Category Archives: Google Drive Blog

News and notes from the Google Drive team

Build with G Suite

Today wraps our annual Google I/O conference. Thousands of developers from around the world gathered to learn about our latest developer products and share best practices, including how to build next-gen business applications using G Suite. In case you need it, here’s a list of the various developer tools you can use to customize app your G Suite experience at your organization.

1. Build and deploy custom apps using App Maker

App Maker is a low-code, application development tool in G Suite that helps developers quickly build and deploy custom apps securely. It comes with built-in templates, a drag-and-drop UI and point-and-click data modeling. Plus, you can customize your app to connect with a wide range of APIs using Apps Script. App Maker is currently available as part of an Early Adopter Program for G Suite Business customers. Learn more.

2. Create seamless integrations with the G Suite APIs

Speaking of APIs, G Suite offers a number of ways for developers to integrate their app with ours and create a seamless experience for users. Here are a few of our favorite G Suite APIs.

Try the Sheets API which lets your developers read, write and format data in Sheets. Plus, you can automatically generate and update charts, pivot tables and more.
The Slides API helps you access and update presentations programmatically, pulling in data from various sources (including popular third-party apps) and producing polished template-based presentations in a fraction of the time.
Leverage the Gmail API to access and organize your Gmail inbox. You can program your application to read and send messages, create filters to automatically label, forward and archive messages, or even update vacation responders.
Finally, the Drive API allows you to manage Google Drive files and/or folders as well as leverage new Team Drive features programmatically. Developers can also use the Drive SDK to create Drive-enabled apps that handle custom files.

3. Customize your G Suite experience with Add-ons

Using Apps Script, G Suite's native JavaScript-based development platform, developers can easily customize their favorite apps like Sheets, Docs, and Forms by adding menu items, sidebars or editing files programmatically directly within these apps. We also recently introduced Gmail Add-ons in developer preview, so that third-party developers can bring the power of their apps directly into Gmail. Better yet, developers need only write their Gmail Add-on once, and it’ll run natively in Gmail on web, Android and iOS right away.

Quickbooks GIF — Image credit: Intuit and Prosperworks

To learn more about how you can integrate and better customize your business applications for G Suite, check out the G Suite Developers blog or the G Suite Developers show. You can also subscribe to the G Suite Developers newsletter for updates.

Source: Drive

Four reasons your company should use the new Team Drives

1. Team Drives makes onboarding new hires easier.

When onboarding new team members, it can take weeks, and sometimes months, before those employees become productive. This may partly be due to having limited access to training materials and project information. With Team Drives, new members get instant access to the right documents, so the time it takes to ramp up is dramatically decreased and they can dive straight into work.

2. Files stay in Team Drives even if team members leave.

Determining file ownership when an employee leaves can be a major pain point for a lot of companies. Files in Team Drives belong to the team instead of an individual, so you no longer have to worry about tracking down and transferring information once an employee leaves. The files stay within Team Drives so that your team can continue to share information and workflows aren’t interrupted.

3. It’s easy to manage and share permissions for employees and admins.

If you’re a large organization, keeping track of your data is critical. You need tools that can help you manage access to ensure that only the right people are sharing information. Team Drives make it easy for employees to manage file access. Team Drives allows you to specialize permissions based on who you’d like to edit, comment, reorganize or delete certain files. By default, all members within Team Drives automatically see the same files regardless of who adds or reorganizes them—cutting back on how many times you have to grant file access to trusted teammates.

Before employees get started using Team Drives, admins can adjust permissions in the G Suite Admin Console, like enabling Team Drives for an entire domain or just specific organizational units. Plus, admins can add or remove members to Team Drives as necessary and easily edit permissions.

4. Team Drives uses machine learning to help you find files.

There are more than 800 million monthly active users on Drive and trillions of files stored in Drive. Many of these files represent collective knowledge of employees, and having “quick” access to these files is a boon for productivity.

Before, Enterprise Knowledge Management solutions attempted to deliver the right files to employees at the right time, but this required manually tagging documents with metadata—a time-consuming process. Now, you can use Quick Access, a feature in Drive that uses powerful machine learning algorithms to analyze trending topics, team calendars and other contextual information to identify relevant documents and suggest files to users.

Use this step-by-step guide to get started on Team Drives today.

Source: Drive

Four reasons your company should use the new Team Drives

1. Team Drives makes onboarding new hires easier.

2. Files stay in Team Drives even if team members leave.

3. It’s easy to manage and share permissions for employees and admins.

4. Team Drives uses machine learning to help you find files.

Use this step-by-step guide to get started on Team Drives today.

Source: Drive

Four reasons your company should use the new Team Drives

1. Team Drives makes onboarding new hires easier.

2. Files stay in Team Drives even if team members leave.

3. It’s easy to manage and share permissions for employees and admins.

4. Team Drives uses machine learning to help you find files.

Use this step-by-step guide to get started on Team Drives today.

