Category Archives: Google for Work Blog

Work is going Google

Cisco and Google partner on a new open hybrid cloud solution spanning on-premises environments and Google Cloud Platform

Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with Cisco to help our customers improve agility and security in a hybrid world with a fully supported, open solution for developing and managing applications on-premises and in Google Cloud.

Together, we’re working on a complete solution to develop, run, secure and monitor workloads, enabling customers to optimize their existing investments, plan their cloud migration at their own pace and avoid lock-in. Developers will be able to create new applications in the cloud or on-premises consistently using the same tools, runtime and production environment.

At the heart of this architecture are open source platforms, Kubernetes and Istio. Customers will be able to accelerate on-premises app modernization using a Kubernetes-based container strategy that’s consistent with cloud-native technology. On-premises, Cisco’s hyper-converged platform, Cisco HyperFlex, will provide a cloud-ready solution for Kubernetes and containers, and management tools to enforce security and consumption policies.

We’re working together to deliver a consistent Kubernetes environment for both on-premises Cisco Private Cloud Infrastructure and Google’s managed Kubernetes service, Google Container Engine. This way, you can write once, deploy anywhere and avoid cloud lock-in, with your choice of management, software, hypervisor and operating system. We’ll also provide a cloud service broker to connect on-premises workloads to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services for machine learning, scalable databases and data warehousing.

With Istio, an open source, container- and microservice-optimized technology that we launched with partners earlier this year, developers can use policy-driven controls to scalably connect, help secure, discover and manage services. Istio is an easy way to create a network mesh of deployed services with load balancing, service-to-service authentication and monitoring built in, without requiring any changes to the actual code running the services. Thus, Istio makes it easier for developers to implement new, more portable services, and creates a separate policy-based platform to configure and manage those services centrally.

This partnership to enhance existing on-premises infrastructure and extend it to the cloud addresses tough operational problems that enterprises have traditionally struggled to solve. It also takes advantage of Cisco’s best-of-breed capabilities, including the ability to extend Cisco’s network and security policies and configurations and monitor application behavior across hybrid cloud environments. Let’s take a look at some of the initial patterns we envision this solution addressing: existing on-premises services, hybrid services and local execution.

Existing on-premises services

Our work with Cisco enables app developers to build modern services that scale and can extend their customer reach while consuming data locked in existing systems that have not yet made the move to the cloud. This solution will extend the reach of existing on-premises systems with services running on Google Cloud that communicate using modern APIs. Google’s Apigee API management platform allows developers to quickly and more securely access legacy systems without all the complexity. This approach helps enterprises get up and running in the cloud at their own pace while preserving the value in their existing on-premises investments.

Hybrid services

Customers will be able to use the Cisco Private Cloud Infrastructure to deploy and manage container clusters powered by Kubernetes. Using a GCP service catalog, they'll be able to easily configure their applications to use remote services, without needing detailed knowledge about how those services are created or managed. Istio can be used to provide runtime metrics, operational insights and service dependency graphs across a hybrid environment.

The benefits for developer teams include:

  • The ability to discover available Google Cloud services using a local service catalog

  • Auto-authentication from on-premises to Google Cloud services

  • Future-proofing existing on-premises applications to be cloud ready

Local execution

Developers want to roll out changes quickly and build services that are easy to port and move across a hybrid environment. This pattern enables development teams to develop on Container Engine and roll out to production on-premises or vice versa, targeting the right environment for their application’s needs.

With this pattern, developer teams will get:

  • A single tool (Cisco Cloud Center) to deploy workloads across the hybrid environment

  • Flexibility to move stateless applications from on-prem to cloud and vice versa

  • A multi-cloud orchestration platform that's natively integrated into the deployment pipeline

  • Reduced application deployment times to hybrid cloud targets

  • A uniform experience for both development and operations teams

As with existing on-premises services, Istio can provide runtime metrics, operational insight and service dependency graphs.

Getting started with the Cisco-Google hybrid cloud

The joint Cisco-Google Cloud solution will include a number of components (hardware, software and cloud services) that can be tailored to the needs of each customer, purchased together or separately.

