Tag Archives: Rapid Release

Admins can install Chat apps for use in direct messages

What’s changing

Google Chat apps integrate with productivity tools, enable you to collaborate with others, and can also help automate your work. Previously, to start using an app in Chat, users had to individually install apps as described here. 

Starting this week, admins can install Chat apps for direct messages on behalf of users within their domain from the Workspace Marketplace. Users will automatically see when an app has been enabled, eliminating the need to manually install the app themselves. 

Admins can deploy Chat apps as they see fit: to an entire domain, OU, or group of users using the Workspace Marketplace apps management controls. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins 

Why you’d use it 

This feature enables admins to provide their users with instant access to the Chat integrations they need for their workflow within an organization. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Not available to Nonprofits 
  • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

Add or remove client-side encryption from a Google Doc

What’s changing 

You can now choose to add client-side encryption to an existing document or remove it from an already encrypted document (File > Make a copy > Add/Remove additional encryption). This update gives you the flexibility to control encryption as your documents and projects evolve and progress.



Getting started

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Education Plus customers

Resources


Improvements to content organization in Google Docs

What’s changing

We’re rolling out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. You now have the options to: 
  • Toggle between three default styles 
  • Toggle page numbers 
  • Toggle tab leader styling (adds lines between a heading and the page number) 
  • Include and indent headings based on levels 
With these enhanced customizations, we hope this highly requested feature refines titles and headings to personalize the content of your document. 

We’re also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier for you to find and utilize table formatting options. Upon adding or editing a table, you will notice a new “Table” section with alignment preferences and a new “Cell” section with clearer cell-specific formatting options within the table properties sidebar. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • For tables, go to Insert > Table > click the “Table options” button in the top toolbar to open the Table properties sidebar. You can also right-click a table and select “Table properties” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding and editing tables. 
    • For table of contents, go to Insert > Table of contents. In paginated mode, there are three table of contents quick layout options: 
      • Plain text 
      • Dotted 
      • Links 
    • Right-click the newly created table of contents and select “Table of contents options” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding a title, heading, or table of contents in a document. 

Rollout pace 

Table of Contents: 
Table sidebar: 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources 

Improvements to content organization in Google Docs

What’s changing

We’re rolling out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. You now have the options to: 
  • Toggle between three default styles 
  • Toggle page numbers 
  • Toggle tab leader styling (adds lines between a heading and the page number) 
  • Include and indent headings based on levels 
With these enhanced customizations, we hope this highly requested feature refines titles and headings to personalize the content of your document. 

We’re also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier for you to find and utilize table formatting options. Upon adding or editing a table, you will notice a new “Table” section with alignment preferences and a new “Cell” section with clearer cell-specific formatting options within the table properties sidebar. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • For tables, go to Insert > Table > click the “Table options” button in the top toolbar to open the Table properties sidebar. You can also right-click a table and select “Table properties” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding and editing tables. 
    • For table of contents, go to Insert > Table of contents. In paginated mode, there are three table of contents quick layout options: 
      • Plain text 
      • Dotted 
      • Links 
    • Right-click the newly created table of contents and select “Table of contents options” to open the sidebar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding a title, heading, or table of contents in a document. 

Rollout pace 

Table of Contents: 
Table sidebar: 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources 

Improving your security with shorter Session Length defaults

What’s changing 

To further improve security for our customers, we are changing the default session length to 16 hours for existing Google Cloud customers. Note that this update refers to managing user connections to Google Cloud services (e.g. Google Cloud console), not connections to Google services (e.g. Gmail on the web). 


For existing customers who have session length configured to Never Expire, we are updating the session length to 16 hours. See below for more information. 




Who’s impacted 

Admins, end users, and developers 


Why you’d use it 

Many apps and services can access sensitive data or perform sensitive actions. Because of this, managing session length is foundational to cloud security and compliance. It ensures that access to the Google Cloud Platform is finite after a successful authentication, which helps deter bad actors should they gain access to credentials or devices.


Additional details 

Google Cloud session controls 
For existing customers who have session length configured to Never Expire, we are updating the session length to 16 hours. This ensures customers do not mistakenly grant infinite session length to users or apps using Oauth user scopes. After the session expires, users will need to re-enter their login credentials to continue their access. This impacts the following: 

Settings can be customized for specific organizations, and will impact all users within that org. This is a timed session length that expires the session regardless of the user's activity. When choosing a session length, admins have the following options:
  • Choose from a range of predefined session lengths, or set a custom session length between 1 and 24 hours. 
  • Configure whether users need just a password, or require a Security Key to re-authenticate.


Third-party SAML identity providers and session length controls 
If your organization uses a third-party SAML-based identity provider (IdP), the cloud sessions will expire, but the user may be transparently re-authenticated (i.e. without actually being asked to present their credentials) if their session with the IdP is valid at that time. This is working as intended, as Google will redirect the user to the IdP and accept a valid assertion from the IdP. To ensure that users are required to re-authenticate at the correct frequency, evaluate the configuration options on your IdP and review the Help Center article to Set up SSO via a third party Identity provider.


