Category Archives: Official Gmail Blog

News, tips and tricks from Google’s Gmail team and friends

#ThisisFamily: how we’re celebrating Pride

It’s the middle of the middle month of a choppy year and I’m thinking about how we stay steady. I’m thinking about ballasts, the heavy things—weighty, substantive—employed in ships to lend balance. My ballast is my family, and I’m lucky enough to have a few. There’s the family of my blood, those mad geniuses who share my last name; the family of my friends, wild spirits exploring the limits of what’s possible; and, last but not least, the family I walked into when I came to Google.

This Pride, Google and Google’s LGBTQ+ community are celebrating families big and small, chosen or inherited, as part of #ThisIsFamily. We encourage you to post on social media about the people who make up your family (no matter how you define it) and to donate to nonprofits like PFLAG, It Gets Better and GLAAD. Google.org has pledged to match up to $100,000 in total in donations to these three organizations during the month of June.

That’s not the only way we’re celebrating Pride. In typical Google fashion, we’re helping you connect with the world around you (and having a bit of fun) across our products:

In Google Maps, this year's parade routes are paved with rainbows.
You'll find rainbow "easter eggs" scattered through Google Search and G Suite, and you can join the fun from your desktop by switching your Gmail to a Pride theme for the month of June.
Google Play Newsstand has a special feature page for Pride-related coverage.
On YouTube, we're celebrating the LGBTQ+ creators who are #ProudToCreate a better future with their imagination, creativity, talent, and truth through our YouTube Spotlight Channel, Twitter, and Instagram.
We continue to help businesses declare their establishments "LGBTQ+ Friendly" or "Transgender Safe Space" on their business listings in Google Maps and Google Search.
One year on from our initial donation to the LGBT Center of New York in collaboration with the National Parks Foundation, Google.org is contributing another $500,000 (for a total of $1.5 Million) to the Center to help with the digitization of LGBTQ+ history. The project is called Stonewall Forever, and we need your help to find, preserve, and share the untold stories of LGBTQ+ history.
Google Arts & Culture has a dedicated Pride collection celebrating LGBTQ+ history, with 20 exhibits and over 2,700 artifacts, part of which comes from the Stonewall Forever project.

Ballasts, like families, help us stay steady amidst commotion. Paradoxically, maybe, these heavy things also lift us up.

Celebrating Pride, from our families to yours.

Source: Gmail Blog

SUBJECT: Write emails faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

Email makes it easy to share information with just about anyone—friends, colleagues and family—but drafting a message can take some time. Last year, we introduced Smart Reply in Gmail to help you quickly reply to incoming emails. Today, we're announcing Smart Compose, a new feature powered by artificial intelligence, to help you draft emails from scratch, faster.

Draft emails quickly with confidence

From your greeting to your closing (and common phrases in between), Smart Compose suggests complete sentences in your emails so that you can draft them with ease. Because it operates in the background, you can write an email like you normally would, and Smart Compose will offer suggestions as you type. When you see a suggestion that you like, click the “tab” button to use it.

Smart Compose helps save you time by cutting back on repetitive writing, while reducing the chance of spelling and grammatical errors. It can even suggest relevant contextual phrases. For example, if it's Friday it may suggest "Have a great weekend!" as a closing phrase.

You can read more about the technology behind Smart Compose in this post on the Google Research Blog.

Get started

Over the next few weeks, Smart Compose will appear in the new Gmail for consumers, and will be made available for G Suite customers in the workplace in the coming months.

To get started, make sure you’ve enabled the new Gmail by going to Settings > “Try the new Gmail.” Next, go to the general tab in your settings, scroll down and enable “experimental access.” If you want to switch back, you can always uncheck the box.

Source: Gmail Blog

SUBJECT: Write emails faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

Draft emails quickly with confidence

You can read more about the technology behind Smart Compose in this post on the Google Research Blog.

