Last month, we launched breakout rooms in Google Meet to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers. We’re now making breakout rooms available to Google Workspace, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers.
In addition, we’re introducing the following new features to improve your experience in breakout rooms:
Ask for help: Participants can ask for help when they are in a breakout room, and the moderator can see the request from the moderator panel and join the breakout room.
Timer/countdown: The moderator can set up a timer for a breakout session. Participants will see a banner to keep track of how much more time they have in the breakout room. They’ll also be alerted when there are 30 seconds left so that they can wrap up the discussion and, when time is up, participants will be prompted to go back to the main call.
Additional supported participants: Dial-in phone participants can now be assigned to breakout rooms. Starting in two weeks, anonymous users will also be able to be added to breakout rooms.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be available by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using breakout rooms in Meet.
Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers
Not available to Workspace Business Starter, as well as G Suite Basic, Education, and Nonprofits customers
Due to low usage, Google App Maker will be turned down gradually over the course of 2020 and officially shut down on January 19, 2021. Prior to the shutdown, you’ll need to review App Maker usage in your domain and take any necessary action.
See the Additional details section below for a timeline of the shutdown and alternatives you can deploy in your organization.
Who’s impacted
Admins, end users, and developers
Why it’s important
As soon as possible, review your organization’s App Maker applications. App creators should review the uses cases listed in the Additional details section below and take action as necessary by the dates listed in the turndown schedule.
Additional details
Turndown schedule App Maker will be disabled gradually according to the schedule below:
Today, existing apps continue to work. Though App Maker is no longer under active development, the service will continue to be maintained.
Starting April 15, 2020, you will no longer be able to create new App Maker apps. You will still be able to edit and deploy existing apps.
Starting January 19, 2021, existing App Maker apps will stop working and you will no longer have access to them. App maker data stored in Cloud SQL will remain unchanged and continue to follow the policies established by your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.
Alternative solutions
Due to the specific source code used for App Maker, you can’t directly migrate your apps to another platform. Depending on your use case, we recommend the following:
If you use App Maker to automate complex business processes: Use AppSheet, a new addition to our application development portfolio that has capabilities similar to App Maker. App Maker data is stored in Cloud SQL, and App Sheet supports Cloud SQL databases. This allows you to build an application on the existing database tied to your App Maker app.
If you use App Maker to develop apps: Use App Engine to build and deploy Google Cloud Platform (GCP) applications on a fully managed platform. App Maker data is stored in Cloud SQL, allowing you to build an App Engine application on the existing Cloud SQL database tied to your App Maker app.
If you use App Maker for data collection: Use Google Forms, which has many new features that were not available when App Maker launched.
Deleting apps
If you no longer use apps created with App Maker, please follow these steps to fully delete each app:
(Optional) Export the app before deleting to save database information.
Your App Maker data belongs to your organization. App Maker user data is stored in CloudSQL and will continue to be retained according to the policies established by your GCP account. Data composing the App Maker app itself is already exported from within the App Maker editor. This export functionality will continue to work until January 19th, 2021.
Getting started
Admins: We recently emailed the primary admin in your domain and provided a CSV file with a list of the App Maker apps being used in your organization. This list includes the application name, creator name, and last modified date for each app. It also contains a link to your Admin console with application-specific usage stats and project information.
Notify app creators in your domain as necessary of the upcoming shutdown and alternative solutions.
We’re making it possible for G Suite super admins to delegate access to the App Maker projects report to other users. Among other things, this will allow appropriate employees without super admin privileges to track App Maker projects and for customers to delegate access to their reseller partners.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users.
Why you’d use it
We launched App Maker to general availability in June 2018, so teams can easily build custom apps that speed up their workflows and improve their processes. As part of that launch, we gave G Suite admins access to the App Maker projects report, which includes a list of all App Maker projects in their organization and details for each app.
We hope that this launch will make it easier to use and manage App Maker projects in your organization.
How to get started
Admins: To enable this feature, check both the App Maker > Settings checkbox and the App Maker > App Maker Projects Report checkbox. You may want to create a custom role to facilitate setting or unsetting both of these privileges. Visit the Help Center for detailed instructions on how to create a custom administrator role.
You can already control the Apps Script projects that run in your organization using the G Suite API permissions settings located in the Admin console (at Security > API Permissions). Using these settings, you can block applications that request access to certain APIs—unless you’ve specifically whitelisted them. App Maker apps, add-ons, and scripts that request certain OAuth scopes (like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc.) are just some of the Apps Scripts projects that these settings control.