Cisco software components will be licensed on an annual subscription basis including one-, three- and five-year terms. The infrastructure components will be sold on a perpetual basis. Cisco Capital can provide flexible pricing options that fit into any buyer’s specific requirements.

For Google Cloud services, you can purchase them directly through Google or via authorized resellers. We offer a number of pay-as-you-go models for cloud services, with pricing models described on the Google Cloud pricing page and the Apigee pricing page.

Configurations targeted to specific business needs and developer kits will be available. Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) will provide customers with a single source of support. The solution will be available to a limited number of customers during the first part of 2018, with general availability during the second half of the year.

To learn more about joint Google Cloud/Cisco offerings, connect with us here or reach out to your Cisco or Google Cloud representative.    

Source: Google Cloud


Do more from your inbox with Gmail Add-ons

For many of us, email is mission control—the prompt to generate an invoice, prepare a presentation or follow up on a sales opportunity. With so many to-dos, imagine if you could complete these tasks directly from your inbox without interrupting your workflow.

We believe email can do more, which is why we’re launching Gmail Add-ons, a new way to work with your favorite business apps directly in Gmail.

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Gmail Add-ons, built for your workflows

Rather than toggling between your inbox and other apps, use add-ons to complete actions right from Gmail. With Gmail Add-ons, your inbox can contextually surface your go-to app based on messages you receive to help you get things done faster. And because add-ons work the same across web and Android, you only need to install them once to access them on all of your devices. Click the settings wheel on the top right of your inbox and then “Get add-ons” to get started.

We made Gmail Add-ons available in developer preview earlier this year, and since then, our partners have built integrations to help businesses connect with customers, track projects, facilitate invoicing and more. Here’s a list of partners that have built Gmail Add-ons you can install today:

  • Asana: Turn communication with clients, customers and teammates into tasks that can be tracked with your team in Asana, all from your inbox.

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  • Dialpad: Message or call colleagues on your device, any time. Automatically view recent communications or save a new contact straight from Gmail.
  • DocuSign (coming soon): Sign and execute contracts, agreements and other documents directly in Gmail using the DocuSign add-on.
  • Hire: Add candidates, manage candidate information and upload resumes without leaving Gmail. You can access full job applications from the Hire add-on.
  • Intuit QuickBooks Invoicing: Create and send professional invoices directly in Gmail. Let customers pay you online and track invoice status and payments no matter where you are.
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  • ProsperWorks: Easily access prospect or customer data, and log activities from calls, demos and meetings. You can also scan related opportunities, tasks and events.

Prosperworks Twitter

  • RingCentral: See the online/offline status of RingCentral contacts, review recent call history, make outbound calls (requires RingCentral for Mobile) and view and send SMS messages.
  • Smartsheet: Add email content and desired attachments directly to Smartsheet without leaving Gmail.
  • Streak: Add email threads to deals, view enriched contact info and quickly respond with snippets directly from Gmail with the Streak add-on.
  • Trello: Turn email into actionable tasks in Trello to give your team a shared perspective on the work that needs to be done.

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  • Wrike: Create Wrike tasks from emails, view and update task details, and send and receive Wrike task comments.

If you're a developer, you can also easily create add-ons for your app or your organization—write your add-on code once and it will run natively in Gmail on web and Android right away. Learn more.

Try Gmail Add-ons today

Knock out action items the minute they hit your inbox. G Suite and Gmail users can check out the G Suite Marketplace to find and install Gmail Add-ons.

Source: Google Cloud


Delivering better government services at lower costs with Chrome

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Vijay Badal, Director of Application Services of DOTComm. Founded in 2003, DOTComm provides centralized IT support and consulting for 70 government agencies in the city of Omaha and Douglas County, NE. DOTComm uses Chrome browser and G Suite to improve employee productivity and mobility and cut IT costs.

