Author Archives: Jane Smith

Updated roadmap for classic and new Google Sites

We have updated our plans for Google Sites and want to let you know two key things:


  1. We're going to build more enterprise-focused features into new Sites (including ones from classic Sites): We listened to extensive feedback from customers and have identified a number of features in classic Sites that are particularly valuable to larger organizations. We plan to add comparable functionality for those features, along with new and unique features, to new Sites. We believe these will help you use new Sites in different and exciting ways, while making the transition process to new Sites easier and more streamlined. See below for more details on specific features. 

  2. The final date to transition from classic Sites to new Sites will be the end of 2021: Also based on customer feedback, we realize that classic Sites still offers unique value to our enterprise customers today. While we add more of the requested features to new Sites, we will continue to invest in maintaining core classic Sites functionality until end of year 2021. 

More features coming to new Sites 


Here are some examples of commonly requested functionality that you will see in new Sites in the future:
Create richer, more customized sites: 
  • New site themes so your sites can match your company look, feel, and brand. 
  • Improved text controls to provide you with a greater choice of fonts, colors, styles, and more. 
  • Standard templates from Google to help you quickly create common types of sites (such as team sites, project sites, and events sites). 
  • Custom templates to provide simple access to starter websites specific to your domain. 
  • Better integration with other G Suite products so you can easily embed content in Sites. 
  • New API capabilities, including AppScript support, so you can automate and manage sites. 
  • New page elements, like tables of contents and image carousels. 

Create and manage larger sites: 
  • Additional functionality and controls to help you create and manage larger sites. 
  • Increased size limits so you can build larger sites. 
  • Ability to see what’s changed between the previous published version and current draft of a site, so you can make more informed publishing decisions. 
  • Version history so you can see and restore previous versions. 
  • Richer and more comprehensive search from within a site. 
  • Google Vault support for content from new Sites. 


Transitioning from classic Sites to new Sites 


In 2016 we announced a new version of Google Sites, and in 2017 we announced that new Sites would eventually become the only version of Google Sites. We’ve heard feedback that classic Sites remains valuable for our customers. While we work to add some of the features detailed above, we plan to maintain core classic Sites functionality. This will extend the deadline to transition from classic to new Sites, which we detailed in this post, to the end of 2021.

We continue to have dedicated engineers maintaining core functionality, but classic Sites was originally built many years ago and its infrastructure and integrations with other products and gadgets are quickly becoming outdated. As a result, we cannot guarantee all features will continue to work as they currently do.

As we make progress along the roadmap and expand the features and functionality of new Sites, we plan to improve our migration tools and processes to help make the migration from classic Sites to new Sites easier.

We’ll provide more updates as work progresses. Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for details of these announcements.


Try new Sites today  

The new Google Sites has a simple interface that makes it easy for anyone to create functional and attractive sites. Many of our customers already prefer it to create common types of sites, including team sites, product sites, and event sites. If you want to try it:



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Get your whole team jamming with Jamboard web improvements

What’s changing 


We’re adding several new features to Jamboard which will make it easier to create and collaborate on jams on the web. We recently announced that you can now create and edit jams in a Chrome browser. We’re enhancing this web-based Jamboard experience with several useful features including:

  • Support for familiar keyboard shortcuts: Use Ctrl/CMD+c to copy, CTRL+V to paste, and CTRL+D to duplicate Jam objects when editing on the web. 
  • Create, delete, and duplicate frames on the web: Easily manage frames (the equivalent of pages in jams) on the web. 
  • Easier switch between creation modes: Quickly switch between the drawing and selection modes - hold down Ctrl/CMD to switch to the select mode, and release to switch back to drawing mode. 
  • Better image management: Add images to jams by drag and drop, copy and paste, or through a simple image upload dialog. 
A new dialogue will make it easier to insert images in jams

Who’s impacted 

End users

Why you’d use it 

Jamboard is a great tool for brainstorming, encouraging collaboration, and generally bringing ideas to life. This launch makes it easier for everyone on your team to collaborate on jams, regardless of whether they’re by a physical Jamboard or not.

With these improvements to Jamboard on the web, and the pre-existing apps for phones and tablets, we hope more if your team can join in and share ideas, capture sticky notes, brainstorm, and much more.