Now you can also control access to projects that request the following scopes:
Apps Script Runtime - Control access to projects that request certain high-risk scopes specific to Apps Script projects (e.g. UrlFetch, Container UI).
Apps Script API - Control access to any project (e.g. Apps Script, GCP, AWS, etc.) that requests scopes for Apps Script API (e.g. Manage Projects, Manage Deployments).
It’s easy to get used to doing things a certain way. This can be a good thing if you're prepping for the World Cup, where process, repetition and routine can make you a champion. But if you're like the rest of us who rely on certain workflows to get things done at work—like budgeting or filing expenses—“trusting the process” doesn’t always feel rewarding.
Today, we’re making App Maker generally available to help you rethink how your teams operate. App Maker is G Suite’s low-code application development environment that makes it easy for teams to build custom apps to speed up workflows and make processes better.
Apps to fill business gaps, built for your needs
Analysts estimate that the right custom mobile app can save each employee 7.5 hours per week (that’s a week’s worth of lunch breaks!). Yet, too few businesses have the means, let alone the resources, to invest time and effort in building custom apps. Why? Because their IT budget centers on big enterprise apps like CRM, ERP and SCM and beyond those priorities, IT executives’ attention focuses on security and governance.
App Maker was created to enable your line-of-business teams to build apps for the jobs these bigger apps don't tackle. With App Maker, you can shape company processes like requesting purchase orders, or you can speed up business workflows like filing and resolving help desk tickets, as if you designed and built the processes yourself.
“Pooling talent resources was always an ad hoc process, but App Maker let us quickly build an app that tracks allocation requests in detail.”
- Peter McAuley, Director of IT, EA
Take Electronic Arts (EA) for example, a global interactive entertainment software company that makes games and more. To create many of its games, EA has to occasionally allocate staff resources to different projects—whether it’s a designer needed on a new game project or an HR consultant to advise on setting up a studio. EA’s IT department used App Maker to create a custom app to streamline capital resourcing.
“Pooling talent resources was always an ad hoc process, but App Maker let us quickly build an app that tracks allocation requests in detail,” says Peter McAuley, director of IT at EA. “Our custom app also calculates and provides management with a view of total resource utilization by month, something which was always more of a chore to put together manually.”
Over the last few months, we've worked closely with customers and partners around the world, including EA, Colgate-Palmolive, SADA Systems and more, to build apps to solve specific business needs.
Powerful new database model and governance
Since launching App Maker in our Early Adopter Program, we've made changes and added new features to make it even better for our customers.
Open: App Maker now offers built-in support for Cloud SQL (GCP account required), offering high performance, scalability and convenience. It also supports a Bring Your Own Database (“BYODB”) model, letting you connect it to your own database using JDBC or a REST API.
Fast:Responsive templates, samples, a drag-and-drop UI design and declarative data modeling make it easier for IT developers, or anyone who wants to automate work, to design and build apps even faster.
Connected: Whether it’s Gmail, Calendar or Sheets, App Maker makes it a cinch to connect with the data and services you need, all while making your apps more powerful. Plus, you can use Apps Script to access over 40 Google services, Google Cloud Platform and other third-party services that support JDBC and REST.
Managed: In the coming weeks, G Suite administrators will have visibility over the apps running in their organization including owners, usage metrics and OAuth permissions. Expanded OAuth Whitelisting controls mean administrators will also be able to prevent apps from running without their approval. Learn more.
Get started
App Maker is now available to all G Suite Business and Enterprise customers, as well as G Suite for Education customers. Learn more, or see how you can get started with documentation and this codelab. We can’t wait to see what your companies build with it.
Additional details for G Suite admins
App Maker is now turned on for your G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, or Enterprise for Education domain, unless you’re a K–12 G Suite for Education customer or you’ve chosen to manually opt in to new services. If App Maker isn’t yet enabled for your eligible domain, you can turn it on in the Apps > Additional Google services section of the Admin console.
App Maker comes with built-in support for Google Cloud SQL, which requires a Google Cloud Platform account. To set up Cloud SQL for your domain, follow the steps outlined in this Help Center article. You can also connect App Maker to your own database using JDBC or a REST API.