At DOTComm, our employees provide technical support for more than 5,000 government workers throughout Omaha and Douglas County. Because these workers are spread across 120 different locations, our employees need access to the tools they need to do their jobs whether they’re in the office or on site with our customers. Several years ago, we realized the legacy systems we were using were getting in the way.

When employees had to travel to provide technical support for the government agencies we serve, they didn’t have mobile access to important documents, or the ability to share and send files back to the office, such as videos that outlined technical issues. In addition, hardware and licensing were costly, and inflexible productivity applications were making it difficult for employees to collaborate or work from the road. Plus, we needed half a dozen employees just to maintain our infrastructure!

To solve these challenges, we turned to Chrome and G Suite. Chrome is fast, secure and gives our staff access to thousands of useful extensions. It’s also allowed us to standardize across our desktop and mobile devices. G Suite has helped us cut hardware costs and improve collaboration and mobility. With Chrome and G Suite, we no longer pay thousands of dollars in annual licensing fees, and we’ve reduced the number of people managing infrastructure from six to one, freeing up the other five people to work on different tasks.

Chrome’s extensions have been big productivity boosters. One extension syncs the staffs’ Google calendars with their Salesforce calendars. Previously, employees had to check two separate apps and cross-reference two separate calendars. Now they only need to check one. Another extension gives staff mobile access to Google Docs and Google Sheets. This means they can work nearly anywhere. When they’re out of the office, or in the field, they can create and share files on any device they need.

As an IT department, we’re particularly pleased with the security and other IT benefits we get with Google. Chrome has built-in malware and phishing protection, and we use the G Suite admin console to ensure all user downloads are stored on the same network drive so they can be checked for malware. The G Suite admin console lets us control Chrome settings for employees, including adding extensions on whitelists so employees can use them, pushing recommended extensions to users, and rolling out Chrome updates on a scheduled timeframe. That’s made our IT administrators’ lives much easier and has been a huge timesaver. And because we centrally manage the rollout of extensions for new employees, individual city and departments no longer need to have a dedicated IT person working on new hire application orientation. So we save time and money with each new hire.

Meanwhile, the number of help tickets for IT support has plummeted, from 30 a day to one or two. For example, we no longer have to deal with local archive files, which means our staff spends less time troubleshooting and the government employees we serve don’t waste time wrestling with unfamiliar technology. Productivity has increased as well. For example, City Police, City Fire, and County Health departments all use shared Google Sheets within their individual precincts for shift change management. This allows them to roll over shift changes swiftly and efficiently, without missing any critical ongoing task assignments.

Chrome browser and G Suite have allowed us to offer more secure and productive IT services to all City of Omaha and Douglas County employees, who are then able to better serve citizens. DOTComm and the City of Omaha were recently honored as one of "Top 10 Cities" by the Center for Digital Government in its Digital Cities Survey 2016, which recognizes cities that use technology to improve citizen services, enhance transparency and encourage citizen engagement. This marked the first time the City of Omaha made the list—but I predict it won’t be the last now that we’re using Chrome browser and G Suite.

Source: Google Cloud


Time for a refresh: meet the new Google Calendar for web

Check your schedule. Starting today, a fresh look and new features are coming to Google Calendar on the web to help you manage your time more efficiently and get more done.

We’re taking a lot of what you know and love from Calendar’s mobile application, like the modern color palette and sleek design, and bringing it to the web with a responsive layout that auto-adjusts to your screen size. We’ve also added more features for enterprises to help teams schedule and prepare for meetings.

New Calendar UI on web

Over the years, you’ve shared valuable feedback on how we can enhance Calendar to better fit your needs and we’re excited to bring new improvements. Now, it’s even easier to manage your schedule at your desk. In the new Calendar for web, you can:

  • See conference room details when booking a room. G Suite admins can now enter detailed information about their organization’s meeting rooms—so employees know where a conference room is located, how large it is, and whether it has audio/video equipment or is wheelchair accessible. Employees can simply hover over the room name in Calendar when they want to book a space, and a hovercard will pop up with details about the conference location and resources.

