(Cross-posted from The Keyword) Posted by Elissa Murphy, Vice President of Engineering, G Suite
G Suite is designed to help you do your best work, whether that’s through real-time collaboration that brings your teams together or machine intelligence that speeds up everyday tasks. But we understand your company has unique needs and workflows that G Suite alone wasn’t built to address. We also know your teams rely on many third-party apps for things like CRM, support, and project management to get their job done. So today, we’re announcing two new ways to customize and extend your experience on the G Suite platform: App Maker, a new low-code developer tool for building custom enterprise applications, and the addition of seven new partners to our “Recommended for G Suite” third-party partner program.
Introducing App Maker, a new way to build powerful apps for your business. App Maker is a low-code, application development tool that lets you quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months.
Go from idea to app, fast: App Maker makes it easy for IT or even citizen developers (including analysts and system administrators) to quickly iterate from a prototype all the way to deployed app. It offers a powerful cloud-based IDE that features built-in templates, a drag-and-drop UI, and point-and-click data modeling to accelerate your app development efforts. App Maker also embraces open, and popular standards like HTML, CSS, Javascript and Google’s material design visual framework, so developers can build apps quickly, in a development environment that leverages their existing skills and knowledge.
Build integrated, tailor-made solutions for every need: App Maker lets you build a range of applications customized to meet the needs of your organization and connects to a wide range of data sources and APIs. This unique flexibility starts with built-in support for G Suite products as well as popular services such as Maps, Contacts, Groups and more. You can also leverage other Google Cloud services such as the Directory API and Prediction API, or third-party APIs, to create richer, more intelligent application experiences.
Focus on delivery, not infrastructure: App Maker is built on the same secure and trusted infrastructure as G Suite apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs. Developers can safely deploy custom apps in the cloud without worrying about servers, capacity planning, infrastructure security and monitoring that would otherwise require internal support from IT.
Over the past few months, we’ve previewed App Maker with a handful of large G Suite customers and many have already built and deployed applications to their organizations. We’re also working with the following consulting partners to help deliver solutions to our joint customers: Appsbroker, gPartner, G-Workplace, Ignite Synergy, Maven Wave, PwC, SADA Systems, and Tempus Nova.
Here are a few ways that enterprise customers and partners have used App Maker to make everyday business processes simpler and more efficient--whether it’s to track suspicious login activities, take analog claims processes and make them digital, or track office inventory orders.
Announcing new apps for the ‘Recommended for G Suite’ program While G Suite helps your teams communicate and collaborate more easily, we get that you also rely on third-party apps to manage other aspects of your business including sales, marketing, and operations. We want to make it easy for you to integrate these solutions with G Suite, and that’s why we introduced the Recommended for G Suite program last year. The program selects market leading applications, built by independent software vendors (ISVs), in a range of categories like project management, customer support, finance and accounting.
Today, we’re adding seven new apps to the program that can help you be more productive. These apps solve critical business problems and offer deep integration and direct support with G Suite. Each app also goes through rigorous security testing and quality measures to qualify for the Recommended for G Suite program.
Since we launched this program with our first eight apps last year, we’ve seen many examples of how our customers have incorporated them with G Suite to drive more value for their business. We’ve created a webinar series to show first-hand examples of this, and you can sign up here if you’re interested in attending. In addition, if you’re an ISV that’s interested in becoming a Recommended for G Suite partner, please submit your application here.
Try these new solutions today We’re committed to helping you get the most out of your G Suite experience by fostering the best ecosystem of cloud applications and partners. App Maker enables you to build powerful apps tailored to your organizational needs, while the Recommended for G Suite program helps your teams select leading apps to grow your business. Both solutions are available today, and we encourage you to try them out.
In September, we announced that we would soon launch an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the Team Drives feature in Google Drive. We’re now ready to accept applications for that EAP, which will kick off shortly.
Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can store their files and guarantee that every member has the most up-to-date information, no matter the time or place. Team Drives make onboarding easy, because every person and Google Group added to a Team Drive gets instant access to that team’s documents. Moreover, Team Drives are designed to store the team’s work collectively, so if a document’s creator moves off of the team that document doesn’t go with them. Advanced access controls make Team Drives even more robust, preventing team members from accidentally removing or deleting files that others need.