How to get started 


Helpful links 

Availability 

Rollout details
  • Rapid Release domains: Keyboard shortcuts, frame management, and mode switching will have a gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on Jan 23, 2019. 
  • Scheduled Release domains: Keyboard shortcuts, frame management, and mode switching will gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on Jan 23, 2019. 
Better image management will start rolling out in February. Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog to know when to expect it.

G Suite editions 
  • Available to G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, Enterprise for Education, and Education editions. Not available to G Suite for Nonprofits edition. 
On/off by default? 

New Gmail compose formatting and download options

What’s changing

We're adding three new features to Gmail:

  • Shortcut to undo/redo in the compose window
  • Shortcut to strikethrough text
  • Ability to download messages as .EML files in rfc822 format from Gmail on the web

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

  • Undo/Redo: If you need to undo an action, like if you accidentally delete the content of your draft of an email, you can do so straight from the compose view. Anytime you have undo, you want to also have the option of redo, so we’ve added that as well.
  • Strikethrough: Strikethrough is a visual cue that something has been completed or can be used as an edit suggestion. We’ve heard from you that this functionality is critical to quickly and efficiently write emails, especially when you want to visually indicate a change in language.
  • Download as .EML: This format is recognized by other email clients, allowing you to view the Gmail content along with attachments within these clients. In addition, with this functionality users can now add these downloaded messages as attachments in their emails.

How to get started

  • Admins: No action necessary.
  • End users - new compose formatting: Click on the formatting menu in the Gmail compose window.

  • End users - new download format: Open the overflow (three dot) menu and select “Download message.”

Availability

Rollout details

  • Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days) starting on January 22, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days) starting on January 22, 2019
G Suite editions

  • Available to all G Suite editions
On/off by default?

  • These features will be ON by default.
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Two new Hangouts Meet tools added to the Admin console

What’s changing

We’re launching two new features in the Admin console to help G Suite admins better understand and manage the usage of Hangouts Meet within their organizations. Specifically, we’re adding:

  • Meet quality tool: 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.

  • Hangouts Meet activity logs: Information about Meet usage and quality is now available to admins through Meet activity logs (in the Admin console under Reports > Audit > Hangouts Meet), enabling you both high level and detailed views on usage within your domain.

Who’s impacted

Admins only

Why you’d use it

Meet quality tool: Meet quality tool is designed to help you to troubleshoot your meetings. You can either look at one specific meeting or filter for a time frame, location, device or user. The data visible in Meet quality tool is available in the Hangouts Meet activity log (explained below) to enable further analysis.

Hangouts Meet activity logs: Each time a device or a user leaves a call, an "Activity event" that summarizes usage and quality is generated. The event includes information about the endpoint (such as device type, location, IP, identifier, or call rating), its usage (such as time sharing their video, screen sharing or audio) and network statistics (such as jitter, packet loss, or RTT). Learn more about the data available in the Help Center.


Hangouts Meet activity logs provides data to help better answer questions such as:
  • Is video conferencing transforming my organization (and if so, how)?
    • Which locations communicate actively and which locations are isolated?
    • How many minutes of video conference (VC) are run every day/week for different groups of people?
    • Does Meet help my organization work remotely?
    • Analyze Hangouts Meet Hardware usage. How does it change over time or location?
  • How is my network performing and what is the impact it has on video quality for my users?
    • How do users rate the quality of the calls on my domain? Does it vary over time or per location?
    • How much bandwidth does Meet use overall and at a specific location?

How to get started


  • Admins
    • Meet quality tool: To use Meet quality tool you need to be a super admin or have the correct delegated admin privilege. Follow the instructions in the Help Center to learn more about Meet quality tool access delegation.
    • Hangouts Meet activity log: Visit the Admin console and go to Reports > Audit > Hangouts Meet. Here, you can export the data to your favorite analytical tool (using the Activity API or BigQuery for G Suite Enterprise customers) to answer specific questions you may have.

Export the data using BigQuery


  • End users: No end user impact.

Helpful links
Help Center: Troubleshoot meeting quality
Help Center: Hangouts Meet audit log

Availability

Rollout details

  • Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days) starting on January 22, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days) starting on January 22, 2019
G Suite editions

  • Both the Meet quality tool and the Meet activity log are available to all G Suite editions.