SRI in Calendar - GIF
  • Add rich formatting and hyperlinks to your Calendar invites. Link to relevant spreadsheets, documents or presentations in your Calendar invite and open them directly from the new “Event Detail” view. This can help you create more detailed agendas and ensure all materials are in one place before your meeting starts.
Rich text formatting in Calendar
  • Manage multiple calendars side by side in “Day” view. Now you can view and manage calendars in separate columns. This makes it easier for employees who manage multiple calendars, like administrative assistants, to schedule meetings on behalf of their teams. Click “Day” view and select the calendars you want to compare.
Side-by-side Day view in Calendar

There are a number of other changes in Calendar, too. Now you can see contact information of meeting participants when you hover over their names in a Calendar invite. There’s also a new way to view and restore deleted items in one place in case you accidentally delete a meeting. Additionally, "Day,” "Week,” and "Month" views are now more accessible, featuring better compatibility with screen readers. For more detail on changes, check out this post.

These new changes in Calendar can help your teams better manage their time, and G Suite admins can enable these new updates starting today. Read this post for more information on rollout options.


And if you use Calendar for personal use, click “Use new Calendar” in the upper righthand corner of the main Calendar view to get started.

Source: Google Cloud


8 swift steps G Suite admins can take to secure business data

Security doesn’t have to be complicated. With G Suite, admins can manage and help protect their users with minimal effort because we've designed our tools to be intuitive—like Vault, which helps with eDiscovery and audit needs, and data loss prevention, which helps ensure that your “‘aha”’ moments stay yours. Here are some key security controls that you can deploy with just a few clicks to get more fine-grained control of your organization's security.

1. Enable Hangouts out-of-domain warnings

If your business allows employees to chat with external users on Hangouts, turn on a setting that will show warnings to your users if anyone outside of your domain tries to join a Hangout, and split existing group chats so external users can’t see previous internal conversations. This substantially reduces the risk of data leaks or falling prey to social engineering attacks (From the Admin console dashboard, go to Apps > G Suite > Google Hangouts > Chat settings > Sharing options).

Tip 1

2. Disable email forwarding

Exercising this option will disable the automatic email forwarding feature for users, which in turn helps reduce the risk of data exfiltration in the event a user’s credentials are compromised.

Tip 2

3. Enable early phishing detection

Enabling this option adds further checks on potentially suspicious emails prior to delivery. Early phishing detection utilizes a dedicated machine learning model that selectively delays messages to perform rigorous phishing analysis. Less than 0.05 percent of messages on average get delayed by a few minutes, so your users will still get their information fast.
Tip 3

4. Examine OAuth-based access to third-party apps

OAuth apps whitelisting helps keep company data safe by letting you specifically select which third-party apps are allowed to access users’ G Suite data. Once an app is part of a whitelist, users can choose to grant authorized access to their G Suite apps data. This helps to prevent malicious apps from tricking people into accidentally granting access to corporate data.

OAuth GIF

5. Check that unintended external reply warning for Gmail is turned on.

Gmail can display unintended external reply warnings to users to help prevent data loss. You can enable this option to ensure that if your users try to respond to someone outside of your company domain, they’ll receive a quick warning to make sure they intended to send that email. Because Gmail has contextual intelligence, it knows if the recipient is an existing contact or someone your users interact with regularly, so it only displays relevant warnings. This option is on by default.

Tip 5

6. Restrict external calendar

To reduce the incidence of data leaks, make sure that Google Calendar details aren’t shared outside your domain. Limiting sharing to “free” or “busy” information protects you from social engineering attacks that depend on gleaning information from meeting titles and attendees.
Tip 6

7. Limit access to Google Groups

By setting default Google group access to private, you can limit external access to information channels that may contain confidential business information, like upcoming projects.
Tip 7

8. Google+ access restrictions

Make the default sharing setting for Google+ restricted and disable discoverability of Google+ profiles outside your domain. Both of these actions can help you control access to critical business information.

Tip 8
Tip 8

Every company has their own unique set of business requirements that need to work in rhythm with their security requirements. By evaluating and implementing some of these suggested security controls, you can make a marked difference in your company’s security posture—with just a few clicks. See this post for other security tips.

