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We recently announced a change to the ownership model of secondary calendars to improve data governance. As part of this, we emailed impacted customers to let them know that orphan secondary calendars would be deleted starting on April 27, 2026.

Since that announcement, we’ve received valuable feedback that to properly manage this new lifecycle, customers need better programmatic tools to handle secondary calendar data before it gets deleted.

To ensure you have the time and tools necessary to manage this transition smoothly, we are making two important updates:

  1. We are launching a new API endpoint by the end of June to transfer secondary calendars within your organization.
  2. We are postponing the secondary calendar lifecycle changes to October 5, 2026 for non-personal Workspace accounts.

Coming soon: new API endpoint to transfer secondary calendars

In the coming months, we’ll introduce a new endpoint in the Calendar API that will allow developers to programmatically transfer the ownership of secondary calendars. This endpoint will require the Calendar administrator privilege.

The API will mirror the existing capabilities in the Admin console—transferring secondary calendars within the same organization without requiring confirmation by the receiving user—and introduces the additional flexibility to transfer individual calendars.

The new API endpoint will be available for integration by June 2026. An announcement and technical documentation will be published when the API goes live.

Extended deadline for lifecycle changes

To give your teams ample time to adjust their workflows and integrate with the new API endpoint, we are officially pushing back the enforcement date for the secondary calendar lifecycle changes for non-personal Workspace accounts.

The new policy—where secondary calendars are permanently deleted upon the deletion of the owner's account—will now take effect on October 5, 2026, for non-personal Workspace accounts.

Until then, we will run a regular process for orphan calendars that auto-assigns ownership to a user who has “Make changes and manage sharing” access. This process will stop on October 5, 2026. Instead, make sure to ask the owner to transfer relevant secondary calendars to a colleague before they leave - or make sure an administrator executes the transfer using the Admin console or the new API endpoint.

Note that the changes to the secondary calendar lifecycle will still take effect on April 27, 2026, for users with personal Google accounts.

Additional details

Secondary calendars owned by an organization must be owned by a user within that same organization, and ownership transfers are restricted to users in the same domain. However, you can continue to share calendars with users outside your organization—including with high-level permissions such as "Make changes and manage sharing"—provided your organization policies allow it.

Example of a secondary calendar owned by the dwelling.com organization, with elsonl@dwelling.com as owner

Example of a personal secondary calendar (not owned by an organization), with amandahayes@gmail.com as owner 

Getting started

  • Admins: Stay tuned for more details on the new API endpoint when it launches.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. End users can already transfer secondary calendars to other users within their organization. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains
    • New API endpoint: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting in June (to be announced on Workspace Updates blog when available)
    • Secondary calendar lifecycle change: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on October 5, 2026
  • Users with personal Google accounts
    • Secondary calendar lifecycle change: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on Apr 27, 2026

Impact

  • All Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts are impacted by these changes 

Resources

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Beginning today, admins have access to an independent review of Google Workspace’s data regions, not only for their compliance needs but also for their peace of mind.


This external evaluation from Coalfire, a third-party assessment organization, gives Assured Controls customers the confidence that their data is stored and processed within a Google data center in the assigned region. Google Workspace admins can log on to their data regions reports and download an independent perspective on Google’s implementation of Workspace data residency controls to meet storage and processing requirements.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

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In September 2025, we launched ransomware detection and file restoration in beta to help organizations minimize the impact of malware attacks on personal computers. Today, we’re excited to share these two features are generally available with significant improvements in malware detection.

Compared to when the feature was in beta, we are now able to detect even more types of ransomware encryption and are able to do it faster. Our latest AI model is detecting 14x more infections, leading to even more comprehensive protection.

Thousands of users have tested file restoration, demonstrating that it’s scalable and reliable.

  • Ransomware detection: When users have Google Drive for desktop installed on their computers, file syncing will be paused when ransomware is detected. The user will see a notification appear on their computer. Admins will see an alert in the Admin console security center; notification emails will be delivered to both users and admins.
  • File restoration: Users are able to bulk restore their files to a previous version in Drive with ease, saving them time and money without paying a ransom. Users can select and restore multiple files prior to when ransomware infected their computer, making their files inaccessible.

Getting started

  • Admins:
    • Ransomware detection will be on by default for users in your organization. You can turn it on or off at the OU level by going to Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Malware and Ransomware. If ransomware is detected for your users, admins will receive an email and get an alert in the Alert center.
    • Drive file restoration will be on by default. You can turn it on or off at Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Drive file restoration.
    • Install the latest version of Drive for desktop on user computers (v.114 or later) to enable the detection alerts (syncing will still be paused on older versions).
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing ransomware detection and file restoration for your organization.