Get started

Over the next few weeks, Smart Compose will appear in the new Gmail for consumers, and will be made available for G Suite customers in the workplace in the coming months.

Source: Gmail Blog

SUBJECT: Write emails faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

Draft emails quickly with confidence

Get started

Over the next few weeks, Smart Compose will appear in the new Gmail for consumers, and will be made available for G Suite customers in the workplace in the coming months.

Source: Gmail Blog

Stay composed: here’s a quick rundown of the new Gmail

Email is a necessity for most of us. We use it to stay in touch with colleagues and friends, keep up with the latest news, manage to-dos at home or at work—we just can’t live without it. Today we announced major improvements to Gmail on the web to help people be more productive at work. Here’s a quick look at how the new Gmail can help you accomplish more from your inbox.

Do more without leaving your inbox

Gmail’s new look helps you get more done. Click on attachments—like photos—without opening or scrolling through large conversations, use the new snooze button to put off emails that you just can’t get to right now or easily access other apps you use often, like Google Calendar, Tasks and Keep.

Gmail will also “nudge” you to follow up and respond to messages with quick reminders that appear next to your email messages to help make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

We’re also adding Smart Reply to Gmail on the web to help you reply to messages faster.

New features on mobile, like high-priority notifications, can notify you of important messages to help you stay focused without interruption. Plus, Gmail will start suggesting when to unsubscribe from newsletters or offers you no longer care about.

And you might notice new warnings in Gmail that alert you when potentially risky email comes through.

Finally, a new confidential mode allows you to remove the option to forward, copy, download or print messages—useful for when you have to send sensitive information via email like a tax return or your social security number. You can also make a message expire after a set period of time to help you stay in control of your information.

Get started

You can start using these new updates in Gmail on the web today, with some features appearing within the coming weeks. Go to Settings (the cog wheel in the top right corner of your inbox) and select “Try the new Gmail.” If you want to switch back later down the road, you can go to the same place and select “Go back to classic Gmail.”

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use Gmail in the workplace, check out our G Suite post which has more detail on all of the ways Gmail can help you stay productive.

Source: Gmail Blog

With new security and intelligent features, the new Gmail means business

Since the beginning, our aim with G Suite has been to help companies transform the way they work with our suite of cloud-based collaboration and productivity apps.

Today we’re announcing major updates to help the more than 4 million paying businesses that use G Suite work safer, smarter and more efficiently. This includes an all-new Gmail, with a brand new look on the web, advanced security features, new applications of Google’s artificial intelligence and even more integrations with other G Suite apps. We’re also introducing a new way to manage work on the go with Tasks.

Keep sensitive data secure with new Gmail security features

Keeping your data secure is our top priority, which is why last month, we introduced new phishing protections to help address Business Email Compromise (BEC) threats—or when someone impersonates an executive to get sensitive information. With these new protections, Gmail has helped block 99.9 percent of BEC attempts by warning users or automatically moving messages to spam for them.

Today, we’re introducing a new approach to information protection: Gmail confidential mode. With confidential mode, it’s possible to protect sensitive content in your emails by creating expiration dates or revoking previously sent messages. Because you can require additional authentication via text message to view an email, it’s also possible to protect data even if a recipient’s email account has been hijacked while the message is active.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 1 — New confidential mode in Gmail lets you set expiration dates for sensitive information.

Built-in Information Rights Management (IRM) controls also allow you to remove the option to forward, copy, download or print messages. This helps reduce the risk of confidential information being accidentally shared with the wrong people. Confidential mode will begin to roll out to consumer Gmail users and a limited number of G Suite customers in the coming weeks (broader rollout following).

We’ve also redesigned our security warnings within Gmail so that they are simpler to understand and give a clear call to action to employees. These bigger, bolder warnings will help you be even more informed when it comes to potentially risky email.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 2 — Bigger, bolder security warnings help you keep your company’s confidential information safe.

And it’s always worth a reminder: we do not scan Gmail for the purposes of targeting ads, and there are no ads shown in Gmail for G Suite customers.