Source: Google Cloud


Google Cloud rolls out data processing terms addressing GDPR changes

On May 25, 2018, the most significant piece of European data protection legislation to be introduced in 20 years will come into force when the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces its 1995 Data Protection Directive. We know that preparing for this regulatory change is a priority for the millions of organizations who rely on our cloud services to run their businesses, and it’s equally a priority for us.

Yesterday we rolled out the Data Processing Amendment (Version 2.0) for G Suite and the Data Processing and Security Terms (Version 2.0) for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), both of which have been specifically updated to reflect the GDPR. We’re making these terms available well in advance of the entry into force of the GDPR to facilitate our customers’ compliance assessments and GDPR readiness when using Google Cloud services. Our customers can opt in now to these updated versions within the admin consoles for G Suite and GCP (as applicable).

Google is committed to GDPR compliance and to helping our customers with their own compliance journeys. Further information regarding Google Cloud and the GDPR is available on our Cloud GDPR website.

Source: Google Cloud


Why building on an environmentally responsible cloud matters

Operating Google in an environmentally sustainable way has been a core value from day one. Each year we release our environmental report to share updates on our progress towards a more sustainable future. This year’s report marks our 10th year of carbon neutrality, and we’re excited to share that, in 2017, we’ll reach our goal of 100 percent renewable energy for all of our operations. This includes our data centers, which support our millions of customers on Google Cloud.

As more and more companies transform their businesses digitally, or build new ones, renewable energy is increasingly critical. As businesses, we affect the environment in ways often not clearly visible. Continued and accelerated digital transformation will generate a large digital exhaust. Some projections have data centers consuming as much as 13 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030. If that electricity is not sourced responsibly, it has the potential to significantly and negatively impact the environment.

sustainability-on-gcp-4

We believe that environmental impact should be an important consideration—alongside factors such as price, security, openness and reliability—when it comes to data storage, processing and development. Fortunately, more and more companies are making commitments toward sustainability.

Here are a few ways businesses can create real impact:

  • By moving from a self-managed data center or colocation facility to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the emissions directly associated with your company’s compute and data storage will be reduced to zero.

  • Businesses that switch to cloud-based productivity tools like G Suite have reported reductions in IT energy use and carbon emissions by 65 percent to 85 percent.

  • Machine learning workloads can require complex computations that are energy intensive. Google Cloud TPUs are designed with energy efficiency in mind, specifically to accelerate deep learning workloads at higher teraflops per watt compared to general purpose processors.

  • Energy efficient cold storage options can help you retain data long term without sacrificing speed to access.

Google takes our commitment to sustainability very seriously. Many data centers use almost as much non-computing or "overhead" energy (like cooling and power conversion) as they do to power their servers. At Google, we've reduced this overhead to only 12 percent (a.k.a. a PUE of 1.12). We also use our own machine learning in our data centers, which enables the analysis of massive amounts of operational data center data to create actionable recommendations, automated controls and 15 percent further reduction in energy overhead.

For each unit of electricity we use as a company, we’ve committed to purchasing an equivalent amount (or more) of renewable energy. This includes the energy we use to power all our Google Cloud users. We also have a high bar for the energy we purchase: We strive to buy renewable energy from projects that are new to the grid, enabling those developers to finance and add even more green power.  In fact, Google is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.

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We’re very proud that Greenpeace gave us an A rating in the 2016 Clicking Clean report, its annual benchmark of the IT sector’s energy performance. But we know there’s still more work to be done. We believe that building on a sustainable cloud is not just good for the environment, it’s good for business, too. We built Google on that belief—and we invite you to build your business on it as well.  

Source: Google Cloud


Best commute ever? Ride along with Google execs Diane Greene and Fei-Fei Li

Editor’s Note: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is coming up, and Diane Greene and Dr. Fei-Fei Li—two of our senior leaders—are getting ready. Sometimes Diane and Fei-Fei commute to the office together, and this time we happened to be along to capture the ride. Diane took over the music for the commute, and with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” in the background, she and Fei-Fei chatted about the conference, their careers in tech, motherhood, and amplifying female voices everywhere. Hop in the backseat for Diane and Fei-Fei’s ride to work.

