G Suite Updates

This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.

  1. Launching in beta: manage working locations with the Calendar API

    What’s changing

    Available now in beta through our Developer Preview Program, you can read working location data using the Calendar API and get notified when those working locations change. Previously, we said this functionality would be available through a separate API. However, in order to provide a more streamlined experience, this functionality will be instead available in the Calendar API. 

    Using the API to read a Calendar user’s working location values can help you:

    • Analyze the flow and volume of people through physical campuses, helping you adapt on-site resources to the needs of your employees.
    • Share whereabouts across other internal or third-party surfaces, making it easier to enable tasks such as hot desk booking or schedule in-office or remote working days.

    We anticipate write support for the API to become available in Q3 2023 — we’ll share an update here on the Workspace Updates Blog at that time.

    Getting started


    Admins and Developers: 

    Admins: 

    Availability

    While all developers will be able to use the API, the working location feature is only available for eligible Workspace editions:

    • Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade and Nonprofits customers, as well as legacy G Suite Business customers 
    • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Frontline, G Suite Basic customers 

    Resources


  2. Connected Sheets for Looker now available for all Looker-hosted instances

    What’s changing

    In 2020, we introduced Connected Sheets on Google Sheets, to help you analyze, visualize, and share billions of rows of data from your spreadsheets. Since then, we’ve made numerous improvements to the feature, including the recent announcement that you can now explore Google Cloud hosted Looker instances using Connected Sheets.


    Today, we’re expanding upon this by making Connected Sheets available for Looker instances hosted on non-Google Cloud providers like AWS and Azure. 
    Connected Sheets for Looker now available for all Looker-hosted instances

    Getting started 

    • Admins: 
    • End users: 
      • If enabled by your admin, follow these steps to explore Looker data using Connected Sheets: 
        • In a Google Sheet navigate to “Data” > “Data connectors” > “Connect to Looker” > enter in the URL of a Looker instance, for example: https://example.looker.com. You will then need to authorize Sheets to access your Looker data. After you connect to an Explore, you can see the available data and continue your analysis in Google Sheets. 
        • Visit the Help Center to learn more about Connected Sheets for Looker. 

    Rollout pace 

    • This feature is available now for all users. 

    Availability 

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

    Resources 

  3. Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - March 24, 2023

    1 New update

    Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time (if not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers.


    Enhancing the Google Drive mobile experience on Android tablets
    We’re optimizing the Google Drive app for tablet displays through several modernizations, including shifting the navigation bar to the side, optimizing visual components to take advantage of the larger screen, and making it easier to see file details for a selected file. | Rolling out to Rapid Release domains now; launch to Scheduled Release domains planned for April 3, 2023.



    Previous announcements

    The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.


    Improvements to content organization in Google Docs
    We’re rolling out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. We’re also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier for you to find and utilize table formatting options. Learn more. 


    Add or remove client-side encryption from a Google Doc
    You can now choose to add client-side encryption to an existing document or remove it from an already encrypted document (File > Make a copy > Add/Remove additional encryption). This update gives you the flexibility to control encryption as your documents and projects evolve and progress. | Learn more.

    Completed rollouts

    The features below completed their rollouts to Rapid Release domains, Scheduled Release domains, or both. Please refer to the original blog post for additional details.


  4. Add or remove client-side encryption from a Google Doc

    What’s changing 

    You can now choose to add client-side encryption to an existing document or remove it from an already encrypted document (File > Make a copy > Add/Remove additional encryption). This update gives you the flexibility to control encryption as your documents and projects evolve and progress.



    Getting started

    Rollout pace


    Availability

    • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Education Plus customers

    Resources


  5. Improvements to content organization in Google Docs

    What’s changing

    We’re rolling out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. You now have the options to: 
    • Toggle between three default styles 
    • Toggle page numbers 
    • Toggle tab leader styling (adds lines between a heading and the page number) 
    • Include and indent headings based on levels 
    With these enhanced customizations, we hope this highly requested feature refines titles and headings to personalize the content of your document. 

    We’re also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier for you to find and utilize table formatting options. Upon adding or editing a table, you will notice a new “Table” section with alignment preferences and a new “Cell” section with clearer cell-specific formatting options within the table properties sidebar. 

    Getting started 

    • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
    • End users: 
      • For tables, go to Insert > Table > click the “Table options” button in the top toolbar to open the Table properties sidebar. You can also right-click a table and select “Table properties” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding and editing tables. 
      • For table of contents, go to Insert > Table of contents. In paginated mode, there are three table of contents quick layout options: 
        • Plain text 
        • Dotted 
        • Links 
      • Right-click the newly created table of contents and select “Table of contents options” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding a title, heading, or table of contents in a document. 

    Rollout pace 

    Table of Contents: 
    Table sidebar: 

    Availability 

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

    Resources 

  6. Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap - March 17, 2023

    New updates 

    There are no new updates to share this week. Please see below for a recap of published announcements. 


    Previous announcements

    The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.


    Introducing new space manager capabilities in Google Chat
    Space managers now have additional capabilities to ensure effective conversations take place in spaces: space configuration, member management, and conversation moderation. | Learn more.

    External label for Google Meet participants
    “External” labels will be available in Google Meet. Users will see a label in the top-left corner of their meeting screen indicating that participants who are external to the meeting host’s domain have joined the meeting. In the people panel, external participants will be denoted with the same icon. | Learn more.

    Provide custom Google Meet background images for your users
    Admins can now provide a set of images for the background replace feature in Google Meet. This will enable users to easily select an image that properly represents their company's specific brand and style. | Learn more. 

    Improving your security with shorter Session Length defaults
    To further improve security for our customers, we are changing the default session length to 16 hours for existing Google Cloud customers. Note that this update refers to managing user connections to Google Cloud services (e.g. Google Cloud console), not connections to Google services (e.g. Gmail on the web). | Learn more. 



    Completed rollouts

    The features below completed their rollouts to Rapid Release domains, Scheduled Release domains, or both. Please refer to the original blog post for additional details.


    Rapid Release Domains:
    Scheduled Release Domains:
    Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:

  7. Improving your security with shorter Session Length defaults

    What’s changing 

    To further improve security for our customers, we are changing the default session length to 16 hours for existing Google Cloud customers. Note that this update refers to managing user connections to Google Cloud services (e.g. Google Cloud console), not connections to Google services (e.g. Gmail on the web). 


    For existing customers who have session length configured to Never Expire, we are updating the session length to 16 hours. See below for more information. 




    Who’s impacted 

    Admins, end users, and developers 


    Why you’d use it 

    Many apps and services can access sensitive data or perform sensitive actions. Because of this, managing session length is foundational to cloud security and compliance. It ensures that access to the Google Cloud Platform is finite after a successful authentication, which helps deter bad actors should they gain access to credentials or devices.


    Additional details 

    Google Cloud session controls 
    For existing customers who have session length configured to Never Expire, we are updating the session length to 16 hours. This ensures customers do not mistakenly grant infinite session length to users or apps using Oauth user scopes. After the session expires, users will need to re-enter their login credentials to continue their access. This impacts the following: 

    Settings can be customized for specific organizations, and will impact all users within that org. This is a timed session length that expires the session regardless of the user's activity. When choosing a session length, admins have the following options:
    • Choose from a range of predefined session lengths, or set a custom session length between 1 and 24 hours. 
    • Configure whether users need just a password, or require a Security Key to re-authenticate.


    Third-party SAML identity providers and session length controls 
    If your organization uses a third-party SAML-based identity provider (IdP), the cloud sessions will expire, but the user may be transparently re-authenticated (i.e. without actually being asked to present their credentials) if their session with the IdP is valid at that time. This is working as intended, as Google will redirect the user to the IdP and accept a valid assertion from the IdP. To ensure that users are required to re-authenticate at the correct frequency, evaluate the configuration options on your IdP and review the Help Center article to Set up SSO via a third party Identity provider.


    Trusted applications
    Some apps are not designed to gracefully handle the re-authentication scenario, which can cause confusing app behavior. Other apps are deployed for server-to-server purposes via user credentials — because they don’t require service account credentials, they are not prompted to periodically re-authenticate.

    If you have specific apps like this, and you do not want them to be impacted by session length reauthentication, the org admin can add these apps to the trusted list for your organization. This will exempt the app from session length constraints, while implementing session controls for the rest of the apps and users within the organization.


    Getting started

    • Admins:For customers who have their session length set to "Never Expire", your session length will reset to 16 hours. It can be turned off or modified at the OU level. Visit the Help Center article to learn how to set session length for Google Cloud services for your organization.  
    • End users:If a session ends, users will simply need to log in to their account again using the familiar Google login flow. 

    Rollout pace

    Availability

    • Available to all Google Workspace and Cloud Identity customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

  8. Provide custom Google Meet background images for your users

    What’s changing 

    We’ve heard from our users that having backgrounds that match your brand guidelines are important for visual polish during critical meetings. Now, admins can now provide a set of images for the background replace feature in Google Meet. This will enable users to easily select an image that properly represents their company's specific brand and style. 




    Getting started 


    Rollout pace 


    Availability

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

    Note:Use this Help Center article to learn more about how to properly set image access so your users can use your custom backgrounds. 

    Resources

  9. External label for Google Meet participants

    What’s changing 

    “External” labels will be available in Google Meet. Users will see a label in the top-left corner of their meeting screen indicating that participants who are external to the meeting host’s domain have joined the meeting. In the people panel, external participants will be denoted with the same icon. 




    Getting started 

    • Admins:External labels will be on by default and can be configured in the Admin console at Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > Google Meet Safety Settings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Meet settings for your users. 
    • End users: No end user action is required — you’ll see warning labels for external participants when configured by your admin. 

    Rollout pace 


    Availability 

    • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and Nonprofits customers 
    • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

     Resources

  10. Introducing new Space Manager capabilities in Google Chat

    What’s changing

    Last year, we announced several improvements to spaces in Google Chat to help you better organize people, topics, and projects, which included introducing the space manager role. Currently, managers can: 
    • Remove and add participants
    • Assign or remove the space manager
    • Delete a space
    • Delete messages
    • Edit the space description
    • Update space access from restricted to discoverable or vice versa

    Starting today, space managers will now have additional capabilities to ensure effective conversations take place in spaces: 
    • Space configuration: enables space managers to choose if members can change space details, such as name, icon, description, and guidelines, or turn Chat history on/off for the space. 
    • Member management: allows space managers to decide if members can add or remove members or groups to a space. 
    • Conversation moderation: authorizes space managers to determine whether members can use @all in a space. 

    Getting started 


    Rollout pace 


    Availability 

    • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
    • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

    Resources