Tag Archives: Google Workspace

A milestone for King’s Cross: a local innovation hub

Over the last few years, King’s Cross has truly transformed, becoming a thriving hub of innovation and creativity. The transformation is a sign of the UK’s strengths, with its incredible local talent and strong history of leading technological and scientific progress. These strengths inspired us to invest here in King's Cross, in one of our most ambitious developments to date.

Today, together with local MP, Keir Starmer, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, leader of Camden Council Georgia Gould, and our building partners, we celebrated a major milestone in the construction of our new King’s Cross office – and in our long-standing commitment to the UK – as we placed the final beam on our new development.

Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party and MP for Holborn and St Pancras said:

“It’s fantastic to attend not only as the leader of the Labour Party and local MP but as a proud local resident of more than 25 years. Congratulations to Google on your magnificent new building, and for all it represents – a seizing of opportunity, harnessing of talent, the creation of good, sustainable jobs and an immense contribution to our community. You’re showing what can be achieved when forward looking local government partners with the ingenuity of the private sector.”

We have long believed that creativity is spurred by environments that promote connection and wellbeing. This is more important than ever as we adapt to a future of flexible, hybrid working. Our new King’s Cross building will be equipped with new workplace technologies to help global and remote teams collaborate more effectively, build relationships, learn from colleagues and dream up new ways to solve complex challenges.

It will also bea place for community and connection thanks to the ground floor retail and community spaces, which are being curated with — and for — the local community. In the coming weeks, in partnership with more than 30 youth organisations in Camden, we’re excited to open our doors to 500 local young people for a week of taster sessions to inspire school students and job seekers with careers in technology, as well as more than 100 local work experience students.

Innovation extends to the design of the building itself, which is playing an important role in helping us to achieve our goal of going carbon free by 2030. We’re pioneering new technologies that will make our King’s Cross office our most ambitious smart building to date, including a system of 13,500 interconnected devices that will work together to improve energy efficiency in real time.

While the doors of our new King’s Cross development won’t open until 2024, incredible work is already underway nearby. The neighbourhood is home to thousands of our engineers working on products like Android, Wear OS, Search and Google Business Profiles, which are used the world over. In fact, many of the team behind some of our newest products – to be released later this year – are based right here in King’s Cross. We look forward to growing these teams and being a part of the local community’s future growth and development.

Sadiq Khan, London Mayor signing a whiteboard

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan commented:

“London has built a reputation as a world leader in technology and innovation, so I’m delighted to see Google reaffirming its commitment to London with the first wholly owned and designed Google building outside of the United States. I was lucky enough to be present for the original ground-breaking at this site back in 2017. So, it’s incredible to see the progress that’s been made since then on this hugely ambitious project.

"My ambition, as Mayor, is to build a better London for everyone – one that is fairer, greener and more prosperous for all. And this magnificent building is a shining example of confidence in our city.”

New Google Workspace features to help solo business owners

Over the past few years, we’ve seen more people forging their own path and turning their personal passions into businesses. These individual business owners, sometimes called “solopreneurs,” wear many hats as they run and grow their businesses: salesperson, marketer, accountant, the list goes on.

That’s why one year ago, we launched Google Workspace Individual as a new offering to help these solo business owners grow their businesses with the familiar apps they’re likely already using in their personal life. We’ve heard from customers that Google Workspace Individual helps them focus their time on doing what they love — like meeting with customers and designing personalized services — and less time on recurring tasks like scheduling appointments and sending emails. Since launch, we’ve delivered a number of improvements to provide even more value to customers, and today we’re announcing what’s coming next – electronic signatures right within Google Docs.

Coming soon: Easily sign important documents right in Google Docs

Whether you’re an event planner or digital creator, it can be a challenge to stay on top of contracts and customer agreements that need to be signed as you’re constantly context switching and jumping between different apps to get work done. That’s why we’re natively integrating eSignature in Google Docs, so you can quickly execute agreements from the familiar interface of Docs without having to switch tabs or apps.

