Tag Archives: Other

Jamboard now available for purchase in Japan

Over the past year, we’ve announced that Jamboard, our cloud-based, collaborative whiteboard, is available for purchase in an ever-growing list of countries such as the United States, Canada, UK, select parts of Europe, and Australia. We’re now expanding that list further, bringing Jamboard to Japan.

G Suite customers in Japan can now purchase Jamboard for 640,000 JPY, which includes two styluses, an eraser, and a wall mount. See the table below for pricing.



Keep in mind that a G Suite license is required to use Jamboard so that you can access files from Drive, use them in your brainstorms, and come back to your work later.

G Suite customers based in Japan can contact their Google Cloud sales rep, our distributor, BenQ, or visit our website to learn more about how to start jamming with colleagues today.

Additional information about Jamboard
In addition to the Jamboard device, the Jamboard app is available on Android and iOS for all G Suite customers. When used on a tablet, the Jamboard app allows users to experience similar features as they would on the Jamboard device. On a smartphone, the app functions as a companion for the Jamboard device.

Usage of the Jamboard app and web viewer are controlled by a service on/off switch in the Admin console. This service switch is on by default.

Check out the Help Center for more information, including an FAQ section.

Launch Details
Release track:
Jamboard devices now available for purchase in Japan

Editions:
G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, Enterprise for Education, and Education editions only

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

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Ensuring your users can access Google Contacts

To create a more consistent, streamlined Google Contacts experience, we’re removing the embedded contacts feature in Gmail, which gives users access to their contacts from the top left corner of the UI. This feature doesn’t appear in the new version of Gmail that recently launched, and it will soon be removed from the old UI as well.


We’re removing the embedded contacts feature in Gmail. 

Going forward, G Suite users can access Contacts via their web browser at contacts.google.com or the app launcher. This will direct them to the new Contacts (a.k.a. Contacts preview) or the classic Contacts Manager, depending on which is enabled for their domain.

You can access Contacts at contacts.google.com or via the app launcher (pictured).

Unfortunately, many customers are unaware that they previously disabled access to the classic Contacts Manager, because their users can still access the contacts feature embedded in the old Gmail UI (as it isn’t controlled by the Contacts on / off switch). In response to feedback from these customers, and so that their users can continue to access their contacts, we’ve now enabled access to the classic Contacts Manager for all G Suite domains.

Note that this change doesn’t impact domains with Contacts preview enabled; users in such domains will continue to see the Contacts preview UI when they navigate to contacts.google.com or select Contacts from the app launcher.

Since launching Contacts preview in 2016, we’ve made steady improvements to the product. We’re continuing to work toward feature parity with the classic Contacts Manager, with delegation functionality planned for later this year. We highly recommend that all G Suite customers migrate their users to the Contacts preview, provided it meets their needs.

If Contacts preview doesn’t yet meet your needs and you’re required to disable access to the classic Contacts Manager, please fill out this form and we’ll do our best to accommodate this need. Please note that this means your users will lose access to Contacts via their browser.


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Helping enterprises stay competitive with new updates in G Suite

(Cross-posted from The Keyword)

In 1958, U.S. corporations remained on the S&P 500 index for an average of 61 years, according to the American Enterprise Foundation. Fast forward to today and companies are being replaced approximately every two weeks. In this rapidly changing market, traditional companies are looking for ways to stay competitive and more and more enterprises, including Nielsen, Colgate and Airbus, are turning to G Suite to help them reimagine how they work to keep pace.

We know that enterprises want to move to cloud-first collaboration to transform how they work, but, understandably, they have questions about how to make it work in a business of their size. What happens with email security? How can they manage their data? How does G Suite work with the tools and systems they already have in place?

Yesterday we announced new products to help businesses reimagine how they work, and today we’re sharing additional solutions we’ve built to address these concerns.

Here’s a snapshot of what we’re announcing today. Read on for more detail.
  • New Gmail (redesigned security warnings, snooze, offline access and more generally available for G Suite users)
  • Cloud Search (being deployed by an initial set of customers)
  • Google Voice for G Suite (available in our Early Adopter Program*)
  • Drive Enterprise SKU (available for purchase)

Keeping businesses (and emails) secure

Keeping your data secure is our top priority, which is why we use machine learning to analyze threat indicators across billions of messages in Gmail to help quickly identify potential security attacks in the making. Machine learning helps protect more than 1.4 billion active Gmail user accounts from nearly 10 million spam and malicious emails every minute.

Today, we’re making the new Gmail generally available to G Suite customers so that, in addition to these baked-in security features, more companies can take advantage of features like redesigned security warnings, snooze, offline access and more. You can learn more in this post.

Bringing the best of Google Search to enterprise data

Searching through your company’s data should be as easy as doing a web search. But the reality is most companies’ information is spread across different silos and systems that don’t talk to each other, which makes finding things a lengthy chore. We introduced Cloud Search last year to make it easy to find information across G Suite in a way that’s intuitive and assistive. Today, we are announcing new Cloud Search functionality to help companies intelligently and securely index their third-party data beyond G Suite, whether that data is stored in the cloud, or on-prem.

Companies, like Whirlpool Corporation, have started deploying Cloud Search’s new capabilities to unify search across multiple data sources. Using Cloud Search’s new SDKs, APIs and connectors for third-party connectivity, Whirlpool created a custom app called Whirlpool SearchPro that indexes more than 12 million documents across different on-prem and cloud systems and returns results in 100s of milliseconds on average. Moreover, search results reflect the specific permissions and access controls from each of the source systems to ensure that individuals only see the information they should.

Index third-party data with Google Cloud Search
New Cloud Search functionality helps companies intelligently and securely index their third-party data.

Cloud Search’s new functionality will be available to G Suite Enterprise customers as well as any company looking to power their enterprise search needs as a new standalone offering. We’re also pleased to offer qualifying Google Search Appliance customers an upgrade path to Cloud Search. Cloud Search is currently being deployed by an initial set of customers, and we’re excited to have 15 launch partners on board, including SADA, Onix and Accenture. Learn more.

Enabling smarter and easier collaboration

We first introduced Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Meet hardware last year to make it easier for employees to collaborate with colleagues across the globe, be it face-to-face or via chat. Aside from bringing the best of video conferencing to businesses, we also want to create better telephony solutions so that employees can be more productive over the phone. For close to a decade, millions of consumers have used Google Voice to connect with folks across the globe. Now we’re bringing an enterprise version of Voice to G Suite.

On top of the existing features that users love, Google Voice is tightly integrated with G Suite apps, like Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar, and provides administrator capabilities best suited for the enterprise. Admins can manage users, provision and port phone numbers, access detailed reports and set up call routing functionality. Voice also lets you deploy phone numbers to employees, or even entire departments, at once, and assigns a number that’s not tied to a specific device. AI-powered features in Voice also help facilitate voicemail transcription and spam filtering, which helps eliminate disruptions for employees so they can focus on what’s important.

We’ve been testing this enterprise version with key customers since last October. As a part of the Trusted Tester* program, Nielsen noticed major improvements in reliability and call quality compared to previous phone solutions. “Google Voice quickly emerged as our preferred telephony solution for remote teams and frequent travelers,” says Kim Anstett, Chief Information Officer at Nielsen. “In fact, we’re excited to announce plans to leverage Voice as the standard for remote work telephony at Nielsen.”

To try out Google Voice within your organization, you can sign up for the Early Adopter Program.

Making transitioning to the cloud simple

Lastly, we want to make it simpler for businesses to adopt and use G Suite, and a large part of this is ensuring a smooth transition off legacy enterprise content management (ECM) systems. To help, our customers will now be able to purchase Drive Enterprise as a standalone offering with usage-based pricing.