(A quick note for the riders: This conversation has been edited for brevity, and so you don’t have to read Diane and Fei-Fei talking about U-turns.)

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Fei-Fei: Are you getting excited for Grace Hopper?

Diane: I’m super excited for the conference. We’re bringing together technical women to surface a lot of things that haven’t been talked about as openly in the past.

Fei-Fei: You’ve had a long career in tech. What makes this point in time different from the early days when you entered this field?

Diane: I got a degree in engineering in 1976 (ed note: Fei-Fei jumped in to remind Diane that this was the year she was born!). Computers were so exciting, and I learned to program. When I went to grad school to study computer science in 1985, there was actually a fair number of women at UC Berkeley. I’d say we had at least 30 percent women, which is way better than today.

It was a new, undefined field. And whenever there’s a new industry or technology, it’s wide open for everyone because nothing’s been established. Tech was that way, so it was quite natural for women to work in artificial intelligence and theory, and even in systems, networking, and hardware architecture. I came from mechanical engineering and the oil industry where I was the only woman. Tech was full of women then, but now less than 15 percent of women are in tech.

Fei-Fei: So do you think it’s too late?

Diane: I don’t think it’s too late. Girls in grade school and high school are coding. And certainly in colleges the focus on engineering is really strong, and the numbers are growing again.

Fei-Fei: You’re giving a talk at Grace Hopper—how will you talk to them about what distinguishes your career?

Diane: It’s wonderful that we’re both giving talks! Growing up, I loved building things so it was natural for me to go into engineering. I want to encourage other women to start with what you’re interested in and what makes you excited. If you love building things, focus on that, and the career success will come. I’ve been so unbelievably lucky in my career, but it’s a proof point that you can end up having quite a good career while doing what you’re interested in.

I want to encourage other women to start with what you’re interested in and what makes you excited. If you love building things, focus on that, and the career success will come. Diane Greene

Fei-Fei: And you are a mother of two grown, beautiful children. How did you prioritize them while balancing career?

Diane: When I was at VMware, I had the “go home for dinner” rule. When we founded the company, I was pregnant and none of the other founders had kids. But we were able to build a the culture around families—every time someone had a kid we gave them a VMware diaper bag. Whenever my kids were having a school play or parent teacher conference, I would make a big show of leaving in the middle of the day so everyone would know they could do that too. And at Google, I encourage both men and women on my team to find that balance.

Fei-Fei: It’s so important for your message to get across because young women today are thinking about their goals and what they want to build for the world, but also for themselves and their families. And there are so many women and people of color doing great work, how do we lift up their work? How do we get their voices heard? This is something I think about all the time, the voice of women and underrepresented communities in AI.

Diane: This is about educating people—not just women—to surface the accomplishments of everybody and make sure there’s no unconscious bias going on. I think Grace Hopper is a phenomenal tool for this, and there are things that I incorporate into my work day to prevent that unconscious bias: pausing to make sure the right people were included in a meeting, and that no one has been overlooked. And encouraging everyone in that meeting to participate so that all voices are heard.

Fei-Fei: Grace Hopper could be a great platform to share best practices for how to address these issues.

...young women today are thinking about their goals and what they want to build for the world, but also for themselves and their families. Dr. Fei-Fei Li

Diane: Every company is struggling to address diversity and there’s a school of thought that says having three or more people from one minority group makes all the difference in the world—I see it on boards. Whenever we have three or more women, the whole dynamic changes. Do you see that in your research group at all?

Fei-Fei: Yes, for a long time I was the only woman faculty member in the Stanford AI lab, but now it has attracted a lot of women who do very well because there’s a community. And that’s wonderful for me, and for the group.

Now back to you … you’ve had such a successful career, and I think a lot of women would love to know what keeps you going every day.

Diane: When you wake up in the morning, be excited about what’s ahead for the day. And if you’re not excited, ask yourself if it’s time for a change. Right now the Cloud is at the center of massive change in our world, and I’m lucky to have a front row seat to how it’s happening and what’s possible with it. We’re creating the next generation of technologies that are going to help people do things that we didn’t even know were possible, particularly in the AI/ML area. It’s exciting to be in the middle of the transformation of our world and the fast pace at which it’s happening.

Fei-Fei: Coming to Google Cloud, the most rewarding part is seeing how this is helping people go through that transformation and making a difference. And it’s at such a scale that it’s unthinkable on almost any other platform.

Diane: Cloud is making it easier for companies to work together and for people to work across boundaries together, and I love that. I’ve always found when you can collaborate across more boundaries you can get a lot more done.

To hear more from Fei-Fei and Diane, tune into Grace Hopper’s live stream on October 4. 

Source: Google Cloud


Access information quicker, do better work with Google Cloud Search

We all get sidetracked at work. We intend to be as efficient as possible, but inevitably, the “busyness” of business gets in the way through back-to-back meetings, unfinished docs or managing a rowdy inbox. To be more efficient, you need quick access to your information like relevant docs, important tasks and context for your meetings.

Sadly, according to a report by McKinsey, workers spend up to 20 percent of their time—an entire day each week—searching for and consolidating information across a number of tools. We made Google Cloud Search available to Enterprise and Business edition customers earlier this year so that teams can access important information quicker. Here are a few ways that Cloud Search can help you get the information you need to accomplish more throughout your day.

1. Search more intuitively, access information quicker

If you search for a doc, you’re probably not going to remember its exact name or where you saved it in Drive. Instead, you might remember who sent the doc to you or a specific piece of information it contains, like a statistic.

A few weeks ago, we launched a new, more intuitive way to search in Cloud Search using natural language processing (NLP) technology. Type questions in Cloud Search using everyday language, like “Documents shared with me by John?,” “What’s my agenda next Tuesday?,” or “What docs need my attention?” and it will track down useful information for you.
NLP GIF

2. Prioritize your to-dos, use spare time more wisely

With so much work to do, deciding what to focus on and what to leave for later isn’t always simple. A study by McKinsey reports that only nine percent of executives surveyed feel “very satisfied” with the way they allocate their time. We think technology, like Cloud Search, should help you with more than just finding what you’re looking for—it should help you stay focused on what’s important.

Imagine if your next meeting gets cancelled and you suddenly have an extra half hour to accomplish tasks. You can open the Cloud Search app to help you focus on what’s important. Powered by machine intelligence, Cloud Search proactively surfaces information that it believes is relevant to you and organizes it into simple cards that appear in the app throughout your workday. For example, it suggests documents or tasks based on which documents need your attention or upcoming meetings you have in Google Calendar.

3. Prepare for meetings, get more out of them

Employees spend a lot of time in meetings. According to a study in the UK by the Centre for Economics and Business, office workers spend an average of four hours per week in meetings. It’s even normal for us to join meetings unprepared. The same group surveyed feels like nearly half of the time (47%) spent in meetings is unproductive.

Thankfully, Cloud Search can help. It uses machine intelligence to organize and present information to set you up for success in a meeting. In addition to surfacing relevant docs, Cloud Search also surfaces information about meeting attendees from your corporate directory, and even includes links to relevant conversations from Gmail.

Start by going into Cloud Search to see info related to your next meeting. If you’re interested in looking at another meeting later in the day, just click on “Today’s meetings” and it will show you your agenda for the day. Next, select an event in your agenda (sourced from your Calendar) and Cloud Search will recommend information that’s relevant to that meeting.

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Take back your time and focus on what’s important—open the Cloud Search app and get started today, or ask your IT administrator to enable it in your domain. You can also learn more about how Cloud Search can help your teams here.