Animation of the process of inserting electronic signature fields in Google Docs

Coming soon: Easily request electronic signatures directly in Google Docs

eSignature in Google Docs will take advantage of the same secure-by-design infrastructure and built-in protections Google uses to help secure your information and safeguard your privacy. Let’s take a look at how eSignature can help you create agreements:

  • Collaborate in documents: Collaborate on changes directly in Google Docs with comments and suggestions — no need to export the file to send a draft contract over email.
  • Add fields to documents: Within the familiar Google Docs interface, you can easily drag and drop signature and date fields in branded documents you create.
  • Request a signature: Once you resolve all comments and suggestions, requesting a signature is as easy as sharing a file in Drive.
  • Add signatures: When ready to sign, the signee can easily add their signature, no downloads needed. Once the signature is added, a completed PDF contract is emailed to both parties.
  • Monitor and track progress: Quickly see the status of pending signatures and easily find completed, signed contracts.
  • Create copies of contracts: For signature workflows that need to be repeated regularly, you can streamline the process by creating copies of existing contracts and then modifying as needed.

eSignature in Google Docs is coming soon in Beta to Google Workspace Individual users and is the latest in a series of improvements we’ve announced for the subscription in the past year. If you’re already using a dedicated eSignature solution, Google Workspace integrates with a number of leading providers. Learn more about how these eSignature and other integrations can help you optimize your workspace on our blog post.

ICYMI: Google Workspace Individual updates from this past year

Email marketing updates for engaging campaigns

For any business, it’s vital to connect with customers and prospects, both on a one-to-one basis and at a large scale. Google Workspace Individual makes it easy to do both, so you can easily send communications like monthly newsletters and also offer items like scheduled consultations.

Animation of the process of creating and sending customized marketing emails from Gmail

Create and send customized marketing emails from Gmail

To help you reach many customers at once, last year we added a way to run simple email campaigns directly in Gmail. We started first by providing professionally designed templates that you can customize with your own branding and images in just a few clicks. Then earlier this year, we added multi-send, which allows you to deliver individual emails to a large number of recipients with a unique unsubscribe link for each recipient. With the combination of these improvements, it’s easy to make communications as targeted as you like, because you can create multiple email mailing lists within Google Contacts for different audiences and easily tailor the message to each audience. Gmail layouts and multi-send are generally available in Google Workspace Individual today.

Appointment scheduling updates for easier bookings

For scheduling in-person appointments or virtual meetings, Google Calendar helps streamline the appointment scheduling process and avoid back-and-forth communication to find a time that works. Since launching, we’ve made a number of enhancements that improve the experience for both the business owner and scheduler, including the ability to:

  • Help prevent no-shows by customizing the timing of reminder emails and having users verify their email before booking for added security.
  • Reflect your operational needs by setting flexible appointment durations, adding buffer time between appointments and limiting the number of bookings per day.
  • Easily update your availability with one-off exceptions like regional holidays and customizable start and end dates.
Animation of creating a shareable appointment schedule that clients can use to book appointments online by setting your availability and appointment offerings directly in Google Calendar.

Get your own professional booking page that stays up to date

Customized appointment scheduling with the above features are generally available in Google Workspace Individual today, on the web and your mobile device.

Google Meet updates for your customer and partner calls

Once an appointment is on the books and it’s time to connect, Google Meet provides an easy way for you to deepen customer and partner relationships through secure video meetings. Helpful features in Meet ensure you can be clearly seen and heard. Noise cancellation removes background distractions like barking dogs, while low-light mode automatically adjusts your video in poorly lit settings. Here are a few notable Meet announcements from this past year:

  • Mimic taking your call from a real-life cafe or condo with immersive backgrounds.
  • Filter out the echoes in spaces with hard surfaces so that you can have conference-room audio quality whether you’re in a basement, a kitchen, or a big empty room.
  • Clearly see participants on a call while you’re presenting or multi-tasking with picture-in-picture on Chrome browsers.
  • Review your forecast or business proposal with meetings directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides.
Animation of joining a Google Meet video call directly from Google Docs.

Quickly join a Google Meet call from Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

Sign up today to take advantage of promotional pricing

Save 20% until October 2022[3bdee8]when you sign up for Google Workspace Individual today or learn more about Google Workspace Individual on our website.

