Google Workspace Updates: 2018

Compare G Suite adoption and use between organizational units

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

View data by OU through the Reports API

When you use the Reports API, outputs will include OU information. You can use this to report on and analyze by OU. Find out more about how to use the Reports API.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Account activity reports
Get started with the Reports API

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We’re adding the ability to view and filter G Suite reports by organizational unit (OU) in the Admin console and the Reports API. This information can make it easier to build more insightful reports and more complete audits.

You could use this to:

Compare G Suite usage across OUs - You can drill down to see metrics such as drive storage, active users, and more at an OU level, helping you to measure and track G Suite usage in different areas of your organization.
Improve your investigation efficiency - You can view Audit logs for a particular unit within the company, which can help filter out unrelated events and focus your investigation efforts.

View data by OU in the Admin console

To view a report or audit for a specific OU in the Admin console, filter using the left-hand menu. See our Help Center to learn more about account activity logs.

Share files more easily with non-Google accounts in Drive Beta

Monday, December 17, 2018

File owners and admins are in full control of sharing

File owners can view all the detailed activity on their files and see where it originated, and revoke access from the Drive sharing dialog at any time. Admins can manage all external sharing and audit usage. For more information on sharing settings, check out this Help Center article.

Apply to join Pincode Sharing in Drive Beta

Pincode Sharing in Drive is launching initially in beta.

Launch Details
Editions:
Beta is available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set Drive users' sharing permission

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Update (May 20, 2019): This beta is now closed and will no longer be accepting new applicants.

Soon, people without Google accounts will be able to view, comment, suggest edits to, and directly edit Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files.

Organizations often work on documents with external vendors, partners, contractors, and customers. When these partners don't have Google accounts, it is a significant barrier for collaboration.

We are introducing a beta for an easy pincode identity verification process that will enable G Suite users to invite non-G Suite users to collaborate on files as visitors, using PINs (Personal Identification Numbers). Below is an example of how it works:

Admin console Uninstall functionality for apps will be removed on January 15, 2019

Thursday, December 13, 2018

To simplify how you can control app access for your users, we’re removing the “Uninstall” feature from the G Suite Admin console. Uninstall was a legacy way to remove a G Suite apps or additional Google service for everyone in your organization, but it’s been replaced by settings to turn apps on or off for users. The uninstall feature will be removed on January 15, 2019. There will be no end user visible impact to the change.

No end user impact to changes

This change will not affect your users’ access to individual apps in any way. Users will continue to have access to the apps they can access today:

If an app was OFF for users before it was uninstalled, it will now reappear in the list of Google services in the admin console set to OFF. Users will still not have access to it.
If an app was ON for some users before it was uninstalled, it will continue to be set ON for those users in the Admin console. It will just reappear in the list of Google services with the state it was in before it was uninstalled.

Manage access to apps in the Admin console by turning them on or off

You can control which users can access particular Google apps and additional services by turning them on or off in the Admin console. When users sign in to their account, they see only services that are turned on for them. You can turn apps on or off by Organizational Unit, and we recently added the ability to turn apps on for specific Google Groups.

See our Help Center to find out more about how to control who can access Google services.

More Information
Help Center: Control who can access Google services

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Improving the security center with custom dashboard charts and new email logs

Thursday, December 13, 2018

We’re adding new features to the G Suite security center. The security center is a set of tools that brings together security analytics, actionable insights and best practice recommendations from Google to empower you to protect your organization, data and users.

We’re making a range of performance and functionality improvements to the security center, but here are the key changes to look out for:

Create more informative and focused dashboards with custom charts

You can now save custom charts to the security dashboard. This can help you customize the dashboard and ensure that it focuses on what is most interesting to you and your organization. You can create a custom chart based on any log event query you make in the investigation tool. Use our Help Center to learn more about the security dashboard or how to create a custom charts for the dashboard.

You can save custom charts to ensure your security dashboard is focused on what you care about

More insights into Gmail incidents with post-delivery event logs

We’re adding new email log events that show information around what happens to emails after they are sent or received. This helps to remove the guesswork when dealing with Gmail incidents and enables you to better understand what is happening in your organization.

New events include: Open, Mark Unread, Reply, Autoforward, Move to Inbox, Move to Trash, Move out of Trash, Link Click, Attachment Download, and Attachment Save to Drive. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to use email event logs.

See details of post-delivery events for Gmail messages

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

Editions:
The G Suite Security Center is available to G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education editions only

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: About the security center
Help Center: Security dashboard
Help Center: Create a custom chart based on an investigation
Help Center: About email search log

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Better information on spam messages in Email Log Search

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

See the Help Center to learn how you, as an admin, can download Email Log Search results to a CSV file or open them in Google Sheets for easy viewing.

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 and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Interpret Email Log Search results

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As a G Suite admin, you can now get more detailed and helpful information in the Admin console about emails that have been marked as spam. The Email Search Log tool will now show the reason an email was flagged as spam, as well as other warnings users may see about suspicious emails.

This new information will help you understand the steps that our spam classification system takes to protect end-users and will assist in managing email traffic. To access the tool, from the Admin console Home page, go to Reports > Audit > Email log search. See our Help Center to get more details on the Email Log Search tool.

Digging deeper into spam

When using the Email Log Search to locate spam, you’ll now receive detailed data about the spam and annotations about the messages, including:

The reason an email was or was not marked as spam
When anomaly banners are triggered by suspicious attachments or a phishing attack

More ways to collaborate using Box for G Suite

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

We’re making Box for G Suite available for all G Suite customers, bringing Google's rich content creation and editing experiences directly into Box so that companies can stay productive and accelerate their work.

Admins can enable the integration from within the Box Admin Console.

Check out this blog post and the Box Community for more information.

Launch Details

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout to all Box users through mid-January 2019

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Box Community
G Suite blog post

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Google Fusion Tables to be shut down on December 3, 2019

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Google Fusion Tables was launched almost nine years ago as a research project in Google Labs, later evolving into an experimental product. For a long time, it was one of the few free tools for easily visualizing large datasets, especially on a map. Since then, Google has developed several alternatives, providing deeper experiences in more specialized domains.

In order to continue focusing our efforts in these areas, we will be retiring Fusion Tables. We plan to turn down Fusion Tables and the API on December 3, 2019. Embedded Fusion Tables visualizations—maps, charts, tables and cards—will also stop working that day. Maps using the Fusion Tables Layer in the Maps JavaScript API v3.37 will start to see errors in August 2019.

Here are some next steps to consider:

Learn about alternative Google tools
Several new Google tools have been developed over the years, and we encourage you to visit the Help Center to learn which ones fit your use case. Teams at Google have developed internal tools that can create powerful map visualizations. We are working to make some of these tools publicly available and will have more to share in the coming months—sign up to stay in touch.

Download your data
You can access your tables in Google Drive by filtering by “type:table”. Download data from a table by following these instructions, and then consider migrating that data to one of the tools listed in the Help Center. If you have a lot of Fusion Tables, we will make it easy to download all your data in one step via Google Takeout starting in March 2019.

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Control access to G Suite apps and services using groups

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

The following admin permissions are needed to access this feature:

View all groups
Manage G Suite apps and Additional Google services at the root OU

See our Help Center for more details on how to control access to G Suite and Google services with groups.

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: Control access to G Suite and Google services with groups

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We’re adding the ability to use Google Groups to control access to G Suite apps and additional Google services within your organization. This provides admins a simple and specific way to make sure the right users have access to the right apps.

This feature was developed based on specific customer requests for more flexible and granular access controls for apps and services. Currently access can only be configured at the Organizational Unit (OU) level. Groups will make it possible to control access by other organizational elements. Customers told us they wanted to be able to turn on apps or services for groups including:

Departments or job functions
Project teams
Specific seniority levels
Different geographic locations
Different companies within a wider organization

Use groups to ensure users have access to apps and services

Group controls are only additive--they can add access to users who don’t already have access to apps, but they can’t take away access from users that currently have access through a domain or OU level setting.

That means it’s best used to complement your current OU and organizational settings to make sure a specific group has access to an app.

Get started using Groups to turn on apps and services

To get started, go to the Admin Console > Apps > G Suite or Additional Google services. You can then:

Search for and select a group in the left hand panel
Select services individually (by hovering) or in bulk (using the check boxes)
Turn services on or off for the specific group

You can only select groups which were created by an admin for the organization--you can’t use user-created groups as part of this feature. You may see a notification, pictured below, which tells you about the new feature.

The following admin permissions are needed to access this feature:

View all groups
Manage G Suite apps and Additional Google services at the root OU

View company-owned desktop and mobile devices in one place

Monday, December 10, 2018

These devices will then appear in the company-owned devices list and show as company-owned when you click for more device details.

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

Editions:

Uploading Endpoint Verification devices available to all G Suite editions
Uploading Android devices available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions only

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add company-owned devices

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Update (Jan 9, 2019): This post previously incorrectly said that uploading Android devices was available to G Suite for Education domains. We updated the post to the accurate availability - G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions only.

With this launch, we’re making it possible for G Suite admins to view a more complete picture of the desktop and mobile devices used by employees in their organization.

Add and view device info in the Admin console

To see a list of the devices your organization owns, you simply need to upload a CSV file listing those devices and their serial numbers in the Admin console. Previously, you could only upload Android devices; you can now add Endpoint Verification devices (Mac, Windows, and Chrome) as well.

These devices will then appear in the company-owned devices list and show as company-owned when you click for more device details.

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

Editions:

Uploading Endpoint Verification devices available to all G Suite editions
Uploading Android devices available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions only

View Google Calendar attachments in Hangouts Meet

Monday, December 10, 2018

Clicking on the attachment will open the file in a new tab on the web. If you’re joining the meeting through the Meet mobile app, the attachment will open on the app best suited to that document (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, etc).

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add attachments to your events

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You can now view the attachments that were included in Google Calendar, directly from a Hangouts Meet meeting. Attachments are available on the web and the Meet mobile apps.

Better group management in the G Suite Admin console

Monday, December 10, 2018

We’re making it easier for G Suite admins to manage groups in their organization. When you open a group in the Admin console, you’ll see helpful cards that show snapshots of key information. When you click into any of the cards, you’ll see more details and have new options to manage the group. The cards and options include:

New settings card makes important group settings more accessible

Previously, group settings had to be managed through a separate workflow at groups.google.com. We’ve brought the 10 most used settings directly into the Admin console, so you can make key changes without disrupting your workflow. This allows you to quickly control:

Access settings, including who can view members, publish posts, contact group owners, and more.
Membership settings, including who can add, invite, and approve group members.
Who can join a group, including if users outside your organization can join.

If you need to change another setting not included here, you can still use the same groups.google.com settings interface that you use to change group settings today.

Control key group settings directly in the Admin console

New members card improves group member management

The members card provides a comprehensive way to manage group members, including better ways to find, add, and manage group members quickly and easily. You can:

Bulk upload members through a CSV file
Quickly add new members individually
Remove one or multiple members
Filter the member list by member role
Search by name or email
Change user role individually
Change user roles in bulk
Export members to a CSV file

Changing user roles in bulk is one of the new management features

See our Help Center for more details on how to manage groups in the Admin console.

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: Manage groups in G Suite

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Save time with Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Once you’ve selected one, you can send it immediately or edit your response starting with the Smart Reply text. Please note, this feature is currently only available in English.

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: Reply to a message

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We’re bringing Smart Reply to Hangouts Chat so you can respond to teammates quickly and move projects forward more efficiently, in less time. This launch is part of our ongoing effort to bring intelligent, assistive writing tools to all of G Suite.

Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat uses sophisticated machine learning intelligence, similar to that behind Smart Reply in Gmail. Our technology recognizes which messages most likely need responses, and proposes up to 3 different replies.

Create and manage web apps through the Admin console

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

You can now create, edit, and manage web apps for your organization directly through the G Suite Admin console. This simple interface will help your organization create and use web apps more quickly and effectively.

Web apps turn web pages into apps for better mobile user experiences

Web apps turn a web page into an app on your user’s phones. This can make the web page easier to find and simpler to use on mobile devices. The web app will look like a native app, but when a user clicks on a it Chrome browser opens the specified URL in one of three different display options (see image below). You can distribute web apps the same way you can native apps. This includes adding them to collections in a managed Google Play store.

G Suite customers often use web apps to make sure their users can access key resources on their mobile devices that have websites but don’t have dedicated apps. Examples include employee information portals, intranets, expense submission forms, and more.

Simple web app management in the Admin console

Find the web apps section of the Admin console at Admin Console > Device management > App Management > Manage apps for Android devices > Manage Whitelisted Apps > Add > Web apps.

From there you can:

Create a new web app - Choose the app name, URL, icon, and other details for your web app.
Distribute a web app - Whitelist an app for some or all of your users.
Edit an existing web app - Delete or make changes to a previously created web app.

See our Help Center for more details on how to create web apps for Android devices.

Note that this is only available to customers with advanced mobile device management enabled.

Web apps let you pin websites as if they were apps on a phone

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: Create web apps for Android devices

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See a filterable, searchable list of the latest G Suite launches

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

We’ve just updated the “What’s new in G Suite?” Help Center article to include recent launches. The article has a list of all the G Suite launches from the past six months. You can filter by product or search by keyword to find and learn about any launch.

Feedback? Let us know.

What's New in G Suite - November 2018

Monday, December 3, 2018

Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" launch recap (pdf) for a roundup of all G Suite launches from November 2018.

Archive and translated versions (coming soon for November issue)

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Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" launch recap (pdf) for a roundup of all G Suite launches from November 2018.

Two Admin console notification methods to be removed on December 31

Monday, December 3, 2018

On December 31, 2018 we will be removing two notification methods in the G Suite Admin console:

The bell icon in the Admin console web interface (see image below)
Push notifications from the Google Admin apps for Android and iOS

You’ll still be able to get all account related notifications via email. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to set up and manage email alerts for G Suite admins.

Bell icon notifications are in the top-right of the web user interface

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Host Hangouts Meet meetings with up to 100 participants

Thursday, November 29, 2018

This new extended participant limit supports people joining from any mixture of video and dial-in entry points so you can flexibly bring together even more people from all over the world. It is now fully rolled out across all domains.

If you need to host an even larger meeting, you can enable live streaming, allowing up to 100,000 viewers to watch at once.

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

Editions:

100-person meetings available to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education editions only
50-person meetings available to G Suite Business and G Suite for Education editions only

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Get Started with Meet
Help Center: Hangouts Meet Benefits and features
G Suite Learning Center: How many people can join a video meeting?

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Meeting with teammates, clients, or customers around the globe is critical to getting your job done. For those times when you need to meet with a larger group, Hangouts Meet now allows G Suite Enterprise users to organize meetings with up to 100 participants and G Suite Business users to host up to 50 participants. This participant count includes people from both inside and outside of your organization.

100-person meetings available to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education editions only
50-person meetings available to G Suite Business and G Suite for Education editions only

Elevate your quizzing and grading experience with two G Suite for Education beta programs

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Better grading in Classroom
Earlier this year, we introduced new grading tools and a comment bank for richer, better feedback. Today, we’re continuing to strengthen the grading process in Classroom with a beta for a new Gradebook to better enable teachers to keep their assignments and grades in one place, and keep this important task more organized.

Express interest in the betas
Beta programs for locked mode and Gradebook are now available to G Suite for Education customers. All teachers and G Suite for Education admins can express interest by completing this form. Check out the full post on the Google for Education blog and the Help Center for more details.

Launch Details

Editions:
Available to G Suite for Education editions only

Action:
Admins and teachers can express interest by completing this form

More Information
Help Center
Google for Education blog post

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We’re offering two new beta programs for G Suite for Education customers to improve their quizzing and grading experience.

Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms
This summer, we announced locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms as a new way to keep students focused during assessments. Available only on managed Chromebooks running operating system 68 or higher, locked mode prevents students from navigating away from the Quiz in their Chrome browser until they submit their answers. Once enabled, teachers can enable locked mode with a simple checkbox, giving them full control over assessments.

Ten third-party applications added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML apps catalog

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

With Single-Sign-On (SSO), users can access all of their enterprise cloud applications—including the Admin console for admins—after signing in just one time. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and there are many applications with pre-integrated SSO support in our third-party apps catalog already.

We’re now adding SAML integration for ten additional applications:

Automox
Boomi
GoodData
LinkedIn Learning
LiquidFiles
Proxyclick
Sigma Computing
TextExpander
VersionOne
Zimbra

You can find our full list of pre-integrated applications, as well as instructions for installing them, in the Help Center.

Note that apart from the pre-integrated SAML applications, G Suite also supports installing “Custom SAML Applications,” which means that admins can install any third-party application that supports SAML. The advantage of a pre-integrated app is that the installation is much easier. You can learn more about installing Custom SAML Applications in this Help Center article.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Using SAML to set up federated SSO

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Google Classroom for all G Suite customers

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

What to expect from Classroom

Classroom is designed for schools and is not an enterprise learning management system, but it is now available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. It remains a core service for G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers. Note that users in G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits domains will not be able to join classes created by users in G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise domains.

Have an idea for Classroom? We encourage you to submit your feedback through the “Send Feedback” button in the application. For more information, check out the Help Center and Help Forum.

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

Editions:
Available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise editions; available as a core service to G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits editions

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

Impact:
All end users

More Information
Help Center: About Classroom
Help Forum: Classroom

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Google Classroom makes it easy for teachers to create classes, distribute assignments, give quizzes, and communicate with students. Today, we’re expanding the walls of Classroom and making the platform available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. Admins can decide whether to opt in or out of new services. Classroom is on by default, unless you’ve chosen to manually opt in to new services.

Just as Classroom helps teachers and students save time, improve organization, and enhance communication, it can also help academies, tutoring centers, and for-profit institutions that manage groups of learners in an instructor-led setting. Explore the possibilities of Classroom for your organization, today.

Learn more about Google Groups with Contacts hovercards

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

When you mouse over the name of a group in Gmail, you’ll now be able to see essential information, like group members, as well as take some actions, such as:

Schedule an event with the group
Email the group
See more members

You can also select “More info,” which will take you to the Groups membership details page on groups.google.com. The group members will only appear on the hovercard if the user has permission to view them. This functionality will be added to other G Suite apps in the future.

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

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Contacts hovercards provide lots of useful information about the people within your organization. We’ve heard from you that you’d like better visibility into Google Groups across G Suite, so we’re adding more information to these hovercards when the contact itself is a group.

When you mouse over the name of a group in Gmail, you’ll now be able to see essential information, like group members, as well as take some actions, such as:

Schedule an event with the group
Email the group
See more members

Secure LDAP now generally available to simplify the management of traditional applications

Monday, November 26, 2018

We’re making secure LDAP generally available. See our post on the Google Cloud Blog for the full announcement, or read a summary of what this means for G Suite organizations below.

Secure LDAP lets you manage access to traditional LDAP-based apps and IT infrastructure using the G Suite identity and access management (IAM) platform. This means organizations can use a single user directory to manage access to both SaaS apps and traditional LDAP-based apps and IT infrastructure, and users can use the same login credentials for more apps and services. The benefits to your organization can include:

Simpler administration: Manage applications and users in one place, decreasing complexity and cost for IT teams.
Improved security: A single place to set up identity and access policies.
Minimized legacy infrastructure: Reduce your dependency on legacy identity infrastructure such as Microsoft Active Directory.

Using secure LDAP doesn’t change end user workflows—applications and IT infrastructure that use LDAP can be simply reconfigured to use the secure LDAP service.

Works with a wide range of apps and IT infrastructure

Virtually any app that supports LDAP over SSL can work with secure LDAP, whether it’s hosted on-premises or in the cloud. We’re actively working with many companies to validate their apps for this use case, including Aruba Networks (HPE), Atlassian, itopia, JAMF, Jenkins (Cloudbees), OpenVPN, Papercut, pfSense (Netgate), Puppet, Softerra, Sophos, Splunk, and Synology.

For more information, see our Cloud Blog post on the announcement. You can also check out our Help Center for more details on how to get started with the secure LDAP service.

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

Editions:
Available to G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, G Suite for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium editions only

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: About the Secure LDAP service
Google Cloud Blog: Cloud Identity now provides access to traditional apps with secure LDAP

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G Suite data migration and sync tools ending support for Windows XP and Server 2003

Monday, November 26, 2018

On December 31, 2018, we will discontinue support for Windows XP and Server 2003 in the following Windows-based G Suite data migration and sync tools:

The Windows XP and Server 2003 platforms are no longer supported by Microsoft. If already installed, the G Suite tools will continue to function on these platforms, but will not be actively tested and maintained, and will not receive security updates. If you are still using one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer version of Windows.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on December 31, 2018

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Google Calendar SMS notifications to be removed January 7, 2019

Monday, November 19, 2018

Starting on January 7, 2019, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be available. Since Calendar offers in-app notifications, you can still get notified, regardless of your device or connection.

If you had previously been receiving Calendar notifications via SMS, they’ll be replaced with in-app and email notifications. You’ll see these notifications:

As event notifications in a web browser that has Calendar open or a mobile device if you have the Google Calendar app for Android or iOS.
In an email if you had set up SMS notifications for new events, changed events, canceled events, or event responses.

We’ll also be making some changes to the Calendar API to support this change. Check out the Google Developers’ page to learn more.

Learn more about different Calendar event & notification settings in the Help Center.

More Information
Help Center: Change or turn off Calendar notifications

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Changes to the Google sign-in interface coming soon

Thursday, November 15, 2018

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

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Starting November 27th, 2018, we’ll make some small changes to the appearance of the Google sign-in page. These follow changes made earlier this year, which updated the sign-in page to match the Material Design principles used in other Google products.

Specifically, you might notice outlines around some entry fields, and changes to the spacing and styling of other text on both the web and mobile screens. The changes will start to take effect on November 27th and may take up to two weeks to reach all users.

See the new sign-in UI

Sign-in page that will start rolling out on November 27, 2018

Sign-in page prior to November 27, 2018

Advanced password controls for increased security

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Control when password length and strength requirements go into effect.

You can choose to enforce password length and strength requirements either the next time a user changes their password or the next time they log in. The default is to start enforcement the next time a user changes their password. To change it, check the box next to “Start password policy enforcement at next sign in.”

Prompt users to change their passwords after a certain number of days.

If you’re unsure about whether or not you need to do this, we recommend you leave this setting as “Never.”

Prevent users from reusing old passwords.

To prevent password reuse, we recommend you leave the box for “Allow password reuse” unchecked. This is the default.

Each of these settings can be found in the Admin console under Security > Password management. As part of the launch we are also moving the password length (minimum and maximum) settings from the Basic Settings card to this new Password management card. For more information, visit the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Manage your users' password settings

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When it comes to protecting online accounts, a strong password is the first line of defense. As such, organizations have various stipulations for their users’ passwords. G Suite admins can already specify minimum and maximum length limits for passwords for their users. With this launch, we’re making it possible to enforce additional rigorous password requirements for increased security and to meet their compliance needs.

Going forward, an admin can do the following:

Require that users set a strong password.

Admins can already see which passwords in their domain are weak; enabling this setting will allow admins to force users with weak passwords to change them. Direct your users to this Help Center article for tips on creating a strong password. Note that this setting is OFF by default.

Prompt users to change their passwords after a certain number of days.

If you’re unsure about whether or not you need to do this, we recommend you leave this setting as “Never.”

Prevent users from reusing old passwords.

To prevent password reuse, we recommend you leave the box for “Allow password reuse” unchecked. This is the default.