Source: Google Cloud


Present like a pro: these new updates in Slides are designed to make you look good

As a go-to presentation tool, Google Slides already comes equipped with real-time collaboration features. Starting today, we’re introducing new robust features to help you and your team win that pitch, nail that client presentation and get buy-in for new ideas—all while saving valuable time.

Here’s a look at the latest updates in Slides, including new G Suite integrations, partner applications and customization options.

Capture ideas in Keep, bring them to life in Slides

We built Keep to help you easily capture and organize ideas. Today, you can use a new drag-and-drop integration between Keep and Slides to transform these ideas into action. Simply select notes from Keep (or sort with #labels) and drag them into Slides. When you add a note from Keep into your presentation, Slides will automatically add a title and description for you.

Keep and Slides GIF

The Office of Information Technology for the State of Colorado uses the new Keep and Slides integration to keep track of population numbers at different agencies and report them to their team. Instead of digging through emails and Docs to track down figures, the team saves statistics to Keep and drags them into Slides to present.

If you’re new to Keep, download here.

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Skip manual updates, use linked Slides

Whether you’re trying to prepare several client presentations or make sure data is up to date, repeatedly copying slides from one presentation to another is a major time-sink. Now, you can link and sync slides from multiple presentations with a click. This way, you can maintain a single source of truth and easily update linked slides to match the source, like for quarterly business reviews or company presentations.

Slides embedding GIF

Sriram Iyer, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce Sales Cloud, is excited to use the new slide embedding feature to streamline his teams workflows. Says Iyer, “At Salesforce, we use Google Slides for customer-facing and internal presentations. The linked slides feature will help us easily keep presentations up-to-date.”

You asked, we updated

Our customers also asked for additional features in Slides. We listened to those requests and now you can:

  • Insert Diagrams, or ready-to-use visualizations. This is great for when you need to effectively share timelines, processes or hierarchies.
  • Select Grid view to view all your slides at once as thumbnails. This helps you easily reorder or change formats of multiple slides.
  • Tailor presentations to different audiences with the Skip slide feature. You can now choose to skip select slides without fully deleting then when you present from your phone or laptop.

Try these feature upgrades and create better presentations.

Try new add-ons, shape up your Slides

We’re constantly improving Slides to provide you with robust tools to share ideas. Today, we’re bringing add-ons to Slides. To kick it off, we’re introducing seven  integrations—designed to bring expertise from companies like Adobe and Shutterstock—right in Slides.

Use these new, rich integrations to help you build more powerful presentations, whether you want to add full-bleed images, use advanced image editing tools or include diagrams you created in programs outside of G Suite.

  • Search for and add images from Adobe Stock, right in Slides. You can use the Adobe Stock add-on to build visually-stunning presentations in Slides. Teams can seamlessly search, preview and purchase Adobe Stock images—without leaving Slides. Through the add-on, teams can also use Adobe Stock Visual Search to find relevant stock images with an uploaded image (versus a text search).

Adobe still

  • Use the Shutterstock Editor add-on to add and customize photos within Slides. With the Shutterstock add-on, teams can browse Shutterstock’s entire library of royalty-free images, and sign into Shutterstock to license content, directly in Slides. Select an image, then apply customization options like filters, text, logos and more.

Shutterstock still

Teams can benefit from even more powerful capabilities in Slides with additional add-ons from Balsamiq, Lucidchart, Pear Deck, Noun Project and Unsplash. Tap “Add-ons” in the Slides menu bar to get started.

Customize Slides, automate workflows with Apps Script

Apps Script, the same technology that powers add-ons, can transform the way you work. Apps Script for Slides lets your teams programmatically create and modify Slides, and customize the menus, dialog boxes and sidebars in the user interface.

So, what’s the big deal? Apps Script provides amazing possibilities for improving your team’s workflows. Sales teams can use Apps Script to automatically pull in information from Sheets’ databases to create customized client pitch decks and templates. Marketing teams can host internal assets in a customized sidebar in Slides for easy access to logos and files they use most often.

Learn how you can automate your workflows using Apps Script.


Present with confidence using Slides—these updates start rolling out to all customers globally on the web today.

Source: Google Cloud