With Drive Enterprise, businesses can move their content to the cloud in Google Drive, and employees can create and collaborate securely with tools like Docs, Sheets and Slides without disrupting other legacy office productivity tools. More than 2 trillion files are stored in Google Drive to date, and most recently, Google was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (CCP) for the second year in a row. Learn more about the new Drive Enterprise.

Purchase Drive Enterprise as a standalone offering
Customers can now purchase Drive Enterprise as a standalone offering with usage-based pricing.

We’ve also made a concerted effort to make it easier to use G Suite with existing legacy tools so that you can avoid interruptions at work. Whether it’s making sure your calendar details stay intact between Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar, providing new ways to integrate Hangout Meet with existing hardware, making it easier to collaborate with teams outside of your domain and more, we’re focused on building solutions to make your work day easier. Read more about our latest interoperability capabilities in this post.

Try today

Visit the G Suite website to see how you can transform how your enterprise operates, and stay tuned to the G Suite Updates blog today for more details on these and other features launching at Next.

*The G Suite Trusted Tester and Early Adopter Programs will soon be renamed as Alpha and Beta, respectively. More details to come.



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Google Voice now available to G Suite customers through Early Adopter Program (Beta)



Because over-the-phone collaboration is a critical part of the modern workplace, we’re expanding our meeting solution beyond just messaging and video and introducing an enterprise telephony offering with the Google Voice for G Suite Early Adopter Program (Beta).

Google Voice for G Suite gives you a phone number that isn’t tied to a device, so you can place and receive calls from any device, anywhere. Using Google Voice in conjunction with Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, your organization can standardize on Google as the single partner for all your communication needs.

Participants in the Google Voice for G Suite Early Adopter Program (EAP) can expect:

  • An app for web, Android and iOS where users can link their Google account to their Google Voice phone number
  • Saved time with fast deployment and instant flows to let admins assign numbers to users individually and in bulk
  • Flexibility to let users choose their own numbers and set up their forwarding preferences
  • Assigned phone numbers automatically syncing with the company directory and surfaced in Google Contacts
  • G Suite integrations with Hangouts Meet and Calendar
Once accepted into the EAP, G Suite admins can begin provisioning their users with phone numbers for Google Voice. Please note, we are only accepting G Suite customers who don't need support for data location at this time. Additionally, this EAP is not currently available to G Suite for Government domains.

Lastly, the free version of Google Voice will still be available to consumers with the existing feature set, and consumer users will continue to receive updates to the app. The Android, iOS and web apps will also get a new icon along with this update.



For more information, or to apply for this Early Adopter Program, visit the sign-up page.

More Information
The Keyword: Helping enterprises stay competitive with new updates in G Suite

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Expand the content your company searches with third-party indexing in Cloud Search

We introduced Cloud Search a year ago to allow teams to search quickly and easily across all of their company’s content in G Suite, from Gmail and Drive to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar and more. We’re now announcing a significant expansion to the capabilities of Cloud Search that will help your organization get the speed, performance, and quality of Google Search across all of your content systems.

With new third-party indexing capabilities, Cloud Search can now intelligently and securely index your data beyond G Suite, whether it is stored in the cloud or on-premise. We’re excited to have 15 launch partners on board, including SADA, Onix and Accenture, and we’ll be adding more in the future.



We’re beginning to offer Cloud Search third-party indexing to a first wave of G Suite Enterprise customers who express interest. We’re also making this new functionality available as a standalone offering to non-G Suite customers. As part of this, we’re offering qualifying Google Search Appliance (GSA) customers an upgrade path to Cloud Search.

To learn more about this new functionality, express interest, or become a partner, sign up through this form and our sales team will be in touch with more information.

More Information
Help Center: Manage third-party data sources
Help Center: Google Search Appliance End of Life
The Keyword: Helping enterprises stay competitive with new updates in G Suite

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Easily connect with Salesforce from Google Sheets

We’re publishing an add-on for Google Sheets to connect with Salesforce.

