Place legal holds on Hangouts Chat messages In addition to setting retention policies, you can now place legal holds on your employees' Hangouts Chat conversations, whether they take place via direct message or in rooms.
Doing so will preserve room conversations in which a held user is a participant (i.e. they’ve sent a message) and direct messages in which a held user is a member (i.e. they’ve sent or received a message), regardless of whether that user deletes those messages. If a user on hold deletes a message, it will appear deleted to them—but it will be available in Vault until the hold is removed. Remember that holds always take precedence over retention rules.
Search, preview and export chat content Finally, you can now search, preview, and export your employees’ Hangouts Chat messages. This enables you to apply the same eDiscovery programs you use for other G Suite services (like Gmail and Drive) to content stored in Hangouts Chat direct messages and rooms.
To learn more about how Vault's support for Hangouts Chat can help your organization meet its legal obligations and archiving needs, check out the Vault Help Center.
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
Editions: Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education editions only
Rollout pace: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)
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 and Cloud Identity customers Rollout pace: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)
Ownership sharing configuration for unclaimed Jams To ensure that Jams get assigned to the correct owner, we’re adding an email confirmation step to claim an unclaimed Jam. Once an admin has enabled this option, when working with an unclaimed Jam, users will need to confirm ownership via email before they are added as an owner. Users can enter multiple in-domain email addresses to confirm ownership, directly from the Jam. Those user(s) will receive an email asking if they’d like to claim the document and the first user to confirm becomes the owner.
This feature prevents sharing of content before an owner is assigned.
Admins can configure this setting (which is off by default) for the domain in the Jamboard Admin console.
Animated frame changes with page numbers Whenever you change a frame on your Jamboard device, we now will show a distinct frame-change animation along with the page number.
USB camera support Users can connect a USB camera and select which camera feed they want to use (either USB camera or internal camera) in the settings panel of the Jamboard kiosk.
S/PDIF audio support Users can attach external speakers to the board via S/PDIF (a rear port on the back of the device for optical audio). For a full list of new features and improvements from this month’s release, check out the What’s New in Jamboard page in the Help Center.
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
Editions: Available to all G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, and Education customers
Rollout pace: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) Impact: All end users
Action: Change management suggested/FYI More Information Help Center
Control when changes are synced to Google Drive (all end users)
Customize the cache location (admins only)
Limit the bandwidth used (admins only)
Customize drive letter or mount point (admins only)
For more details on these features and how to use them, see below.
Control when changes are synced to Google Drive
End users can now pause Drive File Stream syncing. While paused, Drive File Stream will not upload local changes to Google Drive, and new versions of files made available offline will not download.
To pause syncing, open the Drive File Stream menu and click More > Pause Syncing.
Customize the cache location
Admins can now customize the content cache location for Drive File Stream to any directory on a connected APFS, HFS+, or NTFS file system.
In a previous release, we added a feature that allows Admins to customize the default letter drive on Windows, the mount point on macOS, and proxy settings. These configurations can be set at the user or host-wide level, and persist when Drive File Stream restarts.
In the Tools menu, “Spelling” will be renamed “Check Spelling.”
In the Edit menu, “Select none” will be removed.
Items in the File, Edit, and Tools menus will be reordered.
Changes that only affect Google Sheets menus:
In the Data menu, “Filter” will be renamed “Create a filter.”
In the Data menu, “Validation” will be renamed “Data validation.”
Items in the Data menu will be reordered.
Items in the Format menu will be reordered.
These changes will only affect the visual menu on the web version of these products. All options will still be available via keyboard shortcuts and the search box in the Help menu. Launch Details Release track: Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two 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
There are two ways to email members of a Team Drive:
From the Team Drive: Navigate to the Team Drive, click the drop-down menu next to the Team Drive name, and click “Email members.”
From within a file that is in the Team Drive: While editing or viewing the document, open the File menu, and click “Email Collaborators.”
When you select to email members, you can easily customize who your email is sent to. Use checkboxes to include or exclude “Members” who have access to the full Team Drive, “Guests” who only have access to that specific document within the Team Drive, and users with different Team Drive access levels, such as “Full,” “Edit,” “Comment,” and “View.”