Stay on top of email effortlessly using artificial intelligence in Gmail

New AI-powered features in Gmail, like Nudging, Smart Reply and high-priority notifications, can now help you spend more time on work that matters.

Most of us get more emails than we can deal with at one time, and sometimes things slip through the cracks. With Nudging, Gmail will proactively remind you to follow up or respond to messages, making sure you don’t drop the ball.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 3 — Now Gmail will intelligently (and subtly) “nudge” you when you need to prioritize actions in your inbox.

Last year, we introduced Smart Reply to our Gmail mobile apps. Smart Reply processes hundreds of millions of messages daily and already drives more than 10 percent of email replies on mobile. Today we’re bringing Smart Reply to Gmail on the web to help you respond to messages faster.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 4 — New notifications on mobile help you stay focused on what’s important (and eliminate clutter, too.).

We’re also introducing new features on mobile to help you minimize interruptions and clutter. High-priority notifications is a new setting that only notifies you of important messages, keeping interruptions to a minimum. Gmail can also recommend when to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Using intelligence, unsubscribe suggestions appear based on cues like how many emails you get from a sender and how many of them you actually read. You’ll start to see these notifications show up in your inbox over the coming weeks.

Over the past few months, Salesforce has tested the new Gmail to collaborate on global projects. “As the global leader in CRM, the ability to quickly and securely communicate with our stakeholders around the world is critical,” says Jo-ann Olsovsky, executive vice president and chief information officer of Salesforce. “Gmail’s new easy-to-use interface and built-in intelligence enable our employees to collaborate faster and smarter, spending less time managing their inboxes and more time driving our customers’ success.”

Gmail’s new easy-to-use interface and built-in intelligence enable our employees to collaborate faster and smarter. Jo-ann Olsovsky
EVP, CIO of Salesforce

Accomplish more from your inbox with easy-to-use tools

We redesigned the Gmail web application to help you take action even quicker. Now you can see and click attachments in your inbox before ever opening a thread. You can also hover over messages (you don’t have to click into them) to do things like RSVP to a meeting invite, archive an email thread or snooze an email until the time is right.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 5 — Gmail’s new design helps you take action quicker.

As a part of the redesign, we’re also tightly integrating Gmail with other G Suite apps you use every day. Now you can quickly reference, create or edit Calendar invites, capture ideas in Keep or manage to-dos in Tasks all from a side panel in your inbox.

The side panel also makes it easy to access Gmail Add-ons, too, like third-party business apps you might use. This way you don’t have to switch between tabs or apps to get work done. You’ll start to see the new side panel integration in other G Suite apps in coming months—like inside of your Calendar, Docs, Sheets and Slides apps.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 6 — Use the new side panel in Gmail to access all of your favorite G Suite apps, like Google Calendar.

New native offline capabilities in Gmail on the web can help you work without interruption when you can’t find Wi-Fi. Search, write, respond, delete, or archive up to 90 days of messages, just as you would working online, but offline. Teams can start using offline capabilities in coming weeks.

Gmail Convergence_Enterprise_Image 7 — Track projects and meet deadlines with Tasks’ refreshed design on the web and brand new mobile apps.

Like we mentioned, we’re introducing an all-new Tasks on web, as well as new mobile apps to help you handle work on the go. You can use Tasks to create tasks and subtasks, and even add due dates with notifications to help you stay on track.

And because Tasks closely integrates with G Suite, you can simply drag and drop an email from Gmail into Tasks to create a to-do. Tasks with due dates can also appear in your Calendar.

The all-new Gmail experience is available for businesses to start using today in the G Suite Early Adopter Program (EAP) and can be turned on in the Admin console. Heads up: you’ll start to see offline support, confidential mode (limited release), Nudging, high-priority notifications and unsubscribe suggestions appear in the coming weeks. Keep up with the latest news on these features in the G Suite Updates blog.