You can use it to import data and reports from Salesforce into Sheets, and to push updates you make in Sheets back to Salesforce. This seamless integration will help your users optimize workflows and reduce duplicate work between the two products.

For example, your Finance team could use the add-on to perform an in-depth forecast based on all current deals in the pipeline. The add-on would pull all data from the relevant Salesforce report into Sheets, where Finance team members could then use other powerful Sheets features, such as Explore, pivot tables, or macro recorder. Or the Sales team could use the add-on to import the details of their accounts from Salesforce and use Sheets to do a bulk update that pushes the changes back to Salesforce.


Get and use the Salesforce add-on for Google Sheets 

This add-on, made by Google Cloud, is currently in Beta. Add-ons are covered by Google Apps Script Additional Terms. To get the add on:


As a G Suite admin you can control access to this add-on the same way you can with any other Sheets add-on.


See our Help Center for more details on how to import, edit, and sync Salesforce data with Google Sheets.

More information 
G Suite Marketplace: Data Connector for Salesforce add-on
Admin Help Center: Install Marketplace apps
Admin Help Center: Control user installation of Marketplace apps
Admin Help Center: Turn a Marketplace app on or off for users
User Help Center: Use add-ons and Apps Script 
User Help Center: Import, edit and sync Salesforce data with Google Sheets


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New Google Sheets enterprise data integrations with BigQuery and SAP

We're introducing two new Google Sheets integrations to make it easier to analyze your data. We’re opening a Beta program for a data connector that dynamically connects Sheets with BigQuery. We’re also announcing the general availability of an integration with SAP ERP that enables teams to seamlessly pull their business data into Sheets.

We hope that these features will make powerful business data more accessible through Sheets’ familiar, intelligent, and collaborative interface. By freeing data from large databases that need analytical experts to query it or from specialized software that not everyone has access to, we can help you get more insight into your business and make better, data-driven decisions.

Easier and better big data collaboration with Sheets and BigQuery integration Beta 

BigQuery can provide powerful analysis of multiple data sets, but needs specialized skills and knowledge which can make collaborating on data difficult. Sheets provides familiar spreadsheet tools that can help whole teams collaborate and make better data-driven decisions.

Users in the Beta will be able to create a BigQuery query, get a preview, and insert the results into Sheets without leaving the Sheets interface. The data can then be refreshed from within the Sheets interface. Teams can use this to:
  • Streamline reporting and dashboard workflows. Have a single source of truth for big data insights without exports that can get out of date and cause errors. 
  • Democratize analysis. The Sheets interface can bring data to wider, less technical teams with a familiar spreadsheet interface and tools like “Explore” and macro recorder. 
  • Increase collaboration. Sheets makes it easy for teams to comment, discuss, and share insights as they analyze and use the data. 

For example, an analyst could set up a query that analyzes data from several datasets in BigQuery. The data from that would then be accessible in Sheets, where the business team could get the latest data, ask questions in plain English, and add comments ahead of finalizing their quarterly reports. What’s more, with parameterized queries, a single analyst could set up a query in Sheets so that dozens of different sales teams could get different results depending on their regional needs—all without requiring the salesperson to know any SQL.

Apply to join the Beta for the BigQuery and Sheets connectors

Sheets and BigQuery users can apply to join the Beta program for this feature. Admins can see more details, review the eligibility requirements, and apply for their domains to join at gsuite.google.com/bq-sheets.


Discover additional insights from SAP ERP with new integration 

The integration between Sheets and SAP that we announced in June has now launched. You can now export data directly from SAP GUI and SAP ECC 6.0 to Sheets and analyze that data with tools like charts, pivot tables, and Explore. With this new integration, you can skip manually exporting data to CSVs and uploading them to Drive. This can help you:
  • Use the Sheets “Explore” feature to find new insights from data in SAP. 
  • Easily analyze and create data visualizations. 
  • Collaborate with a single source of truth. 

Find out more about how to integrate Sheets and SAP.


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