The Admin console setting for ransomware detection


The Admin console setting for Drive file restoration 


Email to admins when potential ransomware is detected


Admin alert in the Alert center with information on the potential ransomware detection



Alert detail on the ransomware detection


  • End users: The availability of this feature will depend on your admin’s settings. If turned on and ransomware is detected, you will see the alerts and access the interface below. Visit the Help Center to learn more about restoring files in bulk with Google Drive

End user alert in Drive for desktop when ransomware is detected


Interface to assist with file recovery

Rollout pace

Availability

  • File restoration
    • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 
  • Ransomware detection
    • Business: Business Standard and Plus
    • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus
    • Education: Education Standard and Plus
    • Other Editions: Frontline Standard and Plus

Resources

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Today, we're excited to announce the general availability of guest accounts in Google Workspace. Guest accounts empower organizations to securely collaborate with customers, partners, and vendors that are not on Google Workspace. More than secure, real-time messaging in Google Chat, guest accounts enable organizations to extend their security and data protection policies to these non-Workspace users. Whether it’s collaborating on a marketing brief in Google Docs or a presentation in Google Slides, non-Workspace users with guest accounts adhere to your organization’s security policies.

How it works

When an end user in your organization invites an external, non-Workspace user in Google Chat through a direct message (DM) or Chat Space, a guest account is provisioned for that external user within your Workspace domain with a unique account identifier. These guest accounts are also automatically placed in a dedicated "Workspace Guests" Organizational Unit (OU) in the Admin console, with default security policies designed for these external users.

When communicating with guest accounts in DMs or Chat Spaces, your organization’s end users will see a teal “external” label for guest accounts. This is similar to the yellow “external” label that we have utilized in Google Chat to indicate external Workspace users. Guests can be @mentioned across supported Workspace app surfaces, similar to any other user. This means that end users can invite guests via Chat and collaborate with them using Chat, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Meet.


Granular admin settings

Workspace admins have full visibility and control. The guest accounts capability is tied to your existing external chat settings. If you have external chatting enabled, end users in your organization can now start inviting non-Workspace users in Chat to collaborate with you.

    • Manage guest access settings: Manage who can invite guests to your organization.
    • Manage guest lifecycle: View and manage all provisioned guest accounts in the admin console and through APIs.
    • Policy enforcement: Guest accounts have a few default security settings that are not inherited from the Root OU. This helps organizations get started from a baseline security posture for guest accounts. View the defaults and apply your org specific policies to the "Workspace Guests" OU, such as 2-step verification or context-aware access.
Your organization retains full ownership of data created and shared within your Workspace domain when collaborating with users using guest accounts. Moreover, external users with guest accounts cannot create or own new files in Google Drive; they can only be invited to collaborate on existing files.


To learn more about the full set of capabilities for guest accounts and features available to host organization’s administrators to manage these guest accounts, take a look at the detailed documentation.

Important notes

  • Guest accounts are created only for non-Workspace external users. Functionality to collaborate with external Workspace users and consumer Google accounts remains unchanged and does not require guest account creation. API capability to create guests will be available in open beta by May 2026.
  • If you use trusted domains to only allow sharing only with certain organizations outside of your business, you can now start adding non-Workspace domains to your allowlisted domains to start collaborating securely with non-Workspace domains. Note that setting up trusted domains prevents your organisation from collaborating with consumer Google accounts. This includes collaboration with non-Workspace users who may have created consumer Google accounts using their work email address.
  • Guests are modelled as a type of user. In the Directory API, user.list will now include guests by default. The API now also includes a new field is_guest_user to identify guests. Guests will not be auto provisioned to existing 3P SAML apps that support automated user provisioning.

Getting started

  • Admins:
    • External chat settings: At launch, end users who can chat externally will be able to invite and collaborate with non-Workspace external users in Chat by default. You can control which users are allowed to chat externally using the existing external chat settings.
    • Guest invitation setting: You can restrict who can invite guest accounts in your organization using the guest invitation setting. This defaults to ON for everyone who can chat externally in your organization.

  • End users: End users who can collaborate externally and have been permitted by admins to invite end users will be able to invite and collaborate with non-Workspace external users in Chat using guest accounts.
  • Guests: Non-Workspace external users will receive an email invitation to their primary email address when invited by the host organization. Guests can sign up to start collaborating. Guests have limited feature capabilities available, similar to Workspace external users.

Rollout pace

  • Admin controls

Availability

  • Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus

Resources


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The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
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