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
Editions: Available to all G Suite editions. Team Drives is available on G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business, and G Suite for Education editions. G Suite Basic users can’t create Team Drives, but can use the feature if they have access to a Team Drive.
Rollout pace: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)
Impact: All end users Action: Change management suggested/FYI
To help you better manage runtime permissions for Android apps*, we’re introducing two new settings in the Admin console for customers using Google Mobile Management.
The first will give G Suite admins three options for management of all runtime permissions on all Android apps: (1) allow runtime permissions automatically, (2) deny runtime permissions automatically, or (3) prompt the end user to choose whether to grant runtime permissions. The last setting is the default; it can be changed in the Admin console under Device Management > Android Settings > Apps and Data Sharing.
The second setting can be found under the App Distribution and Configuration options provided when an Android app is whitelisted. This setting will allow admins to manage runtime permissions for that specific app. For example, an admin can forbid the app to access the device’s location or contacts. Where there are conflicts, this setting will take priority over the app-wide setting mentioned above.
*IMPORTANT: Android apps will only request permissions at runtime if the device is running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or higher and the app itself targets API level 23 or higher. The second setting mentioned above will be greyed out in Admin console if the app doesn’t target API23+. If you’re unsure of whether an app will request runtime permissions, we recommend contacting the app developer.
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)
Google Drive makes it easy to store and share files in the cloud so you can collaborate securely with your teams and clients while on the go. And we understand that teams work with all kinds of files and tools to get things done. Starting today, we're making it possible to comment directly on more file types including Microsoft Office files, PDFs and images—without having to convert them into Docs, Sheets or Slides.
When you're collaborating with an external agency, negotiating a contract with a client or coordinating a sales agreement with a supplier, chances are you're dealing with multiple file formats. With this update, you can now comment on those files in Drive the way you're used to in Google Docs. In the Drive preview pane, comment, assign tasks, or mention coworkers and the people you work can reply back, even if they’re not using G Suite. Let’s say your coworker opens a file on her Windows laptop using MS Word, she will see your comment in the file and can reply right from there.
Provide quick feedback on the most popular file formats, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files, in the Drive preview pane.
With commenting in Drive preview, you won’t need to open up other tools to complete tasks. Instead, open Microsoft Office files, like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in Drive preview and give feedback in comments then get back to work.
AODocs, a company that helps enterprises replace their legacy document management applications and automate business processes integrated with Drive, has been testing the new Drive commenting feature for the past few months. As AODocs helps companies transition from legacy systems, they often collaborate across various licensed software.
“We frequently use the comments feature in Google Docs and Slides when preparing specification documents, reviewing project proposals and creating marketing materials,” says Stéphane Donzé, chief executive officer and founder of AODocs. “With commenting in Drive Preview feature, we can now extend the same collaboration, review and validation processes to Microsoft Office Applications, images and PDFs.”
Collaborate on Excel files—as well as other Microsoft files—all within Google Drive.
The ability to comment in Drive preview mode is just one example of interoperability between G Suite and Microsoft Office products. You can also use a Drive plug-in for Outlook to make it easier to insert files stored in Drive to an Outlook email and save incoming attachments to your Drive from Outlook. Our help center has more specifics on how to enable the plug-in for admins.
Of course, you can also convert Microsoft Office files into Docs, Sheets or Slides. In Google Drive, right click on an Office file and click Open with and then select Docs (or Sheets or Slides). Lastly, you can choose to edit Microsoft files without converting them fully using Office Compatibility Mode (OCM).
With G Suite, you can work the way you’re used to working. Get started.
Additional information for G Suite admins
As a part of this launch, we will also change the “Can view” permission setting for MS Office files. This creates further interoperability between Google Drive, Microsoft Office and other popular applications. What is changing?:
Users with “Can view” access to MS Office files will start seeing any comments added after the launch of this change, but they will not be able to reply to those comments or create new comments.
