Google Workspace Updates: November 2017

Control who can move your domain’s content out of Team Drives

Thursday, November 30, 2017

You can find this setting in the Admin console under Apps > G Suite > Settings for Drive and Docs > Sharing settings.

By default, this setting is set to “Anyone,” which matches the Google Drive behavior that was previously in place with Team Drives. Additionally, these permissions are determined at the organizational unit (OU) level. This means that the setting will take effect based on the owner of the file and the setting of that owner’s OU.

This new setting will not be available in the Admin console if the “Sharing outside of [domain name]” selection is set to “off.”

Please note: this setting does not prevent users from transferring ownership by adding collaborators or using the sharing dialog. It only controls ownership transfer that happens as a result of moving content out of a shared Team Drive.

For more information on sharing settings for Team Drives, check out the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Team Drives is available on G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business, or G Suite for Education editions.

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Manage your Team Drive users and activity

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Team Drives allow you to share files with people inside and outside of your domain. While you may want people outside of your domain, such as clients and partners, to add and contribute to your domain’s Team Drives, it’s important that you have control over who can move files out as well.

Today, we are introducing a new sharing setting in the Admin console that allows you, as a G Suite admin, to control who can remove content from your domain’s Team Drives and prevents your data from leaving your organization. This setting applies to both moving content from a Team Drive in your domain to a Team Drive or My Drive in an external domain as well as moving content from an a My Drive of a user in your domain to a Team Drive in an external domain.

There are three options to chose from within this setting: “Anyone,” “No one,” or “Only users in this domain.”

Easily add a site-wide footer in the new Google Sites

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

To add a footer, simply scroll to the bottom of your page and click “Add Footer.” This same footer will then appear across all of the pages on your site. To hide the footer on a single page, click the eye icon in the bottom left corner of the text box. If you then want to create a custom footer for that page only, you can create a new section (not using the “Add Footer” functionality) at the bottom of the page.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add text, images, & other content

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Many websites, especially those created for business purposes, require a consistent footer across all of their pages. These footers often house crucial information, like an organization’s contact information, privacy policy, and more. With this launch, we’re making it easy to create and manage these site-wide footers in a single place in the new Google Sites.

Committed to storage APIs, retiring Realtime API

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

(Cross-posted from the G Suite Developers Blog)

Posted by Paul McReynolds, Product Manager, G Suite Developer Platform

We launched Google Realtime API in 2013 to help developers build collaborative apps using familiar JSON-based data models, while leaving the complexities of real-time synchronization to the API. Since then, we've developed other fast, flexible cloud-based storage solutions like Google Cloud SQL and Google Cloud Firestore. As a result, we’ve decided to deprecate Realtime API in favor of these new, powerful solutions.

We’re investing heavily in Google Cloud Platform, as well as Firebase—our mobile development platform—to help developers build scalable, performant applications. While these solutions aren't a direct analog to the Drive Realtime API, we're confident they can meet most of your needs:

Existing Realtime API client applications will continue to work normally until December 11, 2018, but we are no longer accepting new clients of the API. After the API is decommissioned, to facilitate migration, we will continue to provide a mechanism for applications to access document contents as JSON.

More specific deprecation timelines
We know developers and partners have come to rely on Realtime API and that migration may be a significant effort. We hope that the deprecation timelines summarized below allow for a smooth transition.

November 28, 2017: Realtime API is no longer available for new projects.*
December 11, 2018: Realtime API documents become read-only, and attempts to modify document contents using the API fail.
January 15, 2019: Realtime API is shut down, but a JSON export API remains available.

*Projects which accessed the Realtime API prior to November 28, 2017, will continue to function as before. All other projects, including new projects, will be blocked from accessing the Realtime API.

Migration tips
Applications using the Realtime API will need to migrate to another data store. Our migration guide provides instructions on how to export Realtime document data and also how that data can be imported into Google Cloud Firestore. After Realtime API is shut down, we will continue to provide a means for exporting Realtime document contents as JSON.

Additional information and support
You can read more about the deprecation in our documentation. If you have questions that aren’t answered there, see the support page for how to get help.

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Easily copy Hangouts Meet conference information across your Google Calendar events

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

To simplify this process, we are making it easy to copy and paste Hangouts Meet conferences across events.

To change an event’s conference details:

Open the event in edit mode
Click “VIEW DETAILS”
Click the pencil icon to edit
Paste the code (or full URL) of another Hangouts Meet conference

Note that this experience is only available in the new Calendar for web.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming on December 12th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

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There are many reasons you might want to schedule multiple Calendar events with the same Hangouts Meet conference details. For example:

Setting up separate events for an interview to preserve candidate and interviewer privacy.
Creating separate events—one to book a room, another to invite speakers, and a third for other guests.
Running several back-to-back meetings and you’d rather not have to leave and join video conferences every half hour.

In all of these scenarios you want to be sure all participants join the same conference even if they are on different Calendar events.