On/off by default?

  • This feature will be ON by default.

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Upcoming Hangouts service consolidation for all G Suite customers

What’s changing

As we announced in 2017, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet are the next generation of Hangouts that focus on team communication. Later this year, we'll transition classic Hangouts users on G Suite domains to Chat and Meet. As a first step, some changes are coming on April 16, 2019.

Key dates to note

G Suite customers can expect the following timeline of changes:
  • April 16, 2019 – Several changes that may require administrator action (see below for details).
  • Between April and September 2019 – Features from classic Hangouts will come to Chat.
  • October 2019 – Start retiring classic Hangouts for G Suite customers.


Consumer impact
The above dates are specific to G Suite customers and their end users who use classic Hangouts. We will continue to support consumer use of classic Hangouts, and expect to transition consumers to free Chat and Meet following the transition of G Suite customers. A more specific timeline will be communicated at a later date.

What changes will take place on April 16, 2019?
For G Suite domains that have classic Hangouts enabled, Chat will also become available to users on the web and via mobile apps. They can also continue using classic Hangouts in Gmail, mobile, web or the Chrome extension. See these details for how interoperability works between Chat and classic Hangouts.

The following admin-facing changes will begin taking place on April 16, 2019:
  1. For Google Vault customers, Mail retention rules and holds will stop protecting chat messages in classic Hangouts. Instead, Chat retention rules and holds will protect chat messages in both classic Hangouts and Chat.
  2. Chat admin settings will now control chat capability in both classic Hangouts and Chat.
  3. A new setting in the Admin console under Apps > G Suite > Hangouts Chat will be added so you can disable classic Hangouts user interfaces at a time of your choosing.
  4. The "Google Hangouts" settings page in the Admin console will be renamed "Hangouts Meet." This setting will control both classic Hangouts video and Hangouts Meet.

Google Vault customers need to take action before April 16, 2019
Between March 16 and April 16, 2019, Vault customers that have any Mail retention rules or holds will have an indefinite retention rule automatically created for Chat. This rule is to protect all your chat messages in classic Hangouts when Chat rules start protecting them on April 16, 2019. Before April 16, 2019, you must:

  • Review and set new retention rules for Chat in Google Vault.
  • Duplicate any existing Mail holds for Chat in Google Vault.
  • Set any new holds on chat messages from Chat in Google Vault.
  • Once you have set your preferred retention rules and holds for Chat, in order for them to take effect, remove the indefinite retention rule that may be overriding your rules.

If you don’t take set your preferred retention rules or holds in Chat and then remove the indefinite retention rule by April 16, 2019, all your chat messages in classic Hangouts and direct messages in Chat will be retained indefinitely. Refer to this Help Center article to learn more about completing these actions.

What will happen in October 2019?
Classic Hangouts will be retired for all G Suite customers starting in October 2019 and all remaining users will be transitioned to Chat. More notices and details will be shared on the G Suite Updates blog in the future. In order to make the transition easier for your users, you can review our Chat documentation.


What is the best time to move my users to Hangouts Chat?
You can transition your users immediately if you’d like. If there’s more functionality that your organization needs before switching, rest assured that between April and September 2019, we’ll add features that will make it easier for your users to move from classic Hangouts to Chat such as:

  • Integration with Gmail
  • Chatting with external users
  • An improved video calling experience
  • Making calls with Google Voice

We will communicate availability of these new features via the G Suite Updates blog so stay tuned!

Helpful links


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Allow Google Calendar users to book Microsoft Exchange resources

What’s changing

You can now let your Google Calendar users book Microsoft Exchange calendar resources, such as meeting rooms, when they schedule a meeting.

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

We know that some of you manage a coexistence of Google Calendar users and Microsoft Exchange users within your organizations. Last year, we added the ability to share free/busy information across users in these two environments. With this launch, Calendar users can now easily book any resources that are stored in Exchange.

How to get started


  • Admins: To enable Exchange room booking in the Admin console, please follow these instructions.
  • End users: Once this feature is enabled, Calendar users will see both Calendar and Exchange resources displayed as bookable options.

Additional details

For more information about Calendar interop, check out the Help Center.

