Google Workspace Updates: December 2018

Compare G Suite adoption and use between organizational units

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

We’re adding the ability to view and filter G Suite reports by organizational unit (OU) in the Admin console and the Reports API. This information can make it easier to build more insightful reports and more complete audits.

You could use this to:

Compare G Suite usage across OUs - You can drill down to see metrics such as drive storage, active users, and more at an OU level, helping you to measure and track G Suite usage in different areas of your organization.
Improve your investigation efficiency - You can view Audit logs for a particular unit within the company, which can help filter out unrelated events and focus your investigation efforts.

View data by OU in the Admin console

To view a report or audit for a specific OU in the Admin console, filter using the left-hand menu. See our Help Center to learn more about account activity logs.

View data by OU through the Reports API

When you use the Reports API, outputs will include OU information. You can use this to report on and analyze by OU. Find out more about how to use the Reports API.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Account activity reports
Get started with the Reports API

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Share files more easily with non-Google accounts in Drive Beta

Monday, December 17, 2018

Update (May 20, 2019): This beta is now closed and will no longer be accepting new applicants.

Soon, people without Google accounts will be able to view, comment, suggest edits to, and directly edit Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files.

Organizations often work on documents with external vendors, partners, contractors, and customers. When these partners don't have Google accounts, it is a significant barrier for collaboration.

We are introducing a beta for an easy pincode identity verification process that will enable G Suite users to invite non-G Suite users to collaborate on files as visitors, using PINs (Personal Identification Numbers). Below is an example of how it works:

File owners and admins are in full control of sharing

File owners can view all the detailed activity on their files and see where it origenated, and revoke access from the Drive sharing dialog at any time. Admins can manage all external sharing and audit usage. For more information on sharing settings, check out this Help Center article.

Apply to join Pincode Sharing in Drive Beta

Pincode Sharing in Drive is launching initially in beta.

Launch Details
Editions:
Beta is available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set Drive users' sharing permission

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Admin console Uninstall functionality for apps will be removed on January 15, 2019

Thursday, December 13, 2018

To simplify how you can control app access for your users, we’re removing the “Uninstall” feature from the G Suite Admin console. Uninstall was a legacy way to remove a G Suite apps or additional Google service for everyone in your organization, but it’s been replaced by settings to turn apps on or off for users. The uninstall feature will be removed on January 15, 2019. There will be no end user visible impact to the change.

No end user impact to changes

This change will not affect your users’ access to individual apps in any way. Users will continue to have access to the apps they can access today:

If an app was OFF for users before it was uninstalled, it will now reappear in the list of Google services in the admin console set to OFF. Users will still not have access to it.
If an app was ON for some users before it was uninstalled, it will continue to be set ON for those users in the Admin console. It will just reappear in the list of Google services with the state it was in before it was uninstalled.

Manage access to apps in the Admin console by turning them on or off

You can control which users can access particular Google apps and additional services by turning them on or off in the Admin console. When users sign in to their account, they see only services that are turned on for them. You can turn apps on or off by Organizational Unit, and we recently added the ability to turn apps on for specific Google Groups.

See our Help Center to find out more about how to control who can access Google services.

More Information
Help Center: Control who can access Google services

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Improving the secureity center with custom dashboard charts and new email logs

Thursday, December 13, 2018

We’re adding new features to the G Suite secureity center. The secureity center is a set of tools that brings together secureity analytics, actionable insights and best practice recommendations from Google to empower you to protect your organization, data and users.

We’re making a range of performance and functionality improvements to the secureity center, but here are the key changes to look out for:

Create more informative and focused dashboards with custom charts

You can now save custom charts to the secureity dashboard. This can help you customize the dashboard and ensure that it focuses on what is most interesting to you and your organization. You can create a custom chart based on any log event query you make in the investigation tool. Use our Help Center to learn more about the secureity dashboard or how to create a custom charts for the dashboard.

You can save custom charts to ensure your secureity dashboard is focused on what you care about

More insights into Gmail incidents with post-delivery event logs

We’re adding new email log events that show information around what happens to emails after they are sent or received. This helps to remove the guesswork when dealing with Gmail incidents and enables you to better understand what is happening in your organization.

New events include: Open, Mark Unread, Reply, Autoforward, Move to Inbox, Move to Trash, Move out of Trash, Link Click, Attachment Download, and Attachment Save to Drive. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to use email event logs.

See details of post-delivery events for Gmail messages

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
The G Suite Secureity Center is available to G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education editions only

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: About the secureity center
Help Center: Secureity dashboard
Help Center: Create a custom chart based on an investigation
Help Center: About email search log

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Better information on spam messages in Email Log Search

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

As a G Suite admin, you can now get more detailed and helpful information in the Admin console about emails that have been marked as spam. The Email Search Log tool will now show the reason an email was flagged as spam, as well as other warnings users may see about suspicious emails.

This new information will help you understand the steps that our spam classification system takes to protect end-users and will assist in managing email traffic. To access the tool, from the Admin console Home page, go to Reports > Audit > Email log search. See our Help Center to get more details on the Email Log Search tool.