Source: Drive

Bring your idea to life with G Suite

You know that feeling when you present on a project after working on it for too many months? It’s great. Perhaps the most gratifying part of wrapping a project (besides finally being done), is reflecting on how your idea came to be more than just an idea.

For most of us in the workplace, ideas take shape in many forms—and G Suite can help you along the way. Here’s a snapshot of how you can bring an idea to life using G Suite’s intelligent apps:

1. You mention an idea to a teammate over lunch

Some of our best ideas happen outside the confines of the office. You mention an idea to a teammate in passing and they tell you, “Hey, that’s not a bad thought, but we should meet to flesh this out.”

Take your idea to the next level by getting your group together with Find a Time and Find a Room features in Calendar. Find a Time intelligently suggests times that you and teammates are available to meet and books a time for you. Find a Room takes over the hassle of finding an available meeting room. All you have to do is show up and brainstorm.

2. Step into a meeting room and map out your idea

Now that you’ve booked a room, you can put more structure behind this “thing” you’re creating with Jamboard—our collaborative, digital whiteboard for sharing ideas in real-time and mapping out your project plan. Check it out:

If you used legacy systems in the past, you probably brought documents, sticky notes or other prep materials to a brainstorm. With Jamboard, you securely access all of those files directly in the cloud within your “jam.” Simply use the sticky notes tool, pull information and images from the web, or add files from Docs, Sheets or Slides to your brainstorm directly from Drive.

3. Give your brain a rest and come back to your work later

Sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is take a break and revisit it with fresh eyes. Jamboard makes this easy because it saves your work directly to Drive. If you’re on the go and want to revisit a file, you can rely on Drive’s Quick Access feature to automatically find files for you. And if you use Team Drives, you can add relevant files to securely share access and edit rights with others that need to weigh in.

4. Make final edits and present your idea

Once you’ve put the final touches on your “jam,” you can present your work through Hangouts, which integrates seamlessly with Jamboard. Add team members to the Hangout to see your work, and they can even use the Jamboard companion app to make edits from their mobile phones or tablets.

For a presentation you really want to polish, you can also import your work from Jamboard into a presentation in Slides. If you don’t like to fuss with formatting, use Explore in Slides, powered by machine intelligence, to make your presentation look top notch. Choose from dozens of design recommendations and apply them instantly with one click. Now you’re ready to sell your idea.

5. Track your progress

Coming up with the ideas is the fun part. Executing and tracking success is often more difficult. G Suite can help with that, too. Use templates in Sheets to create detailed project trackers or manage employee shift schedules. Sheets can also help you quantify results at the end of your project. Use Explore in Sheets (powered by machine intelligence) to get insights instantly. Just ask questions—in words, not formulas—and get actionable insights from your data. And once you’re finished, create a Form to solicit feedback on how to improve for the next time.

These are just some of the ways that G Suite can help you create—and execute—your best work. For more tips on how to use G Suite products, check out the G Suite Show.

Source: Drive

Bring your idea to life with G Suite

For most of us in the workplace, ideas take shape in many forms—and G Suite can help you along the way. Here’s a snapshot of how you can bring an idea to life using G Suite’s intelligent apps:

1. You mention an idea to a teammate over lunch

2. Step into a meeting room and map out your idea

3. Give your brain a rest and come back to your work later

4. Make final edits and present your idea

5. Track your progress

These are just some of the ways that G Suite can help you create—and execute—your best work. For more tips on how to use G Suite products, check out the G Suite Show.

Source: Drive

Bring your idea to life with G Suite

For most of us in the workplace, ideas take shape in many forms—and G Suite can help you along the way. Here’s a snapshot of how you can bring an idea to life using G Suite’s intelligent apps:

1. You mention an idea to a teammate over lunch

2. Step into a meeting room and map out your idea

3. Give your brain a rest and come back to your work later

4. Make final edits and present your idea

For a presentation you really want to polish, you can also import your work from Jamboard into a presentation in Slides. If you don’t like to fuss with formatting, use Explore in Slides,poweredby machine intelligence, to make your presentation look top notch. Choose from dozens of design recommendations and apply them instantly with one click. Now you’re ready to sell your idea.

5. Track your progress

These are just some of the ways that G Suite can help you create—and execute—your best work. For more tips on how to use G Suite products, check out the G Suite Show.

Source: Drive

How machine learning in G Suite makes people more productive

Email management, formatting documents, creating expense reports. These are just some of the time-sinks that can affect your productivity at work. At Google, this is referred to as “overhead”—time spent working on tasks that do not directly relate to creative output—and it happens a lot.

According to a Google study in 2015, the average worker spends only about 5 percent of his or her time actually coming up with the next big idea. The rest of our time is caught in the quicksand of formatting, tracking, analysis or other mundane tasks. That’s where machine learning can help.

Machine learning algorithms observe examples and make predictions based on data. In G Suite, machine learning models make your workday more efficient by taking over menial tasks, like scheduling meetings, or by predicting information you might need and surfacing it for you, like suggesting Docs.

Eliminating spam within Gmail using machine learning

One of the earliest machine learning use cases for G Suite was within Gmail. Historically, Gmail used a rule-based system, which meant our anti-spam team would create new rules to match individual spam patterns. Over a decade of using this process, we improved spam detection accuracy to 99 percent.

Starting in 2014, our team augmented this rule-based system to generate rules using machine learning algorithms instead, taking spam detection one step further. Now, we use TensorFlow and other machine learning to continually regenerate the “spam filter,” so the system has learned to predict which emails are most likely junk. Machine learning finds new patterns and adapts far quicker than previous manual systems—it’s a big part of the reason that more than one billion Gmail users avoid spam within their account.

See machine learning in your favorite G Suite apps

G Suite’s goal is to help teams accomplish more with its intelligent apps, no matter where they are in the world. And chances are, you’ve already seen machine learning integrated into your day-to-day work to do just that.

Smart Reply, for example, uses machine learning to generate three natural language responses to an email. So if you find yourself on the road or pressed for time and in need of a quick way to clear your inbox, let Smart Reply do it for you.

Explore in Docs, Slides and Sheets uses machine learning to eliminate time spent on mundane tasks, like tracking down documents or information on the web, reformatting presentations or performing calculations within spreadsheets.

Quick Access in Drive predicts and suggests files you might need within Drive. Using machine intelligence, Quick Access can predict files based on who you share files with frequently, when relevant meetings occur within your Calendar or if you tend to use files at certain times of the day.

To learn more about how machine intelligence can make your life easier, sign up for this free webinar on June 15, 2017, featuring experts from MIT Research, Google and other companies. You can also check out the Big Data and Machine Learning blog or watch this video from Google Cloud Next with Ryan Tabone, director of product management at Google, where he explains more about “overhead.”

Source: Drive

How LumApps and G Suite keep employees organized and informed

This year at Google Cloud Next, we recognized some of our partners for outstanding innovation. One of those partners, LumApps, received the “Solution Innovation of the Year” award for its corporate intranet and social platform for businesses. Deeply integrated with G Suite, LumApps houses resources like corporate news, social communities, employee directories and go-to G Suite apps—like Drive, Calendar or Gmail—all in one place. Check it out:

LumApps - Enterprise Portal for Google's G Suite

With LumApps, employees use single sign-on to securely access their corporate information and G Suite apps. Plus, it’s easy to search within the Google tools they use everyday because LumApps uses the power of Google Search to surface the right information when it’s needed.

“Our solution runs on Google Cloud Platform and we really appreciate the performance and scale that Google solutions offer,” says Elie Mélois, chief technology officer of LumApps. “Google's expertise in cloud service made it a clear choice for LumApps, which is why we decided to build on their reliable and powerful platform.”

Companies are using LumApps and G Suite to centralize resources and connect teams throughout their organizations. To learn more about how your business can use LumApps and G Suite, sign up for this free webinar on April 27, 2017 at 1pm ET/10am PT.

Source: Drive

Work hacks from G Suite: a new corporate training regimen (no weights required)

In our first G Suite Hacks article, we shared tips from the Transformation Gallery to help employees automate everyday workflows and save time. Today, we’re focusing on corporate training tips that will help your employees stay engaged so they can do their best work.

According to last year's Global Human Capital Trends report by Deloitte, employees at all levels expect their employers to provide consistent opportunities to learn and develop new skills, and 30% of executives see learning as a primary driver of employee development. But training employees has its own set of challenges, like scaling programs and trainers, ensuring easy access to training materials, accommodating learning styles and tracking progress.

Here are a few ways you can improve your corporate training with G Suite:

1. Scale your training program with an online hub

Create one place where employees can access training material any time. Start by uploading or creating your training files in Team Drives, a central place within Drive for teams to house files. Organize these files into shared folders by topic or course level. Next, set up a Site to display all of the content from Drive and add relevant pages, like training videos, slides, guidelines or handbooks. Share your new hub with employees so that they can easily access training materials, even on mobile. And anytime you need to update training materials, just go into Drive and update the files there. Sites will automatically reflect changes.

2. Provide live training options, too

It’s also important to provide face-to-face training for your employees. You can create a live training option with Hangouts Meet so that employees can join training sessions from a conference room, their favorite coffee shop, or another remote location. Simply set up Calendar invites for training events and send them to your employees (It’s a good idea to post these events to your new training Site so that anyone who missed the invite can join.). Then, track employee attendance with Forms.

3. Quiz employees on their knowledge

Once your employees have completed their training course, you’ll want to track their learning progress. You can do this easily by setting up quizzes in Forms and assigning point values for each question. Let your employees see which questions they missed and explain why so that they can continue to master concepts. And to improve your training course, ask for real-time feedback within the Form. Quiz data is tracked in Sheets so you can keep a pulse on who’s completed training courses and who might need some additional help.

With these quick tips, you can help your employees to do their best work. Check out this G Suite Show episode to learn more, and let the training begin!