5 of our favorite Android widget features

Widgets are a simple way to personalize any Home screen, putting the information that’s most important to you — your inbox, the weather, your to-do list or even a photo of your dog — front and center.

With the upcoming launch of the nearby traffic widget for Google Maps (more on that soon), 35 Google widgets will be available on Android. To celebrate, we’re spotlighting five of our favorite widget features to help everyone better organize and personalize their Home screens.

Check local traffic with a tap

Whether you’re commuting or heading out to meet friends, Google Maps’ real-time traffic predictions can help you easily plan your route. And with the new nearby traffic widget, launching in the coming weeks, you’ll see this information for your current location right from your Android Home screen. So if you're about to leave home, work, school or anywhere else, you’ll know at a glance exactly what local traffic might be like. And because Android widgets are tappable, you can zoom in and out without opening the Maps app.

Dark green Android wallpaper showing a bamboo palm with the Google nearby traffic widget laid over the top. The widget shows a local map of traffic levels and zooms in and out.

Tap to instantly archive emails

The Gmail widget is a simple way to keep your inbox organized. Just tap to archive an email when it hits your inbox, without having to open the Gmail app.

An Android background with light purple orchids. In the foreground, the Gmail widget animates through the archive feature. An email arrives in the inbox, the archive button is tapped and the email disappears.

Scroll through your to-do list

Lots of you love the scrollable to-do list in the Keep widget. It’s an easy way to keep track of your tasks for the day, and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as crossing them off when you’re done — except maybe scrolling back up to see everything you accomplished.

A light peach-colored pastel background, with the Google Keep widget in the foreground. The widget scrolls through a list of items to pack for vacation.

Skim through your favorite translations

The Google Translate widget’s scrolling feature can help you stay organized, too. If you need to keep certain phrases handy while you’re traveling or speaking with friends and family, you can set them up to always appear on your Home Screen. Just star your favorite translations in the app and you’ll see them right on the widget.

Light orange Android wallpaper of a flower stamen. In the foreground a user scrolls through the Google translate widget, with selected saved translations to use.

Resize widgets to fit your needs

Android widgets are easy to resize and even change shape to help you declutter your Home screen — while keeping helpful features intact. For example, if you make the Drive widget smaller, it’ll turn into a toolbar so you can still quickly search for your files.

Light green Android wallpaper showing a green flower. In the foreground, an animation of different Google Drive widgets resizes.

Reach global markets as a Recommended for Google Workspace app

Posted by Elena Kingbo, Program Manager, Google Workspace

Today we announced our 2022 Recommended for Google Workspace apps. This program offers a distinct way for third-party developers to better reach Google Workspace users and attract new customers to their apps. So, for those developers who may be interested in it in the future, we wanted to walk through the basics of what the program is and how to apply for it.

What is the Google Workspace Marketplace?

The Google Workspace Marketplace is the first place Google Workspace administrators and users look when they want to extend or enhance their Google Workspace experience. The Marketplace can be accessed within most first-party Google Workspace apps, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Calendar, and Classroom, as well as at workspace.google.com/marketplace.

Launch Marketplace from your favorite Google Workspace app by clicking the “+”.

The Google Workspace Marketplace is the first place Google Workspace administrators and users look when they want to extend or enhance their Google Workspace experience. The Marketplace can be accessed within most first-party Google Workspace apps, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Calendar, and Classroom, as well as at workspace.google.com/marketplace.

Developers who want to build and deploy apps to the Marketplace can either use their own preferred coding language or leverage Google Apps Script, our serverless platform. You can learn more about building apps and publishing them to the Marketplace in our developer documentation.

What is the Recommended for Google Workspace program?

The Recommended for Google Workspace program identifies and promotes a select number of Google Workspace applications that are secure, reliable, well-integrated with Google Workspace, and loved by users.

Partners who submit their apps will be evaluated based on the quality of their solution, their strategic investment in Google Workspace integrations, and security and privacy posture. In addition, all partners will be required to complete a third-party security assessment in the final stage of the assessment. You can sign up for our Google Workspace developers newsletter to be notified when the next application window opens up.