Before applying for the Team Drives EAP, please note the following restrictions:
Only G Suite admins can sign up for the Team Drives EAP. If you are not the G Suite admin for your organization, please contact that individual and ask them to sign up.
Admins will need to enroll their entire primary domain in the EAP. They will be able to restrict Team Drives creation to certain organizational units, but all users in the domain will be able to see and access Team Drives. They will not be able to enroll secondary domains.
At the moment, Team Drives does not support some features, including adding members from outside of one’s domain, syncing to a desktop computer, and Vault capabilities.
Starting on November 28, 2016, some small but important changes are coming to the way that Google Drive sends notification emails. Your users will not see any visible changes, but if you use Gmail's advanced smart hosting features, then you may notice a difference in the way new emails are archived or filtered by your mail solutions.
What's changing:
Google Drive will no longer store a 'courtesy copy' in the mailbox of the sender.Gmail's comprehensive mail storage feature will now place a copy of Drive sharing notification emails in the sender's Sent folder.
If you use smart hosting (through an outbound mail server), you can now capture and deliver these emails through your preferred mail gateway.
If you previously relied on outbound gateway settings to route Drive notifications, you can now use content compliance rulesor sending routing rules to route these messages, making it consistent with other mail routing features.
What's not changing:
The "from" field is not changing. It will continue to be the sender when the recipient is a group, or [email protected]in all other cases, as it is today.
The message header fields are not changing. The envelope sender will still be [string]@doclist.bounces.google.com, not the actual account of the sender.
Request access notifications will not behave differently.
These changes will roll out to G Suite customers over a few days, starting on November 28, 2016.
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid and Scheduled release
Editions: Available to all G Suite editions
Rollout pace: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)
Today, we’re announcing that on January 1, 2017 we will discontinue support for the Google Drive desktop app on Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 since these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft. The Google Drive desktop app (officially: "Google Drive for Mac/PC") will continue to function on these platforms, but will not be actively tested and maintained. If you are still on one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer version of Windows to continue using Google Drive desktop app.
Release track: Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release on January 1, 2017
Bringing the right team together for a meeting or brainstorm can take an idea from being good to great. When we tap into ideas from teams across the globe, our work becomes more collaborative and productive. It doesn’t feel like...well, work. At Google, we’ve set out to redefine meetings. So today, we’re introducing Jamboard — a collaborative, digital whiteboard that makes it easy for your team to share ideas in real-time and create without boundaries. We’re moving the whiteboard to the cloud.
Your team’s collaborative, cloud-first whiteboard Jamboard raises the bar on collaborative creativity, bringing the same real-time collaboration found in G Suite, combined with the best of the web, to your team’s brainstorms and meetings. You can work with teammates from across the world on other Jamboards or remotely use the smartphone or tablet companion app.
Jamboard makes it easy to enrich your brainstorm with the power of Google Search and your team’s work in G Suite. Grab images and content from the web and bring them straight into your “jam.” Pull in work from Docs, Sheets and Slides, or add photos stored in Drive. To capture your ideas clearly, Jamboard is packed with tools like sticky notes and stencils as well as intelligent features like handwriting and shape recognition.
It’s a hassle when you use a whiteboard, reach the end of your meeting and have to quickly scramble to snap a picture of your work. How many times have you scribbled “do not erase” above your idea? Jamboard lets you take your work with you. When you “jam” with your colleagues, it lives in the cloud in Google Drive, so you can easily share what you’ve created or come back to iterate at anytime. Your brainstorm doesn’t have to end when the meeting does.
Designed for precision and ease Jamboard is intelligently designed to speed up collaboration among your teams with a 55-inch 4k display that features a best-in-class touch response time. Combine this with a built-in HD camera, speakers and Wi-Fi, and you’re set up to collaborate and broadcast your work globally with Hangouts.
Jamboard’s touchscreen was built for precision drawing. It automatically recognizes the difference between using the stylus to sketch or the eraser to start over, and neither require batteries or pairing. Jamboard can also sense when you’re using your finger to wipe work off of the screen, just like a classic whiteboard (except you won’t get ink on your hand). The intuitive, single-cable setup makes it easy to start creating quickly with Jamboard — just wheel it in, turn it on and start brainstorming.
Time to jam We want to help teams get back to the heart of what they love to do: create new ideas. That’s why we’ve worked closely with G Suite customers like Instrument, Netflix, and Spotify to refine the blend of hardware and software that drives Jamboard. We're also partnering with BenQ to tap into its network of channels and resellers to help bring Jamboard to market.
While touch displays have traditionally been expensive, at under $6,000 USD, Jamboard is a competitively-priced way to transform your team’s meetings and will be available for purchase in 2017. As we “jam” on the final product details, we're ready to partner with a broader set of G Suite customers to perfect Jamboard through an Early Adopter Program. If you're interested, submit the form on the Jamboard website to receive more information about eligibility.
Today, we’re announcing that as of February 1, 2017, we will discontinue service for Drive for Mac/PC desktop app versions 1.27 and lower. Going forward, we will officially discontinue service for any Google Drive for Mac/PC versions older than one year.
Newer versions of the Drive desktop app offer several performance and security updates. To ensure the highest quality experience for your users, we recommend that you take the following actions as soon as possible:
OS X and Windows users may check what version of Google Drive they are using by clicking on the Drive for Mac/PC menu, clicking on the three-dots icon, and then clicking About. Users still on versions 1.27 and lower after February 1, 2017 will no longer be able to sync files between Google Drive and local storage using Google Drive for Mac/PC.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be contacting domain administrators whose users currently use older versions of Google Drive for Mac/PC and provide guidance on the appropriate migration path.
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release
Unfortunately, even for AdSense publishers, there’s always the risk of an unauthorized source compromising your secure login credentials. In these instances, you might be locked out of your AdSense account. Here’s what you can do to recover your account and avoid the same issue in the future:
For starters, these triggers can help you identify if your account has been compromised.
You’ve noticed suspicious account activity (for example: there are new users that you haven’t granted access to; the payment details have changed without your permission; your security settings have been updated; and your email notification settings have changed).
You cannot login to your AdSense account.
If you’ve found that your account has been compromised, follow these steps to resolve the issue:
Run a malware scan on your devices
Visit our Login Troubleshooter. If you’re locked out of your account, the troubleshooter will help you recover your Google Account. Once you’ve recovered your Google Account:
Then, the troubleshooter will take you to the Account login issues form, which will direct you to an AdSense account issues specialists.
The specialist will start an investigation and communicate next steps (including the investigation report and reimbursement options).
For a speedy resolution, be sure to include the following with the form as accurately as possible:
Proof of your identity and address using acceptable documents.
Proof of a recent AdSense payment, such as a copy of a check, Western Union receipt or bank statement clearly showing a recent AdSense EFT deposit.
The URL of a test page of your website. This is to prove that you own and manage the domain listed in your account.
It’s important to note that the Account login issues form cannot be used to report disputes between authorized users. The administrator of the account is responsible for all user permissions. In general, it’s a best practice to remove former employees and inactive users from your account to help prevent unauthorized changes.
Unfortunately, in some cases with ongoing security concerns, account reinstatement may not be possible. The AdSense specialist team will let you know if this is the case.
We understand that compromised login credentials may be a huge problem for you and your business. Bookmark these valuable help resources to help retrieve a hijacked account:
If your domain has enabled non-admin user password recovery from the Admin console, then you may have decreased your help desk tickets by giving users an automated way to reset their password. Starting October 25, 2016, we’re extending non-admin user password recovery to include email addresses, an extension to our phone numbers launchfrom last year. Getting Started
Non-admin user password recovery launchedover a year ago as default OFF for new G Suite domains, and you can enable the feature by Organizational Unit from the Admin console under Security settings.
If you’ve already enabled the feature, then users will be prompted to add a secondary email address.
Security Best Practices If you’ve enabled this feature for your domain, we’d like to remind you of the following resources for administrators we’ve updated with this launch:
Note: For G Suite for Education domains that are Primary/Secondary institutions, only administrators will be shown the prompt for email address and phone number.
Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release on October 25, 2016 Rollout pace: Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)