To simplify this process, we are making it easy to copy and paste Hangouts Meet conferences across events.

To change an event’s conference details:

Open the event in edit mode
Click “VIEW DETAILS”
Click the pencil icon to edit
Paste the code (or full URL) of another Hangouts Meet conference

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

In June, we introduced a new resource for admins: What’s new in G Suite? Don’t forget to visit the page regularly for a list of the most recent launches across G Suite.

Feedback? Let us know.

Create and edit objects in jams on your mobile phone

Thursday, November 9, 2017

For a full list of new features and improvements from this month’s release, check out the What’s New in Jamboard page in the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, and Education* customers

*G Suite for Education customers will need to satisfy certain requirements in order to purchase Jamboard devices. See the Help Center FAQ for more information.

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center

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Building off of the recent improvements to the Jamboard app for your mobile phone, the latest Jamboard release allows you to do even more on the go with your phone. We’re also making it easier to move content between frames on your Jamboard device.

Create and edit objects in jams on your mobile phone
Creating and collaborating on jams just got even easier. You can now use the Jamboard app on your Android and iOS phones to:

Create jams
Move/scale/rotate objects
Move objects to adjacent frames
Delete and duplicate objects
Undo/redo changes
Edit sticky notes
Zoom in and out, and pan
And more...

Move objects to other frames via the frame bar on your Jamboard device
In addition, for quicker editing within jams, you can now move objects to other frames easily via the frame bar at the top of your Jamboard device screen.

New languages now supported in Google Docs and Slides files, as well as Docs editors templates

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

No matter where you or your customers or colleagues are located, we want to make sure Google Docs and Slides work for you at work. That’s why we’re expanding the font catalogue in Docs and Slides to support 62 languages, including non-Latin scripts like Cyrillic and Devanagari (with more coming soon!).

To find these new fonts and others, simply click More fonts at the bottom of the Fonts menu. There you’ll also find suggested fonts, based on your document’s language.

In addition, we’re making Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms templates available in four new languages: European Spanish, Latin American Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. Stay tuned for additional languages, including Hindi, coming soon.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Change how paragraphs & fonts look

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Copy comments and suggestions in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

These comments and suggestions will then contain a note indicating that they were copied from the original document.

Check it out today, and collaborate—even on copies—with ease.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming on November 29th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Create, view, or save a file

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Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides make it easier than ever to collaborate on great content. Which is why it’s increasingly important not to lose a history of that collaboration when you duplicate a document, spreadsheet, or presentation. With that in mind, we’re making it possible to copy comments and suggestions any time you make a copy of a Docs, Sheets, or Slides file.

To copy your comments and suggestions, simply select “Make a copy” from the File menu and check the box for “Copy comments and suggestions” or “Copy comments.”

These comments and suggestions will then contain a note indicating that they were copied from the original document.

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

In June, we introduced a new resource for admins: What’s new in G Suite? Don’t forget to visit the page regularly for a list of the most recent launches across G Suite.

Feedback? Let us know.

Insert images more easily in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings

Monday, November 6, 2017

If you select “Upload from computer,” you’ll be taken to your computer’s file manager, which many users are familiar with. If you select “Search the web,” “Drive,” or “Photos,” you’ll be taken to a menu on the righthand side of your screen that is easier to navigate and more intuitive to use. You can also drag and drop images directly from this menu into your document. If you select “By URL,” you’ll be given the option to input the specific URL for an image.

These options should make it easier to enhance your documents, presentations, and drawings with images.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Insert or delete images or videos

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A picture is worth a thousand words... especially when you can add it to your document, presentation, or drawing quickly and easily. That’s why we’re making some improvements to the image insertion process in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings.

Going forward, when you select Insert > Image or click the Image button in Docs, Slides, or Drawings on the web, you’ll see the following options:

Upload from computer
Search the web
Drive
Photos
By URL

View and modify all of your Team Drives using the Google Drive API

Thursday, November 2, 2017

You’ve told us that you want more tools to see and manage all of the Team Drives in your domain in one location. Today, we’re making that easier by providing new methods in the Google Drive API that enable developers to build tools for Team Drive membership management, cybersecurity solutions, and more.

More information about the new methods in the API can be found here.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: G Suite APIs Support

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What's New in G Suite - October 2017

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" launch recap [pdf] for a roundup of all G Suite launches from October 2017.

Archive & Translated Versions (coming soon for October issue)

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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

Host Hangouts Meet meetings with up to 50 participants

Control who can move your domain’s content out of Team Drives

Easily add a site-wide footer in the new Google Sites

Committed to storage APIs, retiring Realtime API

Easily copy Hangouts Meet conference information across your Google Calendar events

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

Create and edit objects in jams on your mobile phone

New languages now supported in Google Docs and Slides files, as well as Docs editors templates

Copy comments and suggestions in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

Insert images more easily in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings

View and modify all of your Team Drives using the Google Drive API

What's New in G Suite - October 2017

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