Google Workspace Features Update: December 2020

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Features Update Summary - December 2020

The summary of essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers in December 2020.

Product: Google Workspace

Ending support for IE 11 for all Google Workspace apps

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

Microsoft recently announced that they will stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11). As a result, we recommend our own users switch to a different browser as soon as possible, to avoid any possible disruptions in service such as degraded performance or security vulnerabilities. Google Workspace will officially stop supporting IE 11 on March 15, 2021. Read more.

Product: Editors

New comment interface for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides rolling out to more devices

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re updating the user interface for comments and action items in the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for iOS. These improvements include:

• Larger, clearer interface to make it easier to see comments and their context in a document.
• Shortcuts and gestures to help you quickly scroll through and respond to multiple comments.
• Quick access button to reply, “@” mention someone, and assign action items.
• Read more

Product: Editors

Customize text style and appearance in Google Sites

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

You can now adjust text size, color, font, spacing, and more while typing in a text box in Google Sites. This significantly expands control over how individual words, paragraphs, pages, and sections look. We hope this will help you make your site look and feel just the way you want it to. Read more.

Product: Editors

Open Office attachments from Gmail in Docs, Sheets, or Slides with one click

Edition: Not available to Google Workspace Essentials or Enterprise Essentials customers

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re making it easier to view, edit, and collaborate on Microsoft Office files sent and received in Gmail using Docs, Sheets, and Slides. With this launch, we’re adding:

• Open Office files in Docs, Sheets, or Slides with one click: When you send or receive email with an Office file attached, you’ll see an edit icon that will open the file directly in Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
• Easily reply to the email from within the file: Once the file is opened, you’ll have new options to respond to the email thread from the File menu in Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
• Read more

Product: Editors

Use macro converter add-on to convert Microsoft Excel files with macros to Google Sheets

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re launching Macro Converter for Google Sheets. This Google Workspace add-on will help convert Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code used in Microsoft Excel macros to Apps Script code that works in Google Sheets. Read more.

Product: Editors

Create and work with documents that contain multiple page orientations in Google Docs

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’ve made it easier to create and work with documents that require multiple page orientations in Google Docs. Read more.

Product: Drive

Improving search in Google Drive on Android and iOS

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

We’re launching new features for the Google Drive mobile apps that will help you search more quickly and efficiently. Now, Android and iOS users with the latest versions of the Drive app will be able to:

• See and re-run recent desktop and mobile searches.
• View and select intelligent suggestions as they type, including suggestions for people, past searches, and keywords, as well as recently accessed files.
• Read more

Product: Contacts

Increasing shared external contact limit to 200,000 contacts

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

Shared external contacts are users outside of your domain who you add to your company directory. Previously, there was a limit of 50,000 external contacts. Now that limit is 200,000. Read more.

Product: Meet

Some Google Meet settings now “sticky” for Education users

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: All end users

Based on your feedback, we’re changing the behavior of some Google Meet settings for G Suite for Education and Enterprise for Education customers. Specifically, certain settings are now “sticky.” This means that if you turn them on or off during a meeting, they will be saved for any future meetings that use the same meeting code. Previously, all settings would return to their default state whenever a meeting was restarted. Read more.

Product: Vault

Vault for Google Voice now generally available

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Admin Only

Google Vault now supports Google Voice. This means you can use Vault to retain, hold, search, and export Google Voice data including text messages, call logs, voicemails, and voicemail transcripts. Read more.

Product: Apps Script

Use the new Apps Script Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Script Editor

Edition: All

Who’s impacted: Developers

We’ve redesigned the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Google Apps Script. The new IDE offers a more modern and simplified development experience which makes it quicker and easier to build solutions that make Google Workspace apps more useful for your organization. Read more.

Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com