Trusted applications
Some apps are not designed to gracefully handle the re-authentication scenario, which can cause confusing app behavior. Other apps are deployed for server-to-server purposes via user credentials — because they don’t require service account credentials, they are not prompted to periodically re-authenticate.

If you have specific apps like this, and you do not want them to be impacted by session length reauthentication, the org admin can add these apps to the trusted list for your organization. This will exempt the app from session length constraints, while implementing session controls for the rest of the apps and users within the organization.


Getting started

  • Admins: For customers who have their session length set to "Never Expire", your session length will reset to 16 hours. It can be turned off or modified at the OU level. Visit the Help Center article to learn how to set session length for Google Cloud services for your organization.  
  • End users: If a session ends, users will simply need to log in to their account again using the familiar Google login flow. 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace and Cloud Identity customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Provide custom Google Meet background images for your users

What’s changing 

We’ve heard from our users that having backgrounds that match your brand guidelines are important for visual polish during critical meetings. Now, admins can now provide a set of images for the background replace feature in Google Meet. This will enable users to easily select an image that properly represents their company's specific brand and style. 




Getting started 


Rollout pace 


Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Note: Use this Help Center article to learn more about how to properly set image access so your users can use your custom backgrounds. 

Resources

External label for Google Meet participants

What’s changing 

“External” labels will be available in Google Meet. Users will see a label in the top-left corner of their meeting screen indicating that participants who are external to the meeting host’s domain have joined the meeting. In the people panel, external participants will be denoted with the same icon. 




Getting started 

  • Admins: External labels will be on by default and can be configured in the Admin console at Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > Google Meet Safety Settings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Meet settings for your users. 
  • End users: No end user action is required — you’ll see warning labels for external participants when configured by your admin. 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and Nonprofits customers 
  • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

 Resources

Introducing new space manager capabilities in Google Chat

What’s changing

Last year, we announced several improvements to spaces in Google Chat to help you better organize people, topics, and projects, which included introducing the space manager role. Currently, managers can: 
  • Remove and add participants
  • Assign or remove the space manager
  • Delete a space
  • Delete messages
  • Edit the space description
  • Update space access from restricted to discoverable or vice versa

Starting today, space managers will now have additional capabilities to ensure effective conversations take place in spaces: 
  • Space configuration: enables space managers to choose if members can change space details, such as name, icon, description, and guidelines, or turn Chat history on/off for the space. 
  • Member management: allows space managers to decide if members can add or remove members or groups to a space. 
  • Conversation moderation: authorizes space managers to determine whether members can use @all in a space. 

Getting started 


Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

New updates for Google Meet on Poly Android-based appliances

What’s changing 

We are rolling out updates to Google Meet to support our upcoming launch of Google Meet on Poly Android-based appliances. Within the Google admin console, admins can enroll Poly devices and include reporting of these new appliances. The Google Meet hardware experience will become available in the upcoming Poly OS 4.0 update as part of the Poly Studio X series family. 


This update will become available over the next few weeks. However customers and admins can try out this experience ahead of the official Poly OS 4.0 launch by downloading the current beta candidate for their Studio X series device. For more information, please reach out to your Poly account team or reseller.


Additional details 

The Google Meet hardware experience will be available on the Poly Studio X series family once they have been updated to Poly OS 4.0. Admins can enroll these devices and manage them as part of the regular Google Admin console experience. The Poly Studio X family offers appliances of all sizes: Studio X30 for small rooms, Studio X50 for medium rooms, and Studio X70 for large rooms. 




This latest update will make it easier for customers currently using the Studio X line to switch to Google Meet from other conferencing platforms. It also offers new customers more choice and flexibility in their hardware options for Google Meet. 


Google Meet on Poly Android appliances require Google Meet hardware licenses; these can be purchased through authorized resellers. Please contact your existing Google Meet hardware or Poly reseller for more details.


Getting started

  • End users: No action required. Once a Studio X Series device has been successfully enrolled, you can join Google Meet meetings normally. 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available on Poly X30, X50 and X70 with support for additional Poly devices will be added over time
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources


Refreshed interface for Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides

What’s changing 

In the coming weeks, you’ll notice a new look and feel for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides on the web. Following the release of Google Material Design 3, the refreshed user interface is purposefully designed to streamline core collaboration journeys across our products. 

In Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you’ll see improvements such as: 
  • A simplified user interface at the top of your docs, sheets, and slides, helping you find frequently used actions faster 
  • Additional user experience improvements in commenting, background, rulers, and gridlines. 
  • Note that while there are no changes in functionality, some features have been relocated to reduce clutter within the new interface. Notably, you can find the latest status info for the doc, such as last edit and version history, via a single entry point: the clock icon in the top right corner.



In Drive, you’ll see improvements such as:
  • Key actions surfaced inline on files, for quick access and increased productivity. 
  • Ability to select multiple items at a time and undertake batch operations for frequent tasks.
  • New search chips (including type, owner, and last modified) to help you find files faster.




Who’s impacted

End users

Why it matters 

These key visual and interactive design changes will help you get your best work done faster by emphasizing the tools within our products used most frequently. For more information, check out the latest on the Workspace blog.

Rollout pace


Availability


  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers
  • Available to users with personal Google accounts


Resources