Tag Archives: Other

Gain deeper organizational insights and take action with new G Suite features

(Cross-posted from the G Suite blog)

Companies across the world are exploring digital transformation to increase collaboration, leading to more idea exchange, less organizational silos and more opportunity for growth. Be it a healthcare company like SCL Health looking for ways to streamline patient care, or a media company like Nielsen looking to collaborate in real-time, every organization is unique—and so, too, are its needs.

For this reason, businesses are turning to cloud-native apps like G Suite to gain greater visibility into their organization, as well as to have more control over policies that keep their data secure.

Today, we're announcing two new ways admins can gain greater insight into their organizations to help employees focus on work that’s core to success.

See how your organization collaborates with Work Insights

Work Insights is a tool built specifically to help businesses measure and understand the impact of digital transformation within their organizations, driven by G Suite. With Work Insights—now available in beta—admins can quickly surface organizational insights about G Suite deployments at the team level (aggregated at 10 people or more) and understand adoption patterns for G Suite apps.

With adoption charts in Work Insights, admins can analyze trends and track deployment progress over time. They can see which apps are widely adopted, and by which teams, as well as benchmark and identify which ones may need additional training on applications. This can be particularly valuable when an organization is transitioning from legacy tools to G Suite.



You can also use Work Insights to learn how your teams are collaborating across your organization. For example, an admin can quickly surface the percentage of users on the Sales team that are working with the Marketing team to see patterns, like if they’re working together in meetings or co-creating documents. This insight can help executives identify opportunities to strengthen collaboration and reduce siloes.

Understand and mitigate potential security risks with new investigation tool

Understanding what is happening within an organization is also important to operate securely, and businesses need a way to simplify their security management. We introduced the security center for G Suite earlier this year to help—bringing together security analytics, actionable insights and best practice recommendations from Google.

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of the investigation tool in security center, which adds integrated remediation to the prevention and detection capabilities already available. With this addition, admins can identify suspicious device activity, see if Google Drive have been shared externally and remove access, delete malicious emails and more.



The investigation tool, with its simple UI, makes it easier for admins to identify threats without having to worry about analyzing logs which can be time-consuming and require complex scripting. Powerful remediation controls enable admins to take action by scaling incident response across the entire domain with a few clicks . Investigation tool is available today for G Suite Enterprise customers. Learn more.

Use these insights from G Suite to augment how your teams work together or visit the G Suite website to learn more.

New G Suite adoption and productivity insights tool launching in Beta

We’re launching Work Insights, a new tool to help you quickly assess the impact of G Suite on your organization by giving you visibility into the adoption of G Suite tools. Initially launching in beta, Work Insights is available to organizations with G Suite Enterprise or Enterprise for Education editions. G Suite admins can use this form to apply for the beta.

See the impact of G Suite in your organization 

With Work Insights, we aim to bring you executive-level insights into how G Suite is increasing collaboration and improving workplace culture at your organization. Use the Work Insights dashboard to see how your organization’s G Suite usage is changing over time in the following areas:
  • Adoption - which teams are adopting G Suite and which apps they use most frequently
  • Collaboration - how are teams working together through meetings, file sharing, and document co-editing
  • Activity - which apps teams are spending time in and how much time they’re spending in meetings
The metrics in the dashboard can help you determine how quickly your workforce is adopting G Suite, how teams are collaborating, if they’re using G Suite products as expected, and if you need additional training resources to help users understand a new workflow.

Compare across your organization

For each category of metrics, you can compare insights by organizational unit. You can also benchmark usage and adoption by comparing team-level statistics to overall company data. This can help you establish usage trends and see adoption patterns to get insights into differences across your organization.

Note that at the organizational level, team insights will only be shown for teams of 10 people or more.

See how G Suite is used across your organization


See how teams within your organization collaborate

Work Insights Beta now open

Work Insights is initially launching in beta to organizations with G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education editions only, with access restricted to admins. See this form for more details and to apply.

