G Suite Features Update: September 2020

Pitcha Gunteethong
Sep 30, 2020

G Suite Features Update Summary - September 2020

The summary of essential information about new features and improvements for G Suite customers in September 2020.

Product: Editors

Quickly add a contact into a Gmail message on Android

+ @ mentions Android

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

Gmail users on Android can now automatically add a contact to the “To” line of an email by typing "+" or “@” and then choosing the contact's name from the list that appears. This feature was previously available on the web. Read more

Product: Editors

Collaborate with people who are not using a Google account in Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites

visitor sharing in docs

G Suite Edition: Available to all G Suite customers. Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

We’re making visitor sharing—secure, pincode-based collaboration with people who are not using a Google account—generally available. This means you can share items with non-Google accounts, providing them with view, comment, or edit access to your content in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites. Visitor sharing was previously available in beta, and will replace the current admin setting to allow external users to preview a file without Google sign-in. Read more

Product: Editors

Google Docs line spacing will now adjust based on font

line spacing docs

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We will now adjust line spacing based on the font used. Previously, line spacing was based only on the font size and line spacing you chose. Now, the font you choose will also be a factor in the spacing. This will increase consistency in document length between Google Docs and other word processing programs, and help make sure converted Microsoft Word documents retain a similar length. It will be particularly useful for education users, who may have assignments with specific document length requirements based on specific formatting combinations. Read more

Product: Editors

Office editing on Android brings G Suite collaboration to Microsoft Office files

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re making Office editing available on Android devices. Office editing brings the collaborative and assistive features of G Suite to your Microsoft Office files. The feature is already available on the web. Read more

Product: Drive

Expanding shortcuts in Google Drive, reducing unorganized files

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’ve made three updates to our plans for shortcuts in Drive and file locations:

- Expanding use of shortcuts: Removing some specific actions which still created multiple locations for files.
- A migration update: More details on migration of existing multiple-location files to shortcuts.
- Improving file management and reducing “unorganized” files: Ensuring files which have their last location removed are now placed in the owner’s My Drive folder. Read more

Product: Drive

Google Drive trash items will be automatically deleted after 30 days starting on October 13, 2020

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

Starting October 13, 2020, we’re changing the retention policies for items in the Trash in Google Drive. With this new policy, any file that is put into a Google Drive trash will be automatically deleted after 30 days. Previously, trashed items would be retained indefinitely until the trash was emptied by the user. Read more

Product: Meets

New look and feel for Google Meet mobile apps

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

We’re updating the user interface (UI) of the Google Meet mobile app for Android and iOS. The new mobile UI will have the same look and feel as that of the meeting experience via the Gmail app. In addition to the streamlined design, there’s a New Meeting button. When you tap on this button, you’ll now see three option:

- Get meeting joining info to share with others
- Start a meet call instantly
- Go to Google Calendar to schedule meetings.
- Read more

Product: Meets

More Google Meet participant controls for education meetings

G Suite Edition: Available to G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers.

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re giving hosts (meeting creators and calendar owners) of G Suite for Education meetings new meeting safety controls to manage who can join their meetings. Read more

Product: Meets

See up to 49 people, including yourself, in Google Meet

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

You can now see up to 49 people at the same time in the auto and tiled layout options in Google Meet. Read more

Product: Groups

Use Collaborative Inboxes and labels in new Google Groups

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

Earlier this year, we made the new Google Groups generally available. Since then, it’s been the default version of Groups, but admins could turn off the new interface for their users via an Admin console setting. Starting on September 15, 2020, we will make new Groups the default for all users. Read more

Product: Groups

Context-Aware Access for SAML apps now generally available

G Suite Edition: Available to G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, G Suite Enterprise Essentials, and Cloud Identity Premium customers.

Who’s impacted: Admins

You can use Context-Aware Access (CAA) to create granular access control policies for pre-integrated SAML apps or custom SAML apps based on attributes including the user, location, device security status, and IP address. This can improve your security posture by reducing the chances that there’s unintended access to specific apps and the data in them. Read more

Product: Groups

Filter audit logs and usage reports by groups

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins only

You can now filter audit logs and usage reports by specific groups. When you add a new or existing group to an allow list, you can then filter to see log events or usage reports by that specific group. Read more

Product: Groups

New APIs to sign out users and control 2-Step Verification

G Suite Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins only

We’re adding two new APIs to the Admin SDK Directory API:

Sign user out of all sessions: This new endpoint allows an admin to programmatically sign a user out of all web and device sessions.
Turn off 2-Step Verification: This new endpoint allows an admin to turn 2-Step Verification (2SV) off programmatically. This action also removes all 2SV methods on the account.
Read more