Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – March 20, 2026

Easily find and set time zones in Google Calendar by searching for city or country

We’re introducing an improved time zone picker for Google Calendar on the web. Instead of manually scrolling through the list of options, you can now simply search for and select a specific city or country, making it easier to coordinate and schedule with others in different time zones. | Learn more about how to easily find and set time zones in Google Calendar by searching for city or country.

Workspace audit logs: New functionality and expanded event fields

We’re releasing a number of enhancements to Workspace audit logs. | Learn more about the new functionality and expanded event fields in Workspace audit logs.

Introducing the new Meetings section in Google Chat

We’re introducing a dedicated Meetings section in Google Chat—a new way to organize your conversation list and keep your meeting conversations in one place. | Learn more about the new Meetings section in Google Chat.

New ways to customize and interact with your content in NotebookLM

We’re introducing several updates to NotebookLM that give users more flexibility when uploading sources, new ways to create and edit visuals from NotebookLM and improvements to the interactive study tools. | Learn more about new ways to customize and interact with your content in NotebookLM.

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

New ways to customize and interact with your content in NotebookLM

We’re introducing several updates to NotebookLM that give users more flexibility when uploading sources, new ways to create and edit visuals from NotebookLM and improvements to the interactive study tools.

More functions and new visual communication tools

  • Slide revisions: Users can now revise presentation content, ask for changes or fix any issues on both desktop and mobile. Users can submit stylistic or factual feedback for each slide and the slides are regenerated quickly as a new deck in the Studio panel.


  • Cinematic Video Overviews: Cinematic Video Overviews are immersive, deep-dive videos with fluid animations and rich, detailed visuals to help you learn and engage with the topics you care about. Gemini models make hundreds of structural and stylistic decisions to best tell the story with your sources. The videos are ideal for visualizing complex narratives and academic research.

  • New infographic styles: Users can now manually choose from ten new predefined infographic styles to visually summarize their sources. Options include: Sketch Note, Kawaii, Professional, Scientific, Anime, Clay, Editorial, Instructional, Bento Grid, and Bricks. By default, NotebookLM will continue to auto-select the best style for your sources.

  • Improved flashcards & quizzes: Progress is now saved and loaded across sessions when using Flashcards and Quizzes in NotebookLM. Users can also now mark flashcards as "Got it" or "Missed it," shuffle the deck, and use a new results screen to rerun any cards they missed. Additionally, specific flashcards or quiz questions can now be deleted. These improvements are available on both web and mobile.
    • Improvements to flashcards and quizzes are available to all users. Slide revisions, Cinematic Video Overviews, and new infographic styles are available to users over the age of 18.

Support for more file types

  • EPUB: All NotebookLM users can now upload EPUB files, the standard, open-source file format for eBooks, as a supported source type in NotebookLM, making it easier to research and interact with long-form digital books.
  • PPTX export: Users can now export generated slide decks as PPTX (in addition to PDF).

Chat improvements

  • Saved and secure conversation history: To support long-term projects, your conversations will be automatically saved and kept private to you. You can close a session and resume it later without losing your conversation history. You can delete chat history at any time, and in shared notebooks, your chat is visible only to you.
  • Artifact creation in chat: You can now instantly transform your chat conversations into stunning Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, tailored reports, and more. Just ask Notebook to create the artifact of your choosing — all without leaving the chat.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Slide revisions, new infographic styles, improved flashcards & quizzes, EPUB as a source, PPTX export, saved and secure conversation history, artifact creation in chat

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts with access to NotebookLM
Cinematic Video Overviews (English only)

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • AI Add-ons: AI Ultra Access, AI Expanded Access, AI Pro for Education

Visit the Help Center to learn more about NotebookLM features and access by Workspace edition.

Resources

Long Term Support Channel Update for ChromeOS

A new LTS-138  version 138.0.7204.307 (Platform Version: 16295.92.0), is being rolled out for most ChromeOS devices. 


This version includes selected security fixes including:


474435504  High CVE-2026-1504 Inappropriate implementation in Background Fetch API.

483853098  High CVE-2026-3539 Object lifecycle issue in DevTools.

Release notes for LTS-138 can be found here 

Want to know more about Long-term Support? Click here

Andy Wu

Google ChromeOS

Chrome Beta for Desktop Update

The Beta channel has been updated to 147.0.7727.15 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Chrome Release Team
Google Chrome

Introducing: Ads DevCast

A new podcast for the ads technical community

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Ads DevCast, a new bi-weekly vodcast and podcast series brought to you by Google’s Advertising and Measurement Developer Relations team.

Hosted by Developer Relations Engineer Cory Liseno, this show is dedicated to deep dives into our latest technical updates, insights from the engineers building our tools, and expert discussions on products like Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Meridian, and more.

While you might already be familiar with the Ads Decoded podcast — where Ginny Marvin does a fantastic job bridging the gap for marketing teams on campaign strategy — Ads DevCast is built specifically for builders and developers.

You can tune in on our Google Ads Developers YouTube channel or find the podcast on Google Ads Developers in YouTube Music.

Episode 1: MCPs, Agents, and Ads. Oh My!

In our premiere episode, we explore the "agentic shift" currently reshaping the advertising landscape. We’re seeing a world where agents, not just humans, are becoming primary consumers of our APIs. To help you stay ahead, we’ve released several tools designed to make your integrations smarter, faster, and more accessible.

Getting Smarter with MCP Servers

One of the covered topics is Model Context Protocol (MCP), and how it allows your agents like Gemini CLI to securely access your data.

We’ve recently released open source, self-hosted MCP servers for the Google Ads API and Google Analytics API. These tools allow you to ask natural language questions directly to your agent, such as:

  • "What are my active campaigns?"
  • "Which properties had the highest traffic yesterday?"
  • "What are my top-selling products over the last month?"

The real magic happens when you combine this data with generative power. In the episode, we discuss how you can use the Analytics MCP to not only pull reports but then ask Gemini to generate a data-justified marketing plan based on those specific results.

Moving Faster with the Developer Assistant

Technical speed is another major focus. To reduce the time spent digging through documentation, we’ve launched the Google Ads API Developer Assistant. This Gemini CLI extension allows you to use natural language to generate, debug, and even test-run integration code.

In one real-world test, we used the assistant to solve a complex reporting issue regarding policy disapprovals. What would normally take days of back-and-forth with email support was resolved by the assistant in minutes, providing the exact GAQL query needed to get the job done.

Improving Accessibility

AI tooling is also changing who can interact with our technical systems. We’re seeing a shift from the "Ads Developer Community" to a broader "Ads Technical Community." Marketing power users are now leveraging MCP servers to perform real-time data operations without waiting for a full development lifecycle. This frees up engineering teams to focus on high-impact "blue sky" projects while giving marketers the agility they need.

We want to hear from you

This show is a pilot, and your feedback is important so we can tailor our content to what is most useful for you. Please take a moment to fill out our Episode 1 Survey and let us know what topics you want us to cover next.

Be sure to also join our Discord Community where you can join the conversation with Googlers and fellow developers.

Thanks for tuning in! We'll see you in two weeks for Episode 2.

Cory Liseno
Google’s Advertising and Measurement Developer Relations team

Introducing the new Meetings section in Google Chat

We’re introducing a dedicated Meetings section in Google Chat—a new way to organize your conversation list and keep your meeting conversations in one place.

Previously, meeting conversations lived in your direct messages, often making it difficult to find specific project discussions or meeting notes.

You can now group all past and future meeting chats into a single, dedicated section in your conversation list. Once a meeting concludes, the meeting conversation (if used) seamlessly moves into this section, providing a persistent home for ongoing follow-ups.

When the feature becomes available, users may see a promotional in-app banner or tooltip highlighting the new Meetings section and inviting them to enable it to better organize their conversation list.

Image depicts a user selecting "Try it" from the promotional prompt to initiate the new Meetings section

Once created, the new Meetings section appears as a distinct category in the conversation list, located under Direct Messages and Spaces. It acts as a smart folder that automatically aggregates any continuous meeting conversation in one place. This section can be moved, deleted, or reordered at any time.

Image depicts the newly created Meeting section under Direct Messages and Spaces in the conversation list

Key benefits include:

  • Organization: Keeps all meeting related conversations in one place.
  • Discoverability: Easily find details from a meeting days after the call has ended.
  • Control: This is an optional feature. You decide where the section sits in your conversation list, and you can move individual meeting threads to any custom section you’ve created.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature is off by default and requires user opt-in. To activate this feature, users must go to the three-dot overflow menu found on any section of their conversation list. From the resulting dropdown, they should choose "Create a meeting section" and then click "Create." Once enabled, the section will appear in the conversation list  beneath Direct Messages and Spaces, and can be moved or removed at any time. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
Image depicts a user going to the 3 dot overflow to manually create the meeting section.

Rollout pace

Availability

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

Resources