As a G Suite admin, you can manage the use of App Maker in your domain. For example, you can view the activity of users creating App Maker apps using the Drive audit logs, or view the activity of end users of App Maker apps in the OAuth Token audit logs. For more information on the management capabilities available to G Suite admins, visit the Help Center.
Apps Script lets you do more with Google, like create add-ons for Docs, develop custom functions for Sheets, and manage responses in Forms. Traditionally, G Suite admins have had little or no visibility into the extent of the Apps Script usage in their organizations. With this launch, however, admins will be able to view Apps Script metrics, including number of users and number of active projects, in the Aggregate reports section of the Admin console. Admins currently participating in the App Maker Early Adopter Program will see App Maker metrics listed as well.
(Cross-posted from The Keyword) Posted by Elissa Murphy, Vice President of Engineering, G Suite
G Suite is designed to help you do your best work, whether that’s through real-time collaboration that brings your teams together or machine intelligence that speeds up everyday tasks. But we understand your company has unique needs and workflows that G Suite alone wasn’t built to address. We also know your teams rely on many third-party apps for things like CRM, support, and project management to get their job done. So today, we’re announcing two new ways to customize and extend your experience on the G Suite platform: App Maker, a new low-code developer tool for building custom enterprise applications, and the addition of seven new partners to our “Recommended for G Suite” third-party partner program.
Introducing App Maker, a new way to build powerful apps for your business. App Maker is a low-code, application development tool that lets you quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months.
Go from idea to app, fast: App Maker makes it easy for IT or even citizen developers (including analysts and system administrators) to quickly iterate from a prototype all the way to deployed app. It offers a powerful cloud-based IDE that features built-in templates, a drag-and-drop UI, and point-and-click data modeling to accelerate your app development efforts. App Maker also embraces open, and popular standards like HTML, CSS, Javascript and Google’s material design visual framework, so developers can build apps quickly, in a development environment that leverages their existing skills and knowledge.
Build integrated, tailor-made solutions for every need: App Maker lets you build a range of applications customized to meet the needs of your organization and connects to a wide range of data sources and APIs. This unique flexibility starts with built-in support for G Suite products as well as popular services such as Maps, Contacts, Groups and more. You can also leverage other Google Cloud services such as the Directory API and Prediction API, or third-party APIs, to create richer, more intelligent application experiences.
Focus on delivery, not infrastructure: App Maker is built on the same secure and trusted infrastructure as G Suite apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs. Developers can safely deploy custom apps in the cloud without worrying about servers, capacity planning, infrastructure security and monitoring that would otherwise require internal support from IT.
Over the past few months, we’ve previewed App Maker with a handful of large G Suite customers and many have already built and deployed applications to their organizations. We’re also working with the following consulting partners to help deliver solutions to our joint customers: Appsbroker, gPartner, G-Workplace, Ignite Synergy, Maven Wave, PwC, SADA Systems, and Tempus Nova.
Here are a few ways that enterprise customers and partners have used App Maker to make everyday business processes simpler and more efficient--whether it’s to track suspicious login activities, take analog claims processes and make them digital, or track office inventory orders.
Announcing new apps for the ‘Recommended for G Suite’ program While G Suite helps your teams communicate and collaborate more easily, we get that you also rely on third-party apps to manage other aspects of your business including sales, marketing, and operations. We want to make it easy for you to integrate these solutions with G Suite, and that’s why we introduced the Recommended for G Suite program last year. The program selects market leading applications, built by independent software vendors (ISVs), in a range of categories like project management, customer support, finance and accounting.
Today, we’re adding seven new apps to the program that can help you be more productive. These apps solve critical business problems and offer deep integration and direct support with G Suite. Each app also goes through rigorous security testing and quality measures to qualify for the Recommended for G Suite program.
Since we launched this program with our first eight apps last year, we’ve seen many examples of how our customers have incorporated them with G Suite to drive more value for their business. We’ve created a webinar series to show first-hand examples of this, and you can sign up here if you’re interested in attending. In addition, if you’re an ISV that’s interested in becoming a Recommended for G Suite partner, please submit your application here.
Try these new solutions today We’re committed to helping you get the most out of your G Suite experience by fostering the best ecosystem of cloud applications and partners. App Maker enables you to build powerful apps tailored to your organizational needs, while the Recommended for G Suite program helps your teams select leading apps to grow your business. Both solutions are available today, and we encourage you to try them out.