Personal Gmail users can opt-in to the new experience, too (Go to Settings in the top right and select “Try the new Gmail.”).

Source: Gmail Blog

Stay composed: here’s a quick rundown of the new Gmail

Do more without leaving your inbox

Gmail will also “nudge” you to follow up and respond to messages with quick reminders that appear next to your email messages to help make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

We’re also adding Smart Reply to Gmail on the web to help you reply to messages faster.

And you might notice new warnings in Gmail that alert you when potentially risky email comes through.

Get started

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use Gmail in the workplace, check out our G Suite post which has more detail on all of the ways Gmail can help you stay productive.

Source: Gmail Blog

Stay composed: here’s a quick rundown of the new Gmail

Do more without leaving your inbox

Gmail will also “nudge” you to follow up and respond to messages with quick reminders that appear next to your email messages to help make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

We’re also adding Smart Reply to Gmail on the web to help you reply to messages faster.

And you might notice new warnings in Gmail that alert you when potentially risky email comes through.

Get started

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use Gmail in the workplace, check out our G Suite post which has more detail on all of the ways Gmail can help you stay productive.

Source: Gmail Blog

Do more from your inbox with Gmail Add-ons

For many of us, email is mission control—the prompt to generate an invoice, prepare a presentation or follow up on a sales opportunity. With so many to-dos, imagine if you could complete these tasks directly from your inbox without interrupting your workflow.

We believe email can do more, which is why we’re launching Gmail Add-ons, a new way to work with your favorite business apps directly in Gmail.

Gmail Add-ons, built for your workflows

Rather than toggling between your inbox and other apps, use add-ons to complete actions right from Gmail. With Gmail Add-ons, your inbox can contextually surface your go-to app based on messages you receive to help you get things done faster. And because add-ons work the same across web and Android, you only need to install them once to access them on all of your devices. Click the settings wheel on the top right of your inbox and then “Get add-ons” to get started.

We made Gmail Add-ons available in developer preview earlier this year, and since then, our partners have built integrations to help businesses connect with customers, track projects, facilitate invoicing and more. Here’s a list of partners that have built Gmail Add-ons you can install today:

Asana: Turn communication with clients, customers and teammates into tasks that can be tracked with your team in Asana, all from your inbox.

Dialpad: Message or call colleagues on your device, any time. Automatically view recent communications or save a new contact straight from Gmail.
DocuSign (coming soon): Sign and execute contracts, agreements and other documents directly in Gmail using the DocuSign add-on.
Hire: Add candidates, manage candidate information and upload resumes without leaving Gmail. You can access full job applications from the Hire add-on.
Intuit QuickBooks Invoicing: Create and send professional invoices directly in Gmail. Let customers pay you online and track invoice status and payments no matter where you are.

ProsperWorks: Easily access prospect or customer data, and log activities from calls, demos and meetings. You can also scan related opportunities, tasks and events.

RingCentral: See the online/offline status of RingCentral contacts, review recent call history, make outbound calls (requires RingCentral for Mobile) and view and send SMS messages.
Smartsheet: Add email content and desired attachments directly to Smartsheet without leaving Gmail.
Streak: Add email threads to deals, view enriched contact info and quickly respond with snippets directly from Gmail with the Streak add-on.
Trello: Turn email into actionable tasks in Trello to give your team a shared perspective on the work that needs to be done.

Wrike: Create Wrike tasks from emails, view and update task details, and send and receive Wrike task comments.

If you're a developer, you can also easily create add-ons for your app or your organization—write your add-on code once and it will run natively in Gmail on web and Android right away. Learn more.

Try Gmail Add-ons today

Knock out action items the minute they hit your inbox. G Suite and Gmail users can check out the G Suite Marketplace to find and install Gmail Add-ons.

Source: Gmail Blog

7 ways admins can help secure accounts against phishing in G Suite

We work hard to help protect your company against phishing attacks—from using machine learning, to tailoring our detection algorithms, to building features to spot previously unseen attacks. While we block as many external attacks as we can, we continue to build and offer features designed to empower IT administrators to develop strong internal defenses against phishing.