What it means to be a Recommended app

Google Workspace customers are often looking for high-quality, secure apps they can install to enhance their Workspace experience. Since recommended apps have exceeded our highest security and reliability standards, they are the first apps we recommend to customers and among the first apps users see when they visit the Marketplace. Recommended partners will also receive new and enhanced benefits, including technical advisory services and early access to APIs.

There have been more than 4.8 billion app installs on the Marketplace. These apps are an integral part of the Google Workspace experience and users are continually looking for new ways to extend the value of Google Workspace. Creating a Google Workspace app is a fantastic opportunity for innovative developers interested in enhancing the Google Workspace experience. And, for those developers who truly want to be set apart as a trusted app on the Marketplace, the Recommended for Google Workspace program offers an unique way to reach new customers.

Explore our Recommended for Google Workspace apps on the Google Workspace Marketplace.

New Workspace for Education tools to enhance learning

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

Whether learning takes place in the classroom, or virtually on Google Meet, control remains paramount. It’s also important to enhance educational tools that help take teaching and learning further for every educator and student. Today we’re announcing several new Google Workspace for Education tools rooted in enhancing learning for the individual and classroom, giving educators more control and increasing support for diverse learners.

Enrich teaching and learning experiences for all types of learners

No one student experience is the same, so it’s a key priority for us to ensure the entire learning environment is enhanced. Earlier this year, we announced many features in Docs, like Assistive Writing features and the ability to use Meet directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides. For our Google Workspace for Education Plus and Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers, we announced live-translated captions in Meet, which allows hosts to add live-translated captions to support video meetings for language classes, multilingual audiences and even parent/guardian teacher conferences.

Today, we’re adding even more features to make Meet useful in the classroom. which are all available in Google Workspace for Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade:

  • Host Q&As and Polls in live stream: Users in a livestream later this year can participate in Q&As and polls, matching the experience Meet attendees enjoy today.
  • Auto-transcribe Meet calls directly into a Google Doc: Keep a record of meetings with less storage than a recording and provide an easier way to edit, review, search and share lessons with students.
  • Live stream public events directly to YouTube: Live stream Meet video calls to the public via YouTube for events like school board meetings, school assemblies and much more.
  • Animated image of joining a Meet call directly from Google Docs.

    Join a Meet call directly from Google Docs.

  • Image of a PTA meeting in Google Meet showing how to turn the feature on to stream directly to YouTube through Google Meet.

    Stream directly to YouTube through Google Meet.

  • Image of students in a meet call and the feature to turn on auto-transcribe within Google Meet.

    Turn on auto-transcribe within Google Meet.

We’ve also made significant updates to Originality Reports in both Classroom and Assignments. Schools using Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade can soon analyze Microsoft Word documents and backfill their private, school-owned repository with previous student classwork so teachers can compare student-to-student matches, in addition to hundreds of billions of web pages and over 40 million books. Also, starting today, originality reports can run reports in more languages including Dutch, Thai and Tagalog.

Increased controls and safety

We’re adding new Meet features to make sure you have control and can manage your class:

  • Additional Meet controls: Admins can now control whether users in their organization can share their screen and use polls, Q&As, and whiteboarding to reduce student distractions and allow only teachers to use these settings.
  • Picture-in-Picture: To be able to see and manage your class while presenting, we added Picture-in-Picture in Google Meet. Hosts can now see up to four meeting participants while presenting and navigating different tabs and windows, when running Meet on Chrome browsers.
Animated image of a Google Meet call and how to turn on the Picture-in-Picture feature to navigate to another tab while also seeing participants in Meet.

Building more inclusive learning environments

We believe in building with and for people with disabilities, and one of the ways we do that is by building accessibility features directly into our products.

  • Individualized accessibility preferences: Previously, these preferences were shared across all Workspace tools, meaning users needed to continuously turn them on and off. Now, accessibility features, like high contrast mode, will automatically work in Docs, Sheets and Slides, without needing to turn on an Editor-specific preference.
  • Alt-text in Gmail: You can now add alt-text to your images in Gmail. This allows people to add context for an image, making it accessible for people using screen readers and helping them better understand exactly what is being shared.

