Trust rules will replace the existing “Sharing options” in the Google Drive admin controls. Admins will be able to choose to allow, deny, or display warnings to end-users within specific organizational units (OUs) or groups when they attempt to:
Share Drive files with external users or external domains
Receive Drive files from external users or external domains
Share Drive files with other OUs or groups within the organization
Receive Drive files from other OUs or groups within the organization
Trust rules will help Admins to create more sophisticated and secure access policies which help ensure their data is shared with, and accessed by, desired parties. Some examples of how you could use Drive trust rules to better control collaboration include:
Block your internal audit team from sharing files outside of their team.
Warn your finance team when they share files with the sales team to help ensure that sharing is deliberate and thoughtful.
Allow your legal team to share with a specific group of external counsels, but not allow them to share with users outside of that group.
Prevent any users in your organization from receiving files from a specific external domain.
Getting started
Admins: Learn more and apply for the beta here. The beta will start rolling out in the next few months, but once enabled, trust rules can be scoped at the domain, OU, or groups level with coverage of both My Drive and shared drives. If you are accepted into the beta program, you will get more documentation on the feature.
End users: No end-user impact until their admin joins the beta and configures trust rule settings.
Rollout pace
The beta will start rolling out in the next few months, but eligible customers can now apply for the beta here. You’ll get more details via email when the beta is available to use.
Availability
Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus and Education Plus customers
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.
Today, we’re announcing new forthcoming innovations in Google Chat to help teams do their best work in the hybrid work world, as many of us begin a return to office. In addition, we will also introduce a more streamlined and flexible user interface that helps people and groups more easily stay organized and balance focus and multitasking.
Later this year, we’ll evolve the Rooms experience in Google Chat to Spaces, a dedicated place to organize people, topics, and projects in Google Workspace. In Spaces, you’ll notice new features like:
In-line topic threading
Presence indicators
Assigned tasks
Expressive reactions, custom statuses using emojis, and GIFs
Improved content search across Spaces
Message pinning
User roles and moderation tools
Discoverable spaces
Spaces will also seamlessly integrate with Calendar, Drive, Tasks and across Workspace becoming a new home for getting more done, together. In Spaces, you’ll be able to:
Create and share docs
Side-by-side discuss and edit
See status from calendar
Run interactive polls
Integrate workflows directly with Bots
For moments when you need to collaborate further, you can easily convert your group conversations into Rooms. In the future, you’ll be able to convert group conversations into Spaces when it becomes available.
The new experience will begin rolling out to all users of Chat in Gmail over the next several months for all organizations that have Chat enabled, with new features being delivered on a rolling basis. We will continue to provide updates on the Workspace Updates Blog as these features become available.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why it matters
Google Chat has been an essential part of work during the last year, serving as a bridge for separated colleagues to collaborate in real time. We hope these innovations will give distributed teams more shared spaces, making collaboration easier.
Additional details
In the coming months, we will introduce a new streamlined and flexible user interface that helps people and groups more easily stay organized and balance focus and multitasking. The new experience will feature a new left-hand navigation which surfaces critical applications like Gmail, Chat and Meet in one location.
This will make staying on-top of and navigating to important conversations and critical notifications easier, eliminating the need to switch between various applications.
Google Workspace customers who are interested in early access to these features, please express interest here. If accepted into the program, we will contact you in the coming weeks to confirm and share next steps.
Getting started
Admins: Admins can turn on Google Chat in Gmail so their organizations can start using Rooms today, ensuring a seamless transition to Spaces when it becomes available.
Google Workspace customers based in Belgium can now sign up for Google Voice, and customers who have purchased Google Voice Premier can get phone numbers for their users in Belgium. With this launch, Voice is now available in these countries. | Learn more.
Easily view the number of Google Meet hardware devices in your organization in the Admin console
In the Admin console under Devices > Google Meet Hardware, admins will now see a simple count on the device list page of the number of devices that meet the criteria of the currently selected filters. | Learn more.
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.
Replace your background with a video in Google Meet
In addition to replacing your Google Meet background with a static image, you can now replace your background with a video. | Learn more.
Option to replace your background in Google Meet is now available on Android
Admins can specify which third-party apps their users can install from the Google Workspace Marketplace. With the addition of the “Approved for you” section in the Marketplace, users can quickly find and install pre-approved apps for Gmail, Drive, Editors, Calendar, and more.
Available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials and Frontline customers
Having the ability to blur or replace your meeting backgrounds can help you show more of your personality, or help hide your surroundings if that’s your preference.
Additional details
Support for replacing your background with a custom image on Android and support for iOS will be coming soon; we’ll announce on the Google Workspace Updates blog when they become available.