Here are seven things we recommend admins do in G Suite to better protect employee data.

1. Enforce 2-step verification

Two-step verification (2SV) is one of the best ways to prevent someone from accessing your account, even if they steal your password. In G Suite, admins have the ability to enforce 2-step verification. 2SV can reduce the risk of successful phishing attacks by asking employees for additional proof of identity when they sign in. This can be in the form of phone prompts, voice calls, mobile app notifications and more.

G Suite also supports user-managed security keys—easy to use hardware authenticators. Admins can choose to enforce the use of security keys to help reduce the risk of stolen credentials being used to compromise an account. The key sends an encrypted signature and works only with authorized sites. Security keys can be deployed, monitored and managed directly from within the Admin console.

The Key to working smarter faster and safer

2. Deploy Password Alert extension for Chrome

The Password Alert chrome extension checks each page that users visit to see if that page is impersonating Google’s sign-in page and notifies admins if users enter their G Suite credentials anywhere other than the Google sign-in page.

Admins can enforce deployment of the Password Alert Chrome extension from the Google Admin Console (Device management > App Management > Password Alert)—just sign in and get started. You should check “Force installation" under both “User Settings” and “Public session settings.”

Admins can also enable password alert auditing, send email alerts and enforce a password change policy when G Suite credentials have been used on a non-trusted website such as a phishing site.

3. Allow only trusted apps to access your data

Take advantage of OAuth apps whitelisting to specify which apps can access your users’ G Suite data. With this setting, users can grant access to their G Suite apps’ data only to whitelisted apps. This prevents malicious apps from tricking users into accidentally granting unauthorized access. Apps can be whitelisted by admins in the Admin console under G Suite API Permissions.

4. Publish a DMARC policy for your organization

To help your business avoid damage to its reputation from phishing attacks and impersonators, G Suite follows the DMARC standard. DMARC empowers domain owners to decide how Gmail and other participating email providers handle unauthenticated emails coming from your domain. By defining a policy and turning on DKIM email signing, you can ensure that emails that claim to be from your organization, are actually from you.

5. Disable third-party email client access for those who don't need it

The Gmail clients (Android, iOS, Web) leverage Google Safe Browsing to incorporate anti-phishing security measures such as disabling suspicious links and attachments and displaying warnings to users to deter them from clicking on suspicious links.

By choosing to disable POP and IMAP, Google Sync and G Suite Sync for Microsoft Outlook, admins can ensure that a significant portion of G Suite users will only use Gmail clients and benefit from the built-in phishing protections that they provide. Additional measures include enabling OAuth apps whitelisting to block third-party clients as suggested earlier in the blog.

Note: all third-party email clients, including native mobile mail clients, will stop working if the measures outlined above are implemented.

6. Encourage your team to pay attention to external reply warnings

By default, Gmail clients (Android, Web) warn G Suite users if they’re responding to emails sent from outside their domain by someone they don’t regularly interact with, or from someone not in their contacts. This helps businesses protect against forged emails, from malicious actors or just plain old user-error like sending an email to the wrong contact. Educate your employees to look for these warnings and be careful before responding to unrecognized senders. Unintended external reply warnings are controlled from the Admin console control in the “Advanced Gmail” setting.

7. Enforce the use of Android work profiles

Work profiles allow you to separate your organization's apps from personal apps, keeping personal and corporate data separate. By using integrated device management within G Suite to enforce the use of work profiles, you can whitelist applications that access corporate data and block installation of apps from unknown sources. You now have complete control over which apps have access to your corporate data.

These steps can help you improve your organization’s security posture and become more resistant to phishing attacks. Learn more at gsuite.google.com/security or sign up for our security webinar on September 20, 2017 which features new security research from Forrester and a demonstration on how the cloud can help effectively combat cyber threats.