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Gmail Offline Chrome app to be removed later this year

We’ve heard from customers that they want to use the same Gmail app whether they’re online or off. Our new offline feature makes that possible, allowing you to search, write, delete, and archive up to 90 days of messages, even when you don’t have an internet connection.

This native capability is easier to use and performs better than the Gmail Offline Chrome app, so we’re removing it from the Chrome Web Store after December 3rd, 2018. This is part of our ongoing effort to move Chrome apps to the web.

In preparation, we recommend that affected G Suite admins who want to preserve offline access enable Gmail web offline for their domains and then encourage their users to do the following:

  1. Enable Gmail offline in their individual settings.
  2. Uninstall the Gmail Offline Chrome app.

To access Gmail while they’re offline, users should simply navigate to mail.google.com in a Chrome browser (v61 or higher).

Please note that you can only use the native Gmail offline feature in the new Gmail.

More Information
G Suite Updates blog: Work offline in the new Gmail
Help Center: Work offline in Gmail
Help Center: Use Gmail offline

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

New Content manager role coming to Team Drives

In October 2018, we will make several changes to membership roles in Team Drives. Most importantly, we’ll add a new “Content manager” role, which will make it easier to manage files in Team Drives. When it takes effect, Content manager will become the default role for new members of a Team Drive.

Many organizations have asked for this role in Team Drives. To help them take full advantage at launch and reduce manual work, we’re offering a one-time migration to move users who currently have “Edit access” to the Content manager role. G Suite admins can opt in to this migration by filling out this form before September 26th.

Content manager role will make file management easier 

Users with the Content manager role will be able to edit, reorganize, and delete Team Drive content, but they won’t be able to modify Team Drive membership or settings. Content manager will replace “Full access” as the default role for new Team Drive members.

There are some important differences between the permissions for Content managers and users with Edit access that are particularly helpful if you use Drive File Stream:


  • Unlike users with edit access, Content managers will be able to reorganize and delete files in a Team Drive. 
  • Content managers will have read and write access to files in Drive File Stream, allowing them to easily manage Team Drive files through their computer’s file system or the Drive web interface. Users with Edit access won’t have this access and so will still need to access Team Drive files on the web to edit them. 


Optional: Enroll your organization in a one-time role migration by September 26th 

We recommend organizations with Drive File Stream enabled use the new role and consider opting in to the migration. However, no action is required in response to these changes. If you don’t do anything, the roles of Team Drive members in your organization will not change in October. If you opt in to the migration:


  • All individual users and groups in your organization who are members of Team Drives with “Edit access” will become “Content managers.” 
  • External users who are members of Team Drives in your organization will not be migrated, unless they belong to a group that also contains internal users. If they belong to a group that also contains internal users and that group is a member of a Team Drive with “Edit access”, those external users will be migrated to the Content manager role. 


To opt in to the migration, complete this form by September 26th, 2018.

To access the form, you must be a G Suite admin for your organization and have received an email with the subject line “Introducing a new role in Team Drives.” If you received this email but can’t access the form, please contact G Suite support and reference ID: 78256060.

Migration will take place in October 

If you fill out the form above and enroll your organization in the one-time migration, it will start on October 15th, 2018, for Rapid Release domains and October 29th, 2018, for Scheduled Release domains. It will be a gradual rollout, so it may take up to 15 days after those dates to reach all domains. When the migration takes place, users and admins will not be explicitly notified, but will be able to see the different role description when they look at their Team Drive membership.

Launch Details 
Release track:

  • Migration applications open now until September 26th, 2018 
  • Migration will start on October 15th for Rapid Release domains and October 29th for Scheduled Release domains (for organizations who’ve opted in only) 


Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, Nonprofit, and Enterprise for Education editions only

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
Migration decision applicable to admins only Full launch in October applicable to all end users 

Action: 
Admin action suggested/FYI and change management suggested/FYI


More Information 
Learning Center: Get started with Team Drives
Form to enroll in one-time Team Drives role migration


Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Inbox by Gmail shutting down at the end of March 2019

Inbox by Gmail has been a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications to help you stay productive.