Now your Activity Dashboard is one click away in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Clicking on the icon opens the dashboard, where you can analyze time statistics and adjust privacy and document settings. This gives you instant access to the Activity dashboard information you’re seeking. Hovering over the icon enables you to view the information others can see about you in the Activity dashboard. To learn more about seeing the view history of your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files, consult the Help Center.

Launch Details

Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in 2 weeks

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: See the view history of your Google Docs, Sheets & Slides

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We’ve made it easier for you to open the Activity dashboard directly from Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings. You’ll now see the Activity dashboard icon (a jagged arrow pointing upward) next to the comments button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Organize and create apps for your domain directly from the Admin console

Monday, November 12, 2018

Create private apps quickly and easily in the Admin console

We know that creating a private app in the Google Play Console can be time-consuming and often requires unnecessary steps. To streamline that process, we’re now making it possible to publish a private Android app directly from the Admin console.

You no longer need to create a Play Console account, provide a credit card, or fill in irrelevant fields; simply upload the APK and give the app a title (see full instructions here). The app will then appear in the managed Play store within minutes—as opposed to the hours previously required.

Note that this feature is also only available to customers with advanced mobile device management enabled.

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 and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Organize Android apps into collections
Help Center: Manage Google Play private apps

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With this launch, we’re making it easier for you to create—and for your users to find—the Android apps they need at work.

Group and order apps in the managed Google Play store

To help your users find the apps they need, you can now group whitelisted Android apps into “collections” that users will see in the managed Google Play store. For example, you can create a collection for frequently used apps or one for apps related to expenses. You can then change the order in which those collections appear, as well as the order of apps within those collections.

You can do all of this without leaving the Admin console; visit the Help Center for detailed instructions. Note that this feature is only available to customers with advanced mobile device management enabled.

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 and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Organize Android apps into collections
Help Center: Manage Google Play private apps

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Invite people to an ongoing Hangouts Meet meeting

Friday, November 9, 2018

Clicking on this option will open a dialog box to send them an email invite to join as a full participant or call them into the meeting by phone.

To invite someone into your meeting, simply input their email address or lookup by name from the company directory.The invited participant will receive an email with instructions to join your meeting.

Enter the person's name, email address, or phone number

As always, inviting someone using their phone number will immediately call the phone number to to add them to the meeting. They will join as an audio only participant and will not see any video or the screenshare.

For more information on inviting people to Meet meetings, check out the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Invite people

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We’re adding a new way to invite people to an ongoing meeting directly within Hangouts Meet. When you’re in a Meet meeting, you’ll now see an option to “Add people” at the top of the participant list.

Add people directly from the call

Enter the person's name, email address, or phone number

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Last year, 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.

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

Compare G Suite adoption and use between organizational units

Share files more easily with non-Google accounts in Drive Beta

Admin console Uninstall functionality for apps will be removed on January 15, 2019

Improving the security center with custom dashboard charts and new email logs

Better information on spam messages in Email Log Search

More ways to collaborate using Box for G Suite

Google Fusion Tables to be shut down on December 3, 2019

Control access to G Suite apps and services using groups

View company-owned desktop and mobile devices in one place

View Google Calendar attachments in Hangouts Meet

Better group management in the G Suite Admin console

Save time with Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat

Create and manage web apps through the Admin console

See a filterable, searchable list of the latest G Suite launches

What's New in G Suite - November 2018

Two Admin console notification methods to be removed on December 31

Host Hangouts Meet meetings with up to 100 participants

Elevate your quizzing and grading experience with two G Suite for Education beta programs

Ten third-party applications added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML apps catalog

Google Classroom for all G Suite customers

Learn more about Google Groups with Contacts hovercards

Secure LDAP now generally available to simplify the management of traditional applications

G Suite data migration and sync tools ending support for Windows XP and Server 2003

Google Calendar SMS notifications to be removed January 7, 2019

Changes to the Google sign-in interface coming soon

Advanced password controls for increased security

Now your Activity Dashboard is one click away in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings

Organize and create apps for your domain directly from the Admin console

Invite people to an ongoing Hangouts Meet meeting

Check out the most recent G Suite launches

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Localized Google Workspace Updates

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Learn about more Google Workspace launches