Helpful links

Help Center: Allow Calendar users to book Exchange resources

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain level.

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New pricing for G Suite Basic and Business Editions

More than a decade ago, we introduced Gmail—our first cloud-native productivity app—to help make email safer and easier for everyone. Since then, we pioneered more ways for teams to collaborate in real-time with products like Google Calendar, Docs, Drive and Hangouts. Together, these apps make up G Suite, our set of intelligent, secure productivity and collaboration tools.

We’ve brought businesses more than a dozen new G Suite services to help them reimagine how they work, including powerful video conferencing (Hangouts Meet), secure team messaging (Hangouts Chat) and enterprise-grade search capabilities (Cloud Search). We’ve also infused our products with advanced artificial intelligence to make it easier to respond to emails, gather insights from data and protect against phishing attacks before they happen.

Today, more than four million organizations use G Suite to collaborate efficiently and securely, and analysts have taken notice. IDC’s Wayne Kurtzman notes, "Google has established G Suite as a secure, enterprise-ready, AI–powered productivity and collaboration platform. With its broad set of capabilities, G Suite offers a strong value proposition to customers.”

Over the last ten years, G Suite has grown to provide more tools, functionality and value to help businesses transform the way they work. The one thing that hasn't changed over this time, is price. Today, we are announcing two incremental list price updates to reflect this value. Starting on April 2, 2019, G Suite Basic Edition will increase by $1 (from $5 to $6 per user/month) and G Suite Business Edition will increase by $2 (from $10 to $12 per user/month), or the local currency equivalent where applicable. These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions. Pricing for G Suite Enterprise Edition customers will not change.

For existing G Suite Basic or Business edition customers on the Flexible Plan, the new list prices will go into effect on April 2, 2019. For customers on the Annual Plan, the new prices will go into effect the first time their plan renews on or after April 2, 2019. These changes will not impact current contracts or any renewal events prior to April 2, 2019.

Additionally, for those Basic and Business Edition customers who receive their bill from Google, we’ll send an email with details specific to their domains no later than February 28, 2019. Any customer that licenses G Suite through a reseller should hear from their partners directly regarding the new pricing, or they can reach out to their partners proactively.

We are grateful for the many businesses that use G Suite to empower their teams to work collaboratively, and we remain committed to expanding its functionality to help our customers succeed. Feel free to reference this edition guide to learn more about each offering.

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Material Design for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites on Web

What’s changing

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites will be getting a new look and feel on the web. While there are no functionality changes, users will notice some visual improvements, including:

  • Interface typography that uses Google’s custom-designed and highly-legible typefaces
  • Controls (like buttons, dialogs, and sidebars) that are updated and consistent
  • Iconography that is legible and crisp, with a fresh feel

The four products in this update join other G Suite products like Gmail and Calendar in sharing a common design language.

Before

After


Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

This style change is part of a new, consistent design approach from Google. You can expect to see similar changes across other G Suite applications in the future.

How to get started 


  • Admins: No action needed
  • End users: You’ll see the new look coming your way.


Availability

Rollout details

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on January 15, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility) starting on February 11, 2019


G Suite editions
Available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and G Suite for Nonprofits

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

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Embed Google+ search streams in new Google Sites

What’s changing 

You can now embed a stream of posts from a Google+ search in the new Google Sites. This search could contain simple keywords or advanced search operators.

This builds on our previous launch, which helped you embed community pages, profiles, and other Google+ streams in new Sites.

Who’s impacted 

End users

Why you’d use it 

When you embed a stream from G+, users will see the exact same content, whether they’re viewing it on plus.google.com or within an embedded module in a Sites page. They’ll also be able to interact with the content, and have that interaction show in both locations. This can help you create more engaging sites with dynamic and collaborative content from Google+.

By embedding a stream from a Google+ search, you could embed posts from specific people, or you can embed a Google+ stream that aggregates posts from multiple G+ communities. Users will be able to see the content and interact with it if they choose.

How to get started 




Helpful links 

Help Center: Add Google files, video & more to Google Sites 

Availability 

Rollout details 
G Suite editions 
Available to all G Suite editions
On/off by default? 
This feature will be ON by default
Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Notice the new format for these launch announcements? Give us feedback on it here.