Four years after launching Inbox in 2014, we've learned a lot about how to make email better—and we’ve taken popular Inbox experiences and added them into Gmail to help more than a billion people get more done with their emails everyday. As we look to the future, we want to take a more focused approach that will help us bring the best email experience to everyone. As a result, we’re planning to focus solely on Gmail and end support for Inbox by Gmail at the end of March 2019.

Earlier this year, we introduced the new Gmail, which incorporates many of the same features you’ve come to love about Inbox. We recommend encouraging your employees to begin using the new Gmail instead of Inbox. Check out this guide for help with the transition.

If you’d like to disable access to Inbox prior to the end of March 2019, you can do so in the Admin console.

More Information
Transition Guide

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Get a unified view of essential notifications with the alert center Beta

Today, we’re launching the alert center for G Suite in Beta*. The alert center will offer a single, comprehensive view of essential notifications, alerts, and actions across G Suite. In response to these, admins can take actions to better serve and protect their organizations.

The alert center: a single place for important notifications 

The unified view that the alert center provides will help admins manage alerts more efficiently, and provide insights that help them assess their organization's exposure to security issues at the domain and user levels. In addition, G Suite Enterprise edition domains can use the G Suite security center for integrated remediation of issues surfaced by alerts. 

A sample view of the new G Suite alert center 

Notifications within the alert center can be broadly categorized into three groups: security threats, monitoring, and critical system alerts. At the Beta launch, the alert center will include these specific alerts:

  • Google Operations - provides information about G Suite security and privacy issues that Google is investigating that may impact your organization's G Suite services. 
  • Gmail phishing and spam - reports spikes in user-reported phishing, including links to samples and the list of recipients that are affected. 
  • Mobile device management - provides information on devices that are exhibiting suspicious behavior or have been compromised (available on G Suite Business and G Suite Enterprise editions) 

Beta program for the alert center now open 

We’re excited to open a Beta program to let G Suite customers try and provide feedback on the alert center functionality. The Beta is available to all G Suite customers. G Suite super admins may apply with their primary domain on behalf of their organizations. Apply to join the Beta here.

More Information 
Help center: About the alert center

* Beta is the new name for Early Adopter Programs



Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Making it easier to set up Android devices as company-owned

When employees set up their phones and tablets as company-owned devices, they give your organization full control over those devices—allowing you to apply policies regarding app installation, network settings, security options, and more. This helps protect your users and your corporate data.

If you have advanced mobile device management but don’t register your company-owned devices in the Admin console, your users must choose to set up their devices as company-owned.

To encourage more users to make this choice, we’ll start showing the screen below to all users who add their G Suite account to a new Android device before adding their personal account.

This change will start rolling out on September 19th, 2018; please note that it may take several weeks for it to take effect for all users.


Starting on September 19th, users will be asked if they own the device they’re setting up. Unless they explicitly state that they own the device personally, ownership will be auto-assigned to your organization.

Currently, your users only see this choice if your organization has Device Owner mode enabled. That option will disappear from the Admin console on September 19th.

Note that users will only see the screen and option above on new (and recently factory-reset) devices running Android 6.0 or higher.

Allowing users to install any app from the managed Google Play store

In addition to the change outlined above, we’re making it easier to install apps on company-owned Android devices and work profiles.

Currently, you have to actively whitelist apps to make them available to your users. Starting on September 19th, users with company-owned Android devices and work profiles will be allowed to install any app from the managed Google Play store by default. If you don’t want your users to do this, you can choose to restrict app availability to whitelisted apps.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on September 19th, 2018

Editions:
Available to all G Suite and Cloud Identity Premium editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set up Android devices your company owns


Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates