Use AI to supercharge your financial analysis with Workday for Google Sheets

Use AI to supercharge your financial analysis with Workday for Google Sheets Google Sheets Rapid Release Scheduled Release Workday for Google Sheets is a new add-on available in the Google Workspace Marketplace that connects Workday Adaptive Planning directly to Google Sheets and Slides. Deeply integrated with the AI-powered “Ask Workday” feature in Adaptive Planning, this add-on eliminates the need for manual CSV downloads. | Learn more.

New manual calculation setting in Google Sheets

We’re introducing a new manual calculation setting in Google Sheets to give you precise control over when formulas and other references update. The new manual calculation setting allows editors of complex or data-dense spreadsheets to pause automatic recalculation, batch their edits, and trigger a sheet-wide update at the exact moment they are ready to review the results. | Learn more.

Study notebooks in Gemini are now available for Google Workspace accounts

Now, we’re excited to share that users of all ages who are signed into a school or work-issued Google account will also have access to study notebooks if the Gemini app and Gemini Notebook are enabled by their admin. | Learn more.

Manually reorder and custom sort pivot tables in Google Sheets

Google Sheets now supports custom sorting and manual reordering in pivot tables. Users can now drag and drop rows and columns on a pivot table to match specific presentation needs and custom business hierarchies, rather than being restricted to standard ascending or descending alphanumeric order. | Learn more.

Introducing the new Confluence integration with Google Chat

Confluence by Atlassian is designed  for teams to store and share ideas, docs, and knowledge. Workspace customers can now use Confluence for Google Chat to bring relevant project context and information from Confluence directly into Chat conversations. This integration, which is part of the Atlassian add-on, enables teams to work more effectively by connecting real-time collaboration with source-of-truth documentation. | Learn more.

Quick notes in Take notes for me

Introducing Quick notes – high-level overview of main takeaways from your meetings that empowers you to quickly review essential information without diving into every single detail. Designed specifically for the efficient consumption of knowledge, the content fits onto a single page and is strictly limited to the most important meeting action items, outcomes, and talking points. It is built primarily for executive users, or anyone less involved in the deep details, who needs to extract information as fast as possible. | Learn more.

New Google Meet 'Take notes for me' settings for admins and end users take effect September 29th

Previously, we announced new admin and end user settings for Google Meet ‘Take notes for me’ pre-configuration. These settings will begin to take effect September 29th. | Learn more.

Occupancy counting now available for Google Meet on Logitech room hardware

Occupancy counting is now available for Android-based Logitech Gen 2 room hardware (starting with Logitech Rally Board 65) to help measure how meeting rooms are used. This feature brings the same occupancy counting capabilities found on ChromeOS devices to Android-based hardware. Support for occupancy counting will be added next year for earlier Gen 1 devices later as part of an upcoming CollabOS update. | Learn more.

Seamlessly import your emails from any IMAP server to Google Workspace

We’re excited to announce the GA release of a new, simplified way for Workspace admins to import their past emails from any IMAP-based email provider while setting up Google Workspace. | Learn more.

Ground AI prompts in Google Docs on existing sources from Gemini Notebook

We are introducing the ability to use Gemini Notebook as a context source in Google Docs. Building on our Workspace Intelligence foundation, this feature bridges the gap between deep research and content creation by grounding your drafts in a curated knowledge base – all without the need to switch tabs or copy-paste between tools. | Learn more.

Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash now in Vids with improved extension quality, 1080p, and duration control

Users now have access to Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash directly within Google Vids. Omni 1.1 provides higher quality video extension with significant improvements in character and audio consistency. Additionally, Vids now supports generating AI videos and upscaling AI videos to 1080p to be publish ready. | Learn more.

Assign temporary administrator roles in the Google Admin console

Admins can now assign administrator roles to users, groups, or service accounts for a defined period of time. Once the expiration time is reached, the access granted by the role is automatically revoked. | Learn more.

Now in beta: Import and convert your PowerPoint files to client-side encrypted Slides

Eligible customers can now import PowerPoint files as client-side encrypted (CSE) Slides, allowing users to access and edit content. This enables interoperability with Microsoft Office, with this launch PowerPoint files are encrypted on the client before the content is imported to Workspace, and then converted to high-fidelity encrypted Slides. | Learn more.

View up to three time zones in Google Calendar on the web

We’re making it easier to schedule and coordinate meetings across global teams by expanding time zone support in Google Calendar on the web. You can now configure and display up to three time zones—a primary, secondary, and new tertiary time zone—directly on your calendar grid. Previously, users could only display a primary and secondary time zone. | Learn more.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

We’re making it easier to schedule and coordinate meetings across global teams by expanding time zone support in Google Calendar on the web. You can now configure and display up to three time zones—a primary, secondary, and new tertiary time zone—directly on your calendar grid. Previously, users could only display a primary and secondary time zone.

Whether you’re an executive assistant managing complex calendars for leaders across regions, a project manager coordinating global launches, or a team member working with colleagues in San Francisco, New York, and Zurich, viewing three time zones at once reduces scheduling friction and eliminates manual time conversions.

• Main calendar grid (Day, Week, and Custom multi-day views): View up to three labeled time zone columns side-by-side along the left side of your calendar grid to compare local working hours at a glance.
• Find a Time view while scheduling: When creating or editing events in “Find a Time”, Calendar displays up to three time zones.
• Custom labels: Add custom labels (such as "SFO", "NYC", or "ZRH") to each of your three display time zones in Settings to easily identify them on the grid.

View up to three time zones side-by-side on Google Calendar on the web

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Google Calendar in different time zones.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 25, 2026 
• Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on October 12,2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

• Google Help: Use Google Calendar in different time zones

The Stable channel is being updated to OS version 16765.51.0 (Browser version 152.0.7977.132) for most ChromeOS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways:

1. File a bug

2. Visit our ChromeOS communities

1. General: Chromebook Help Community

2. Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community

3. Report an issue or send feedback on Chrome

4. Interested in switching channels? Find out how.

Luis Menezes

Google ChromeOS

The MaxText team successfully reproduced AI2’s OLMo 3 7B language model from scratch on Google Cloud TPUs using JAX/XLA, precisely matching the original PyTorch-on-GPU reference across pre-training and mid-training stages on all held-out evaluations. The implementation achieved up to 57.4% Model Flops Utilization (MFU) and demonstrated robust infrastructure portability by surviving mid-run cluster resizes and cross-generation TPU shifts without requiring recipe alterations. Crucially, the exercise proved the necessity of comprehensive held-out validation by catching a silent data-loader memorization bug that artificially depressed training loss and would have otherwise faked a performance win.

Google Cloud API Gateway now acts as a native remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, eliminating the need to build and maintain custom middleware to expose REST APIs to AI agents. By simply adding specific annotations (like x-google-api-management.mcp) to existing OpenAPI 3.x specifications, developers can instantly convert standard REST operations into discoverable, agent-ready tools. The gateway automatically transcodes incoming MCP JSON-RPC requests into REST calls, ensuring that your existing authentication, quotas, and logging policies apply seamlessly to agent traffic without requiring new infrastructure.

by Daryl Ducharme, Open Source Programs Office

This Week in Open Source for September 24, 2026

A look around the world of open source

Open source underpins an $8.8 trillion global economy, yet sustaining it requires moving beyond voluntary charity and philosophical appeals. This week’s reads examine how the ecosystem is adapting to modern economic and AI pressures—from proposing package-registry royalties and quantifying 2–5x net value for regulated utility grids, to turning autonomous AI security incidents into hardened supply-chain defenses that empower open-science breakthroughs like NASA and IBM’s Lunar Foundation Model.

Upcoming Events

🗓️ October 2026

• MCP Dev Summit Toronto (October 5–6, 2026) — Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated Linux Foundation developer summit advancing the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and open agentic interoperability standards. Join Google OSPO's Daryl Ducharme on October 6 for "Tag-Team Transmission: Navigating A2A and MCP for Optimum Orchestration," examining how the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and MCP interoperate across multi-agent architectures.
• Open Source Summit Europe (October 7–9, 2026) — Prague, Czechia. The premier Linux Foundation gathering in Europe celebrating the 35th anniversary of Linux and connecting developers, technologists, and community leaders across open AI, embedded systems, and digital trust.
• Community Over Code (October 11–14, 2026) — Glasgow, Scotland. The flagship Apache Software Foundation conference bringing together project maintainers, committers, and users to collaborate on open governance, data architecture, and community-led software development.
• All Things Open 2026 (October 19–20, 2026) — Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. One of the largest community-focused open source conferences on the U.S. East Coast exploring open source software, AI engineering, DevSecOps, and maintainer sustainability.
• GitHub Universe 2026 (October 28–29, 2026) — San Francisco, California, USA & Virtual. Annual global developer gathering highlighting open source workflows, collaborative security, and AI-assisted software engineering.

🗓️ November 2026

• Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF) New York (November 4–5, 2026) — New York, New York, USA. Dedicated industry conference examining open source compliance, supply-chain security, and collaborative innovation across regulated financial institutions.
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026 (November 9–12, 2026) — Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation's flagship conference uniting adopters and maintainers around Kubernetes, platform engineering, and modern cloud infrastructure.
• SFSCON (South Tyrol Free Software Conference) 2026 (November 13–14, 2026) — Bolzano, Italy. One of Europe's longest-running Free Software conferences bringing together public-sector decision-makers and developers to advance digital sovereignty and open infrastructure.

Open Source Reads and Links

• [Blog] Nobody pays for open source. We can force them to. — Companies already spend over $1 billion a year on open source, but that money goes to supply-chain mirror and security vendors rather than the maintainers writing the code. Laurie Voss breaks down why voluntary charity and license changes always fail, arguing that commercial package registries and mirror vendors should pay automatic royalties down the dependency tree to long-tail maintainers.
• [Article] AI Is reshaping open source software and straining the systems that sustain it — As conversations grow around moderating the speed of AI development across the industry, it is critical to watch the friction points where AI and open source overlap—particularly as an influx of AI-generated code and vulnerability discovery strains maintainers of an $8.8 trillion ecosystem. Funding remains front and center, requiring not just raw capital but continuous monitoring for effectiveness in sustaining the human governance, consensus-building, and non-coding infrastructure that AI cannot replace.
• [Report] LF Energy Research Finds Open Source Software Can Deliver 2-5x Greater Net Value for Grid Operators — While open source software and public utilities seem like natural philosophical allies as public goods, philosophical appeals routinely fail in regulated infrastructure sectors where operators are bound by strict reliability mandates and ratepayer accountability. This new LF Energy report demonstrates how to bridge that gap: by translating collaborative "make together" governance into an auditable benefit-cost framework showing two to five times greater net value over proprietary procurement.
• [Article] AI Is at a Turning Point — High-profile incidents of autonomous AI agents breaching Hugging Face or social-engineering open source maintainers inevitably dominate headlines and amplify purely negative narratives around AI. However, treating these security failures as concrete post-mortems—exposing how standard reinforcement learning incentivizes deceptive subgoals—is exactly what allows open source communities to establish hardened supply-chain defenses and safely advance high-impact, positive AI use cases.
• [Article] IBM and NASA Release Open-Source AI Model to Support Lunar Exploration — Seeing open source, AI, open data, and space science converge is genuinely inspiring, especially when it demonstrates that open scientific models are only as useful as the open datasets beneath them. While NASA and JAXA planetary archives have long been public, IBM and NASA's release of the Lunar Foundation Model alongside the first harmonized, machine-learning-ready lunar dataset (unifying 30+ multi-instrument layers) proves that transforming raw open data into shared, interoperable infrastructure is what unlocks domain discovery.

Which of these stories will you be chatting about at your next meetup or conference? Let us know! Share with us on our @GoogleOSS X account or our @opensource.google Bluesky account.

Eligible customers can now import PowerPoint files as client-side encrypted (CSE) Slides, allowing users to access and edit content. This enables interoperability with Microsoft Office, with this launch PowerPoint files are encrypted on the client before the content is imported to Workspace, and then converted to high-fidelity encrypted Slides.

The feature is available via the CSE Office Interop beta program, which offers immediate access to features for Microsoft Office Editing, export, import, and takeout. Eligible Google Workspace admins can apply for the beta program today. For organizations that are already registered, this feature is now available across their domains.

Encrypted .pptx file imported to CSE Slides

Getting started

• Admins: Admins with eligible Workspace licenses can sign up for the CSE Office Interop beta. We’ll provide more information on how to get started if you’re accepted.
• End users: This feature is ON for users in domains that have registered for the CSE Interop beta program. 

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now for customers previously accepted into the CSE Office Interop beta program, and upon acceptance into the beta for those who sign up in the future, 

Availability

• Enterprise: Enterprise Plus
• Education: Education Standard and Plus
• Other Editions: Frontline Plus, Assured Controls, Assured Controls Plus

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: About client-side encryption
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Now in beta: Download client-side encrypted Google Slides
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Available in beta: Convert your client-side encrypted Slides after a Vault or Takeout export
• Beta Application: Registration form

From managing complex research projects to minimizing digital distractions, Chrome has the tools you need to succeed this school year.

Five updates in Google Photos that will help you make the most of your summer memories.

Pixel Watch users can explore the new health and safety tools in the Google Health app.