With these improvements, we aim to change the way the classroom is connected, with the ability to teach across various learners’ needs. We look forward to another upcoming school year that is more connected and more personalized, regardless of where learning is taking place.

The Anywhere School 2022

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

Each year, my team and I speak with thousands of educators around the world to better understand how students and teachers are using technology in the classroom. We do this to help educators amplify their efforts and, most importantly, help students pursue their personal potential. Today, we’re sharing new updates to Chromebooks, Google Classroom and Google Meet to set up teachers and students for success ahead of the next school year.

Create screencasts and cast to a big screen with Chromebooks

From sharing devices to 1:1, to teachers using Chromebooks alongside students, we’re constantly evolving our features to meet the needs of the classroom. We’re adding new features like the Screencast app, built into Chrome OS in M103, where you can record, trim, share and view transcribed screencasts — and create a custom library of videos automatically saved in Google Drive. Cast moderator is a new mode coming to select devices with Google TV that enables both educators and students to wirelessly share their Chromebook screen to a class display using an access code, so that only folks in the same classroom as the display are able to cast. To get notified on availability of cast moderator hardware, express interest in this form. And for more on what’s new for Chromebooks, read our blog.

YouTube video of Screencast on Chromebooks
10:25

Adaptive learning enhancements in Google Classroom

We’re rolling out newintegrations and tools to improve teachers’ day-to-day tasks and help students grow their skills. Practice sets lean into adaptive learning by giving students instant feedback on their answers and real-time support if they get stuck — providing automated insights for teachers to identify potential gaps in students’ understanding. Practice sets are now globally available in beta, and in English only, for Google Workspace for Education customers with the Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Editions. Sign up here to get access. With add-ons, we’re making it possible for students and teachers to access more than 15 EdTech tools, like Kahoot! and Pear Deck, all with a single login. Teachers can create engaging assignments and see new grading experiences, while students don’t have to worry about remembering extra passwords and navigating external websites. Add-ons will be available with the Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Edition. And to get ready for the new school year or semester, we’re expanding our roster import feature in Google Workspace for Education Plus to an additional 15 countries, in partnership with Elevate Data Sync, so class lists can automatically be synced with student information systems. Sign up here for the beta. For more on what’s new with Classroom, read our blog.

YouTube video of practice sets in Google Classroom
10:25

Better interconnectivity and efficiency with Google Meet

For those using the Google Workspace for Education Teaching & Learning and Plus editions, we’re adding features focused on increasing interconnectivity, control and efficiency in the classroom to Google Meet. Now, Meet calls can be auto-transcribed directly into a Google Doc for easy lesson reviews and the ability to search for keywords and concepts. Ever wished you could keep tabs on your class and present from another tab? Now you can, with Picture in Picture in Meet, where you can navigate other tabs in Chrome while viewing 4 tiles of students in a Meet call. And to keep your class engaged and regularly check for understanding, you can now add polls and Q&A to Live-streams, and live-stream directly to YouTube. For more on what’s new with Google Meet, read our blog.

Gif of picture in picture in Google Meet on Chrome OS

Building for the future of more personal learning experiences

We want to continue developing products and features that meet the needs of students and teachers today, and in the future. The magic happens when tech is put in the hands of teachers who know how to engage students, to challenge them and instill that love of learning. Education is not one size fits all — and neither is the technology that powers education.

Helping every student learn how they learn best

Editor’s note: Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We’re also sharing how we’re partnering with people with disabilitiesto build products and a newAndroid accessibility feature.

I often think about what Laura Allen, a Googler who leads our accessibility and disability inclusion work and is low vision, shared with me about her experience growing up using assistive technology in school. She said: “Technology should help children learn the way they need to learn, it shouldn’t be a thing that makes them feel different in the classroom.”