MS Office files with comments added before this change (i.e. using the Google Drive API, or from an older version of this feature) will not be affected.
Comments, actions items and suggested edits in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings files will continue to remain invisible to users with “Can view” access.
In addition to making and replying to file-level comments while previewing a file in Google Drive Preview, users can now make new inline (a.k.a. anchored) comments, for example:
Draw a rectangle on a PDF, or PowerPoint (.pptx), or image file and make an anchored comment.
Select a sentence in a MS Office Word (.docx), or PowerPoint (.pptx), or PDF file and make an anchored comment (similar to comments in Google Docs).
Select a cell in MS Office Excel (.xlsx) file and make a cell-based comment.
This new feature also supports importing and exporting comments to the underlying file for certain OOXML file formats such as MS Office file formats(.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and PDF files. This means that existing comments available in those file formats will be imported and displayed in Drive Preview. Additionally, comments made in Drive Preview will be exported to the underlying file so that when you open up the file using the local client application, you will be able to see the comments made in Drive Preview.
Launch Details Release track: - Web: Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in 5 weeks - Mobile: Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
Editions: Available to all G Suite editions
Rollout pace:
Web: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)*
Mobile: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)
*On web, we’ll roll out these features to Rapid Release domains over the course of three weeks. Two weeks after we complete the rollout to Rapid Release, we’ll begin the rollout to Scheduled Release. We anticipate it will take up to three weeks after that point to roll out to 100% of Scheduled Release domains.
(Cross-posted from The Keyword) TJ Varghese, Product Manager, G Suite Katie Roberts-Hoffman, Product Manager, G Suite
We’re working closely with customers and industry experts to shape the role of technology in meetings, and we want to make it easy for teams to work together face-to-face, anytime, anywhere. A big part of getting this right is working closely with IT, AV and facilities leaders to understand how we can solve some of their challenges which is why this week, we’re at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) conference in Amsterdam to learn from AV and systems integration experts about how we can help them make meetings easier.
Expanding Jamboard and Hangouts Meet hardware to new countries
Adding AI-powered autodraw to improve your jams
Offering more Hangouts Meet hardware options for larger rooms
Here’s what’s new. Jamboard updates: EU expansion and adding AI-powered AutoDraw
Businesses in North America and the UK are using Jamboard to collaborate, and now teams in Europe can jam together, too. Next month, Jamboard will be available for purchase in eight additional countries: Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain and Finland.
Along with expanding Jamboard to new markets, we’re also adding an AI-powered feature called AutoDraw. AutoDraw is a new drawing tool in Jamboard that auto-detects sketches you make and pairs them with images. This gives teams the ability to make their ideas even more visual—whether you’re a creative designer working with clients or even a teacher working with students.
We also recently welcomed the Jamboard app as a core service in G Suite. For everything else Jamboard, check out google.com/jamboard. Hangouts Meet hardware updates: more options for larger rooms
Fast video meetings are the most effective when they’re available everywhere. Today, we’re also expanding Hangouts Meet hardware—our latest meeting solution—to two additional countries: the Netherlands and Denmark, bringing the total to 14 countries.
Until now, the Hangouts Meet hardware kit has consisted of a touchscreen controller, speakermic, ASUS Chromebox and 4K sensor camera, great for capturing small rooms. While this has made it easy for some businesses to collaborate straight out of the box, we want to ensure the kit is scalable to any room size. So today, we’re adding options for larger rooms:
A new Hangouts Meet room kit that comes with a Logitech PTZ Pro 2 and accommodates up to 20 people. The camera can capture details with 10x optical zoom, and you can pan and tilt to focus on participants.
A standalone Meet speakermic to keep audio quality crisp in bigger rooms. Custom designed and built by Google, the speakermic intelligently reduces echoes and manages background noise. It’s easy to daisy chain up to 5 speakermics together to bring great quality audio to every corner of a room.
To learn more about Hangouts Meet hardware, check out our website or reach out to your Google Cloud representative or your reseller.
And if you’re attending ISE, stop by our booth at B200 in Hall 15.
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.