available to Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Easily share access to presented content in Google Meet with all attendees

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

What’s changingWe’ve made two improvements which will make file sharing in Google Meet even easier:First, you can now share access to the content you’re presenting in a meeting with attendees, including everyone on the Calendar guest list, directly from Meet. While presenting, you can share the file from the floating action menu or via the suggestion in the Meet Chat.

Meeting attendees will see a notification when you’ve shared a file, and a link to the file will be automatically shared in the meeting chat.

Second, whenever you paste a link into the meeting chat, you’ll be prompted with the file access dialog — from here you can adjust access as needed and choose to attach the file to the calendar event.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why it’s important

By allowing sharing directly from Meet, you can seamlessly share presented content without having to switch into another window to grant access, which can be disruptive. This makes it easier for meeting attendees to follow along with your presentation, find and reference your material later on, and continue working on action items from the meeting.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Google Workspace Admin Help: Present during a video meeting

Check availability across multiple calendars when using appointment schedules on Google Calendar

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

What’s changingThe appointment scheduling tool is a feature that allows people to share their availability via a booking page that can be used by colleagues, external stakeholders, clients, and partners to schedule a meeting. With the current appointment scheduling experience, you are unable to review multiple calendars for conflicts when exposing appointment times to others.
As a result, we’re introducing the ability to check and see a visual preview of multiple calendars when setting up your appointment schedules. Your booking page will show you as unavailable when you’re busy based on the calendars you choose.

Who’s impacted End users

Why you’d use it This update will prevent scheduling conflicts by checking your availability across multiple calendars, enabling others to set up meeting times that best fit your schedule.

Additional details In addition to your primary calendar, you can check availability from all of your calendars added to Google Calendar on the web, such as calendars you own, calendars you have edit and manage rights to, and subscribed calendars.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn how to set up an appointment schedule and how to customize your appointment availability.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits customers
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Frontline, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

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

Include captions with a Google Meet video recording

Expanding the power of Google Sheets with localized formatting and improved CSV imports

Expanding SIP Link for Google Voice to Latin America

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - February 3, 2023

Explore Looker data using Connected Sheets

Google Sheets adds powerful new functions for advanced analysis

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - January 27, 2023

Improved membership management for spaces

Easily share access to presented content in Google Meet with all attendees

Check availability across multiple calendars when using appointment schedules on Google Calendar

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