Google Workspace Features Update: October 2022

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Features Update Summary - October 2022

The summary of essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers in October 2022.

Product: AppSheet

AppSheet databases, available in public preview

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus customers, as well as those with an AppSheet license.

Who’s impacted: Admins, developers and end users

AppSheet is Google’s platform for building and deploying end-to-end apps and automation without writing code. As we continue to enhance and streamline app creation, we’re introducing a built-in structured database in public preview. Read more.

Product: Calendar

Encouraging Working Location coverage across organizations

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, as well as legacy G Suite Business customers

Who’s impacted: Admins 

Starting today, admins have access to a new tool that aims to drive Working Location coverage across their organizations. This setting adds a customizable banner to users’ Calendar either encouraging or requiring them to set up their working location. 

By increasing the usage of working location, admins and colleagues will have better context for location planning, meeting room management, attendee visibility, and more. Read more.

Product: Calendar

Google Workspace Client-side encryption beta expanded to include Google Calendar

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

In 2021, we announced Google Workspace Client-side encryption to help customers strengthen the confidentiality of their data while helping to address a broad range of data sovereignty and compliance requirements. 

Since then, we’ve made this feature available for Google Meet, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, with support for multiple file types including Office files, PDFs, and more. Today, we’re happy to announce the beta for Client-side encryption for Google Calendar. When using Client-side encryption for Calendar events, your event description, attachments, and Meet data is indecipherable to Google servers. You have control over encryption keys and the identity service to access those keys. Read more.

Product: Chat

Hold separate conversations in Google Chat spaces with in-line threading

Edition: Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Who’s impacted: All end users

In addition to recently increasing the number of members you can add to a space in Google Chat from 400 to 8,000, you can now reply directly to any message in new spaces and some existing spaces. This creates a separate in-line thread where smaller groups of people can continue a conversation on a specific topic. Read more.

Product: Drive

Workspace Admins are now notified when Label editing is restricted by set rules

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Education Standard customers

Who’s impacted: Admins and end users

In addition to a recent feature allowing admins to programmatically manage and apply Drive Labels using new API functionality, we’ve added a new Label Manager UI feature showing which rules a label is used within. 

When labels are published, their semantic meaning can be leveraged for the enforcement of rules, such as a DLP policy based on the presence of a label. Labels are locked to prevent the possibility of breaking a related rule, and to make it easier to use labels to enforce rules, we've added warnings and feedback to the Labels Manager UI. Read more.

Product: Editors

Easily drop content into Slides from other apps on Android

Edition: All Android device users

Who’s impacted: End users

A few months ago, we added several new features and functionality to products like Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Keep on Android devices. The ability to drag and drop content from other Android apps into Slides is the latest update. We hope this enhances flexibility by giving you more ways to work with, display and organize your content. Read more.

Product: Editors

Preview and interact with files using smart chips in Google Sheets

Edition: Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Who’s impacted: End users

In 2021, we announced the ability to insert smart chips for files and meetings in Google Docs. Starting today, you can now add files directly into a Google Sheet as a smart chip, making it easier for you to quickly preview and interact with files from Google Drive. Read more.

Product: Gmail

Use built-in mail merge tags like @firstname to personalize multi-send emails

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Workspace Individual customers

Who’s impacted: End users

Recently, we made it easier to send individual emails to many recipients with the launch of multi-send in Gmail. Whether you’re organizing a large event or sending a newsletter to customers, multi-send emails look more professional than using mass-BCC. Read more.

Product: Gmail

Improving the Google Chat and Gmail search experience on web and mobile

Edition: Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Who’s impacted: End users

In order to help you find more accurate and customized search suggestions and results, we’re introducing three features that improve the Google Chat and Gmail search experience on web and mobile. Read more.

Product: Meet

Improved experience for the Calendar guest list in Google Meet

Edition: Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching & Learning Upgrade, Education Plus, Non profit customers, and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Who’s impacted: All end-users

In addition to seeing the RSVP status of everyone on the invite, you can now see all from the Calendar invite, including:

• Working Location
• Out-of-office status
• If the meeting is outside of their working hours
• If they’re joining from the meeting room 
• Read more
  

Product: Meet

Automatically transcribe speech during Google Meet calls into a Google Doc

Edition: Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers

Who’s impacted: All end-users

Meeting hosts can now choose to automatically transcribe video meetings into Google Docs files. The transcribed file is saved in the hosts “Meet Recordings” folder in Google Drive, similar to meeting recordings. This feature can only be accessed when using Google Meet on a desktop or laptop. Read more.

Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com