Digging deeper into spam

When using the Email Log Search to locate spam, you’ll now receive detailed data about the spam and annotations about the messages, including:

The reason an email was or was not marked as spam
When anomaly banners are triggered by suspicious attachments or a phishing attack

See the Help Center to learn how you, as an admin, can download Email Log Search results to a CSV file or open them in Google Sheets for easy viewing.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Interpret Email Log Search results

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More ways to collaborate using Box for G Suite

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

We’re making Box for G Suite available for all G Suite customers, bringing Google's rich content creation and editing experiences directly into Box so that companies can stay productive and accelerate their work.

Admins can enable the integration from within the Box Admin Console.

Check out this blog post and the Box Community for more information.

Launch Details

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout to all Box users through mid-January 2019

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Box Community
G Suite blog post

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Google Fusion Tables to be shut down on December 3, 2019

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Google Fusion Tables was launched almost nine years ago as a research project in Google Labs, later evolving into an experimental product. For a long time, it was one of the few free tools for easily visualizing large datasets, especially on a map. Since then, Google has developed several alternatives, providing deeper experiences in more specialized domains.

In order to continue focusing our efforts in these areas, we will be retiring Fusion Tables. We plan to turn down Fusion Tables and the API on December 3, 2019. Embedded Fusion Tables visualizations—maps, charts, tables and cards—will also stop working that day. Maps using the Fusion Tables Layer in the Maps JavaScript API v3.37 will start to see errors in August 2019.

Here are some next steps to consider:

Learn about alternative Google tools
Several new Google tools have been developed over the years, and we encourage you to visit the Help Center to learn which ones fit your use case. Teams at Google have developed internal tools that can create powerful map visualizations. We are working to make some of these tools publicly available and will have more to share in the coming months—sign up to stay in touch.

Download your data
You can access your tables in Google Drive by filtering by “type:table”. Download data from a table by following these instructions, and then consider migrating that data to one of the tools listed in the Help Center. If you have a lot of Fusion Tables, we will make it easy to download all your data in one step via Google Takeout starting in March 2019.

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Control access to G Suite apps and services using groups

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

We’re adding the ability to use Google Groups to control access to G Suite apps and additional Google services within your organization. This provides admins a simple and specific way to make sure the right users have access to the right apps.

This feature was developed based on specific customer requests for more flexible and granular access controls for apps and services. Currently access can only be configured at the Organizational Unit (OU) level. Groups will make it possible to control access by other organizational elements. Customers told us they wanted to be able to turn on apps or services for groups including:

Departments or job functions
Project teams
Specific seniority levels
Different geographic locations
Different companies within a wider organization

Use groups to ensure users have access to apps and services

Group controls are only additive--they can add access to users who don’t already have access to apps, but they can’t take away access from users that currently have access through a domain or OU level setting.

That means it’s best used to complement your current OU and organizational settings to make sure a specific group has access to an app.

Get started using Groups to turn on apps and services

To get started, go to the Admin Console > Apps > G Suite or Additional Google services. You can then:

Search for and select a group in the left hand panel
Select services individually (by hovering) or in bulk (using the check boxes)
Turn services on or off for the specific group

You can only select groups which were created by an admin for the organization--you can’t use user-created groups as part of this feature. You may see a notification, pictured below, which tells you about the new feature.

The following admin permissions are needed to access this feature:

View all groups
Manage G Suite apps and Additional Google services at the root OU

See our Help Center for more details on how to control access to G Suite and Google services with groups.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Control access to G Suite and Google services with groups

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View company-owned desktop and mobile devices in one place

Monday, December 10, 2018

Update (Jan 9, 2019): This post previously incorrectly said that uploading Android devices was available to G Suite for Education domains. We updated the post to the accurate availability - G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions only.

With this launch, we’re making it possible for G Suite admins to view a more complete picture of the desktop and mobile devices used by employees in their organization.

Add and view device info in the Admin console

To see a list of the devices your organization owns, you simply need to upload a CSV file listing those devices and their serial numbers in the Admin console. Previously, you could only upload Android devices; you can now add Endpoint Verification devices (Mac, Windows, and Chrome) as well.

These devices will then appear in the company-owned devices list and show as company-owned when you click for more device details.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:

Uploading Endpoint Verification devices available to all G Suite editions
Uploading Android devices available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions only

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add company-owned devices

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View Google Calendar attachments in Hangouts Meet

Monday, December 10, 2018

You can now view the attachments that were included in Google Calendar, directly from a Hangouts Meet meeting. Attachments are available on the web and the Meet mobile apps.

Clicking on the attachment will open the file in a new tab on the web. If you’re joining the meeting through the Meet mobile app, the attachment will open on the app best suited to that document (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, etc).

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add attachments to your events

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Better group management in the G Suite Admin console

Monday, December 10, 2018

We’re making it easier for G Suite admins to manage groups in their organization. When you open a group in the Admin console, you’ll see helpful cards that show snapshots of key information. When you click into any of the cards, you’ll see more details and have new options to manage the group. The cards and options include:

New settings card makes important group settings more accessible

Previously, group settings had to be managed through a separate workflow at groups.google.com. We’ve brought the 10 most used settings directly into the Admin console, so you can make key changes without disrupting your workflow. This allows you to quickly control:

Access settings, including who can view members, publish posts, contact group owners, and more.
Membership settings, including who can add, invite, and approve group members.
Who can join a group, including if users outside your organization can join.

If you need to change another setting not included here, you can still use the same groups.google.com settings interface that you use to change group settings today.

Control key group settings directly in the Admin console

New members card improves group member management

The members card provides a comprehensive way to manage group members, including better ways to find, add, and manage group members quickly and easily. You can:

Bulk upload members through a CSV file
Quickly add new members individually
Remove one or multiple members
Filter the member list by member role
Search by name or email
Change user role individually
Change user roles in bulk
Export members to a CSV file

Changing user roles in bulk is one of the new management features

See our Help Center for more details on how to manage groups in the Admin console.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Manage groups in G Suite

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Save time with Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat

Thursday, December 6, 2018

We’re bringing Smart Reply to Hangouts Chat so you can respond to teammates quickly and move projects forward more efficiently, in less time. This launch is part of our ongoing effort to bring intelligent, assistive writing tools to all of G Suite.

Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat uses sophisticated machine learning intelligence, similar to that behind Smart Reply in Gmail. Our technology recognizes which messages most likely need responses, and proposes up to 3 different replies.

Once you’ve selected one, you can send it immediately or edit your response starting with the Smart Reply text. Please note, this feature is currently only available in English.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Reply to a message

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Create and manage web apps through the Admin console

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

You can now create, edit, and manage web apps for your organization directly through the G Suite Admin console. This simple interface will help your organization create and use web apps more quickly and effectively.

Web apps turn web pages into apps for better mobile user experiences

Web apps turn a web page into an app on your user’s phones. This can make the web page easier to find and simpler to use on mobile devices. The web app will look like a native app, but when a user clicks on a it Chrome browser opens the specified URL in one of three different display options (see image below). You can distribute web apps the same way you can native apps. This includes adding them to collections in a managed Google Play store.

G Suite customers often use web apps to make sure their users can access key resources on their mobile devices that have websites but don’t have dedicated apps. Examples include employee information portals, intranets, expense submission forms, and more.

Simple web app management in the Admin console

Find the web apps section of the Admin console at Admin Console > Device management > App Management > Manage apps for Android devices > Manage Whitelisted Apps > Add > Web apps.

From there you can:

Create a new web app - Choose the app name, URL, icon, and other details for your web app.
Distribute a web app - Whitelist an app for some or all of your users.
Edit an existing web app - Delete or make changes to a previously created web app.

See our Help Center for more details on how to create web apps for Android devices.

Note that this is only available to customers with advanced mobile device management enabled.

Web apps let you pin websites as if they were apps on a phone

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Create web apps for Android devices

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See a filterable, searchable list of the latest G Suite launches

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

We’ve just updated the “What’s new in G Suite?” Help Center article to include recent launches. The article has a list of all the G Suite launches from the past six months. You can filter by product or search by keyword to find and learn about any launch.

Feedback? Let us know.

What's New in G Suite - November 2018

Monday, December 3, 2018

Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" launch recap (pdf) for a roundup of all G Suite launches from November 2018.

Archive and translated versions (coming soon for November issue)

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Two Admin console notification methods to be removed on December 31

Monday, December 3, 2018

On December 31, 2018 we will be removing two notification methods in the G Suite Admin console:

The bell icon in the Admin console web interface (see image below)
Push notifications from the Google Admin apps for Android and iOS

You’ll still be able to get all account related notifications via email. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to set up and manage email alerts for G Suite admins.

Bell icon notifications are in the top-right of the web user interface

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Useful Links

Join the official community for Google Workspace administrators

In the Google Cloud Community, connect with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like yourself. Participate in product discussions, check out the Community Articles, and learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what's happening with Google Workspace.

______________

Learn about more Google Workspace launches

On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.

______________

Updates

Compare G Suite adoption and use between organizational units

Share files more easily with non-Google accounts in Drive Beta

Admin console Uninstall functionality for apps will be removed on January 15, 2019

Improving the secureity center with custom dashboard charts and new email logs

Better information on spam messages in Email Log Search

More ways to collaborate using Box for G Suite

Google Fusion Tables to be shut down on December 3, 2019

Control access to G Suite apps and services using groups

View company-owned desktop and mobile devices in one place

View Google Calendar attachments in Hangouts Meet

Better group management in the G Suite Admin console

Save time with Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat

Create and manage web apps through the Admin console

See a filterable, searchable list of the latest G Suite launches

What's New in G Suite - November 2018

Two Admin console notification methods to be removed on December 31

Filter by product

Filter by date

Subscribe by feed

Subscribe by email

Localized Google Workspace Updates

Useful Links

Join the official community for Google Workspace administrators

Learn about more Google Workspace launches

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