End users: This feature is OFF by default. Visit our Help Center to learn more about how to change your background on Google Meet. Note: virtual backgrounds work on most recent mobile devices, visit the device compatibility page for more information.
Custom backgrounds can help you show more of your personality, as well help hide your surroundings to maintain privacy. With the option of replacing your background with video, we hope this makes your video calls more fun.
Additional details
Initially available on the web only, coming to mobile soon
Background Video will initially only be available when using Google Meet on the web. We’ll make it available on mobile in the coming months — we’ll post an update on the Workspace Updates Blog when it becomes available.
Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to control whether users can change their backgrounds in Meet. Note: the “Let users select custom images” option is disabled by default for Google Workspace for Education customers.
Shared drives empower teams and organizations to store, access, and collaborate on files. Shortcuts are pointers to files that are stored in another folder or in another drive, which make it easy to surface content without creating copies of files.
Who’s impacted
Admins, end users, and developers
Why you’d use it
Assigning colors to specific folders can help you visually organize your Google Drive. For example, you can assign colors to your most important folders, making it easier to quickly navigate to them in Drive.
Note: Custom folder colors in My Drive, shared drives, and shortcuts are only visible to you.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
Developers: You can use the Drive API to set folder colors.
End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about customizing folder colors.
Rollout pace
Google Drive on web
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 3, 2021
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 17, 2021
Google Drive on mobile
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 3, 2021.
Note: Requires app version 2.21.20 and up for Android and 4.2021.20204 and up for iOS
Availability
Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, and users with personal Google Accounts
[July 20, 2021]: The rollout for this feature is currently paused while we evaluate performance. We apologize for the delay — we’ll provide an update here when rollout resumes.
What’s changing
Now in Google Sheets, you can:
Review comments and conversation threads in a sidebar.
Apply filters to find the most relevant comments for getting your work done when a document is highly collaborative.
Page through comment threads in a document in the comment overlay.
Use the new comments sidebar to see all the conversations happening in a spreadsheet. Quickly reply, resolve, or create new conversations in collaboration with your colleagues.
In highly collaborative spreadsheets, apply filters in the sidebar to find the most relevant feedback (for example, comment threads that need your response).
Take action directly in the sidebar when tasks are complete, or conversations have been resolved.
Use the new navigator to progress through comments in the spreadsheet.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
Collaborating with teammates is more important than ever, and comments are a powerful way to discuss and collaborate wherever you and your colleagues are, and whenever you’re working. By making it easier to review, respond to, and resolve comments in Sheets, it’s easier to collaborate to create more impactful data and analysis.
Additional details
With these new changes, you now have easy ways to see and navigate all comments in a spreadsheet by clicking:
The comment icon in the Appbar.
The "open all comments" item in the sheet tab.
The "open" from any comment anchored to a cell.
A new button in the comment overlay that allows you to page between comment threads in a document.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be ON for everyone.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 2, 2021
Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 16, 2021
Availability
Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.
Specifically, admins will see failed connection attempts when a user tries to:
Join a call already at its maximum participant limit,
Re-join a call after previously being removed or their account was automatically denied due to prior abuse,
Join a call but was denied entry by a participant already in the call,
Join a call but the request timed out because nobody in the call responded,
Who’s impacted
Admins
Why you’d use it
This tool gives quick and easy access to meeting information in your domain. With that information, you can better understand what happened in a meeting and what might have caused quality issues, significantly reducing troubleshooting time.
Previously, the Meet Quality Tool only displayed information about the endpoints that were in a call and participating. With this added support, admins can quickly assist their users with connection issues without having to contact Google for support.
Gentle notifications: When Meet detects a performance issue that is impacting call quality, you’ll see a notification bubble describing the issue and a red dot on the “More options” menu. From the “More options” menu, users can select “Troubleshooting & help” to find more information on the issue and troubleshooting guidance.
When Google Meet detects a performance issue, you’ll see a notification bubble and red dot on the “More options” menu.
Tailored troubleshooting recommendations: Based on the detected performance issue, users will now see personalized suggestions on how to improve the quality of their call. This can be useful in situations where decreases in available processing resources are impacting call quality, such as your device automatically lowering CPU speed to extend battery life.
Quick actions: You’ll also see one-click changes, which can quickly reduce Meet resource consumption. These can include switching settings to use less CPU or network bandwidth, or adding closed captions to assist with understanding audio.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it matters
Network metrics and CPU usage are currently available to users by going to More options > Troubleshooting & help. There, users would find a general list of recommendations — now, users will see a dynamic list of recommendations based on:
Battery level,
Bandwidth and network connection,
Whether a user is presenting, and more.
These changes will help alert users when there are issues with their meeting quality and provide them with actionable recommendations to improve their call experience.
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.
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.