As someone who has spent years building technology at Google, I’ve thought a lot about how we can create the best possible experience for everyone. A big part of getting that right is building accessibility right into our products — which is especially important when it comes to technology that helps students learn. Ninety-five percent of students who have disabilities attend traditional schools, but the majority of those classrooms lack resources to support their needs. The need for accessible learning experiences only intensifies with the recent rise of blended learning environments.

  • Teacher working with a student on a Chromebook

    An educator works 1:1 with a student

  • A teacher sitting with a student with intellectual disabilities. The teacher's cane is leaning on the table nearby.

    An educator sits with a student working on a Chromebook.

  • One autistic student and one student with Downs Syndrome working together in classroom on a Chromebook

    Students in their special education class working together in their classroom

We want students to have the tools they need to express themselves and access information in a way that works best for them. Here are a few recent ways we’ve built accessibility features directly into our education tools.

  • You can now add alt-text in Gmail. This allows people to add context for an image, making it accessible for people using screen readers and helping them better understand exactly what is being shared.
  • We’ve improved our Google Docs experience with braille support. With comments and highlights in braille, students reading a Google Doc will now hear start and end indications for comments and highlights alongside the rest of the text. This change makes it easier for people using screen readers and refreshable braille displays to interact with comments in documents and identify text with background colors.

We added new features to dictation on Chrome OS. Now you canspeak into any text field on the Chromebook simply by clicking on the mic icon in the status area or pressing Search + d to dictate. The dictation feature can be helpful for students who have trouble writing — whether that's because of dysgraphia, having a motor disability or something else. You can also edit using just your voice. Simply say “new line” to move the cursor to another line, “help” to see the full list of commands, or “undo” to fix any typos or mistakes.

Accessibility in action

We see the helpfulness of these features when they’re in the hands of teachers and students. My team recently spoke with Tracey Green, a teacher of the Deaf and an Itinerant Educational Specialist from the Montreal Oral School for the Deaf (MOSD) in Quebec. Her job is to work with students with hearing loss who attend local schools.

She and Chris Webb, who is a teacher at John Rennie High School and also a Google for Education Certified Innovator and Trainer, have been using Google Classroom to support students throughout distance learning and those who have returned to the classroom. For example, they integrate YouTube videos with automatic captioning and rely on captions in Google Meet. Their efforts to improve access to information during school assemblies kicked off a school-wide, student-led accessibility initiative to raise awareness about hearing loss and related accessibility issues.

Benefiting everyone

One phenomenon that underscores how disability-first features benefit everyone is called the “Curb-cut Effect.” When curbs were flattened to allow access for people with disabilities, it also meant greater access for bikers, skateboarders, and people pushing strollers or shopping carts. Everyone benefitted. Similarly, accessibility improvements like these recent updates to our education tools mean a better experience for everyone.

We see this similar effect time and time again among our own products. Take Live Caption in the Chrome browser for example. Similar to Google Meet captions, Live Caption in Chrome captions any video and audio content on your browser, which can be especially helpful for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. It can also be helpful when people want to read content without noise so they don’t disrupt the people around them.

When we build accessible products, we build for everyone. It’s one of the things I love about working for Google — that we serve the world. There’s a lot of work ahead of us to make sure our products delight all people, with and without disabilities. I’m excited and humbled by technology’s potential to help get us closer to this future.

Stay up-to-date on the latest accessibility features from Google for Education.

Export log data in near-real time to BigQuery

Quick summary 

Currently, you can export Google Workspace logs to Google BigQuery for customized and scalable reporting. Exports take place as a daily sync, returning log data that can be up to three days old. With this launch, exported log data streams will be near-real time (under 10 minutes), ensuring fresh data for your export. This helps you stay on top of security threats and analysis with the most up-to-date activity log data. 



Stream activity log data in near-real time when using BigQuery export




Getting started 

  • Admins: This feature works automatically if you have set up service log exports to BigQuery. There is no additional admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: There is no end user impact. 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

7 ways AI is making Google Workspace better

Hybrid work life is…well, one of our many “new normals.” Over the last two years, many of us have gone through various versions of what the office looks like, and these changes have been a significant motivation behind some of our recent updates to Google Workspace.

With some people in the office and others at home, the amount of emails, chats, and meetings in our inboxes and on our calendars has increased — so we’ve been working on finding more ways to use machine learning to fight information overload and keep you feeling productive. Here are seven upcoming features — most made possible by AI — on their way to Google Workspace:

  1. Portrait restore uses Google AI technology to improve video quality, so even if you’re using Google Meet in a dimly lit room using an old webcam — or maybe you’ve got a bad WiFi connection — your video will be automatically enhanced.
Animated GIF showing a person in a Google Meet call who is backlit, and their image is very dark in the call. Portrait restore is applied, and their face is then better lit and more visible.

Portrait restore improves video quality using Google AI.

2. We’re also introducing portrait light: This feature uses machine learning to simulate studio-quality lighting in your video feed, and you can even adjust the lighting position and brightness.

Animated GIF showing a person in a Google Meet call. The cursor is moving around selecting areas where it can apply portrait lighting, brightening up various areas of the image.

Portrait light brings studio-quality lighting effects to Google Meet.

3. We’re adding de-reverberation, which filters out echoes in spaces with hard surfaces, so it sounds like you’re in a mic-ed up conference room…even if you’re in your basement.

4. Live sharing will sync content that’s being shared in a Google Meet call and allow participants to control the media. Whether you’re at the office or at home, the person sharing the content or viewing it, participants will see and hear what’s going on at the same time. Our partners and developers can use our live sharing APIs today to start integrating Meet into their apps.

5. Earlier this year, we introduced automated built-in summaries for Google Docs. Now we’re extending auto-summaries to Spaces so you get a helpful digest of conversations you missed.

An animated GIF demonstrating how summaries in Spaces works.

Summaries in Spaces help you catch up quickly on conversations.

6. Later this year, we're bringingautomated transcriptions of Google Meet meetings to Google Workspace, so people can catch up quickly on meetings they couldn't attend.

7. Many of the security protections that we use for Gmail are coming to Google Slides, Docs and Sheets. For example, if a Doc you’re about to open contains phishing links or malware, you’ll get an automatic alert.

For a deeper dive into all the new AI capabilities coming to Google Workspace, head over to the Cloud blog for more details.

Now in Developer Preview: Create Spaces and Add Members with the Google Chat API

Posted by Mike Rhemtulla, Product Manager & Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate

The Google Chat API updates are in developer preview. To use the API, developers can apply for access through our Google Workspace Developer Preview Program.

In Google Chat, Spaces serve as a central place for team collaboration—instead of starting an email chain or scheduling a meeting, teams can move conversations and collaboration into a space, giving everybody the ability to stay connected, reference team or project info and revisit work asynchronously.

Programmatically create and populate Google Chat spaces

We are pleased to announce that you can programmatically create new Spaces and add members on behalf of users, through the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program via the Google Chat API.

These latest additions to the Chat API unlock some sought after scenarios for developers looking to add new dimensions to how they can leverage Chat. For example, organizations that need to create Spaces based on various business needs will now be able to do so programmatically. This will open up the door for Chat solutions that can build out Spaces modeled to represent new teams, projects, working groups, or whatever the specific use case may be that can benefit from automatically creating new Spaces.

Coming soon, example from an early developer preview partner

One of our developer preview partners, PagerDuty, is already leveraging the API as part of their upcoming release of PagerDuty for Google Chat. The app will allow users of their incident management solution to take quick actions around an incident with the right team members needed. PagerDuty for Chat will allow the incident team to isolate and focus on the problem at hand without being distracted by having to set up a new space, or further distract any folks in the current space who aren’t a part of the resolution team for a specific incident. All of this will be done seamlessly through PagerDuty for Chat as part of the natural flow of working with Google Chat.

Example of how a Chat app with the new APIs can enable users to easily create new Spaces and add members to an incident.

Learn more and get started

As you can imagine, there are many use cases that show off the potential of what you can build with the Chat API and the new Create methods. Whether it’s creating Spaces with specified members or extending Chat apps that spawn off new collaboration Spaces for use with help desk, HR, sales, customer support or any endless number of scenarios, we encourage you to explore what you can do today.

How to get started: