Today, when someone leaves a comment or suggestion on one of your Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, you receive an email notification. With this update, you can now choose to receive comment notifications on your Android device and web browser as well.

Notifications will follow the same rules as your existing notification settings, so there’s no need to update settings. Web browser notifications are controlled in the Drive settings menu and are off by default.

Note: You will only receive Android notifications if you have the latest Google Drive for Android app.


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

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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We’re excited to announce that the ”What’s New in Google Apps” site has been redesigned and relaunched as part of apps.google.com. The What’s New site has a slick new look and feel and brings together many helpful resources in one location.

Be sure to update your bookmarks with the new page locations (redirects from the old pages are in place as well):

• ”What’s New in Google Apps” home page 
• Google Apps release calendar 
• What’s New in Google Apps newsletter archive
• What’s New for Apps Admins video archive 

The Google Apps release calendar itself is unchanged, but, if you haven’t already, be sure to add it to your own calendar and subscribe for notifications when calendar launch release dates change.

We hope you like the new home for Google Apps launch resources!


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Today, we’re announcing that as of September 26, 2016, we will discontinue support for Google Apps Lookup.

Google Apps Lookup was used for viewing the Global Directory on devices using Android 2.1 (Eclair) to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Newer versions of Android include Global Directory lookup functionality built directly into the native contacts app.

We recommend Apps admins to: 

1. Identify users running Android 2.1 (Eclair) to 2.3 (Gingerbread) on your domain that may be affected by this announcement. If you are managing devices on your domain, you can use the “os:android” search operator to filter and sort users with devices on Android 2.2 (Froyo) to 2.3 (Gingerbread). Note: It is not possible to search for devices running Android 2.1 (Eclair), from the Admin console, as Device Policy is not available for this version of Android. 
2. Assist users in updating to a newer version of Android via software update or find alternative contacts/Global Directory apps from Google Play. 

Users may check which version of Android they are using from their device, under Settings > About phone > Android version, or a similar location.

Users who have already installed Google Apps Lookup prior to September 26, 2016, will still be able to use the application. However, on September 26, 2016, support for this app will be discontinued and Google Apps Lookup will no longer be available from Google Play. Google Apps Lookup functionality cannot be guaranteed beyond September 26, 2016.

Launch Details 
Release track:
Support will end for both Rapid release and Scheduled release on September 26, 2016 

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action required


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML standard that allows secure web domains to exchange user authentication and authorization data. Google Apps for Work acts as an Identity Provider using SAML 2.0. With SAML, a user can use their Google Apps credentials to sign in to enterprise cloud applications via Single Sign-On (SSO).

In the Admin console today, you can track the creation, modification, and deployment of SAML applications by Apps administrators (under Reports > Audit > Admin). With this launch, you can now audit end-user events as well: successful SAML login and failed SAML login. You can see the audit trail on these events under Reports > Audit > SAML in the Admin console. This audit trail helps significantly with the debugging of runtime errors and the monitoring of user login events. It also provides information on error type, as well as OU-level filters that can enhance search capability.



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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: SAML audit log

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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In May, we launched Mobile Audit, which audits activities on iOS and Android devices managed by Google Mobile Management, and which allows Apps admins to view reports on these activities and to receive alerts when certain activities take place. Today, we’re introducing Insights, a centralized location where admins can perform each of those actions. Located in the Device Management area of the Admin console, it features three sections: Mobile Reports, Mobile Audit, and Mobile Alerts. Check it out today, and refer to the Help Center for more information on Google Mobile Management.

NOTE: This feature is available for Google Apps Unlimited customers only.

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

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Get insights on your domain’s mobile devices

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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We know that security is one of your top concerns as a Google Apps admin and that many of you require your employees to turn on 2-Step Verification (2SV) to keep their accounts safe. There are multiple ways your end users can approve sign-in requests via 2SV—by tapping a Security Key, by entering a verification code sent to their phone or, starting today, by approving a prompt like the one below that will pop up on their phone.



Your employees can now choose any of these options in the Sign-in & Security > Signing in to Google > 2-Step Verification section of My Account. Check out the Help Center for more detailed information.


Notes:

• Currently, you can't have Security Keys and Google prompt enabled at the same time.
• A data connection is required to use Google prompt.
• Android users will need updated Google Play Services to use Google prompt.
• iOS users will need the Google Search app installed on their phone to use Google prompt.

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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Sign in faster with 2-Step Verification phone prompts

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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A new version (v4.3.0*) of Google Apps Directory Sync (GADS) is now available for download. With this latest update, Google Apps admins can now use GADS to sync additional LDAP attributes into Custom User Fields for use with SAML SSO, or for simply building out richer Google Apps profiles for their users.

For example, a SAML application may require an account ID value for SSO access. With this launch, admins can now use GADS to sync an account ID value from LDAP into a custom user field. Then, within the SSO configuration of the SAML app, they can specify to use the account ID from the custom user field.

This latest version of GADS also includes the following bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue where user-created groups' permissions were being reset by GADS to the default group permissions settings. 
• Fixed an issue where the City field was not synced properly and did not display correctly in the contacts interface.
• Fixed an issue where group descriptions containing a new line in LDAP would fail when being applied to the Google group. 

Check out the Help Center for more details and download the latest version of GADS.

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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days* for feature visibility).
*Update - July 6, 2016: Please note that GADS version 4.3.0 was rolled back shortly after launch to address a bug. The fix has now been deployed as version 4.3.2, which is now available for download.

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action required (download the latest version of GADS)

More Information
GADS Overview
What’s New in GADS


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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In the Admin console today, you can create Google+ profiles for employees in your domain—either one by one or across an entire organizational unit (OU). Until now, however, if you needed to create profiles for multiple individuals or only a portion of an OU, that process was tedious and lengthy. And if you needed to delete profiles, no tool existed. To save you valuable time and to give you greater control over your employees’ information, we’re now launching the ability to create and delete Google+ profiles for several employees at once.

Simply visit Apps > Additional Google services > Google+ > Profiles in the Admin console, and select all of the users for whom you want to create profiles (or whose profiles you want to delete).


In any profile you create, all information—except the individual’s name, picture, and tagline—will remain private until that user takes action to make it public. It’s important to note that you will not be able create a profile for any user who already has a public Gmail picture or who has uploaded photos to Picasa. Just as is the case today, those users will need to create their own Google+ profiles manually.

If you delete profiles for certain users, some of their content will also be deleted, while some of their content will remain. For more specific details, carefully review the summary of terms that appears in the Admin console before you complete this process.

*Please note that the bulk creation feature is not available to K–12 Google for Education customers.

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

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Manage Google+ profiles

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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The latest versions of the Google Docs and Sheets apps for Android and iOS devices include the following new features:

• Edit content in Print layout view in the Docs Android and iOS apps - Tap the edit pencil when you’re viewing a document in Print layout mode, and you’ll be able to edit that document immediately—without needing to leave Print layout mode. 

• Add new and edit existing conditional formatting rules in the Sheets Android app - Format cells, rows, and columns to change their formatting (text, background color, and more) if they meet certain conditions, like containing a particular word or number.

Check out the Help Center articles below for more information.

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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Print or change the page setup
Use conditional formatting rules in Google Sheets

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Cross-posted on the Google for Work Official Blog 

Posted by Prabhakar Raghavan, Vice President of Engineering, Google Apps

Google Atmosphere, Google’s global enterprise event series, lands today in Tokyo, where I’m addressing an audience of several thousand enterprise IT execs along with our very own Diane Greene, and local customers such as ASICS and Fujitec. We have two exciting announcements to share; new experiences we’re adding to the Google Apps suite, with Search and Sites.

It’s no secret that the growth of information inside the enterprise continues to accelerate. In fact, today the average knowledge worker spends the equivalent of one full day a week searching for and gathering information.1

Google Springboard puts the right information at your fingertips

Google is no stranger to helping enterprise customers sort through their corporate information and making it more useful for employees. We’ve been a leader in Enterprise Search for nearly 15 years and have partnered with some of the largest companies in the world. As we continue to invest in applying technologies like machine intelligence to power our web search engine, we’re working on a new way to bring all of this power to the enterprise: Google Springboard.
Google Springboard helps you find the right information that you need at the moment that you need it. It searches quickly and easily across all of your information in Google Apps including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Contacts and more. Springboard also assists you throughout your workday by proactively providing useful and actionable information and recommendations.

A totally rebuilt Google Sites

Google Sites is one of the most popular products among our enterprise customers, and we’ve been working on an update that makes it even easier for employees to share information within their company.

With the new Google Sites, you can build beautiful, functional pages to aggregate and distribute content across your enterprise, optimized for every screen. A new intuitive drag-and-drop design experience supports real-time collaboration by multiple editors, just like in Docs, and offers easy access to all your content from Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps and more. The new Sites also includes themes and layouts designed to scale and flex to any screen size, so they’re as useful when you access them on the 30-inch monitor at your desk or your smartphone on your commute.

Additional information for Apps administrators*:

• The classic version of Google Sites will remain fully functional for at least one year.
• In the future, we will provide options for moving content from classic Google Sites.

*These details were not included in the version of this post published on the Google for Work Blog.

Ready for early adopters

We’ve been previewing Google Springboard and the new Google Sites with a small set of customers, and we’re excited to begin to extend each of these new apps to more customers through an Early Adopter Program. If you’re the admin of a company that runs on Google Apps for Work you can express your interest in the Google Springboard Early Adopter Program or the Google Sites Early Adopter Program. We have a lot more in store for both Google Springboard and Google Sites, and we’re excited to help you start to take back the time you spend searching for and gathering information.2

**Please note that we are no longer accepting sign-ups for the Google Sites Early Adopter Program. Please monitor the G Suite Updates Blog for an announcement when new Sites launches to general availability.** 

1 Study from McKinsey states that the average information worker spends 8.8 hours or 19% of their average work week searching for or gathering information.
2 The Early Adopter Program for the new Google Sites will have no impact on customers’ usage of classic Google Sites.

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Companies are getting more connected every day, and if you’re like us, you might store business phone numbers in your Google Contacts to keep in touch with company headquarters, partners you work with, or even your favorite restaurant for delivery.

This launch adds Google Maps as a new source of information to enrich your existing contact data. Now when you store a phone number that matches an official business number in Google Maps, we’ll list the information you’ve saved, supplemented with business information directly from the listing. This can include business name, address, phone number, website, and photo. These fields will never override information you’ve added manually.

This new Google Maps integration is only available in the Google Contacts preview.


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

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Last month, we announced plans to no longer support two very old security systems called SSLv3 and RC4 when sending messages with Gmail SMTP, and today, we are announcing that Gmail IMAP/POP will follow suit and no longer support SSLv3 and RC4 connections after June 16, 2016.

Unlike Gmail SMTP, this change will be rolled out as a gradual change, where it may take longer than 30 days for users to be fully restricted from connecting to Gmail from SSLv3 or RC4 connections; however, we recommend updating your clients soon in order to avoid any potential disruption.

Please note: When given the choice, the vast majority of mail clients already favor modern TLS connections over outdated ones, so the majority of users are not affected by this change.


Action for admins still using SSLv3 or RC4 on IMAP or POP clients: 

• Most Google Apps customers have already stopped using IMAP or POP clients that connect to mail servers using SSLv3 and RC4. After June 16, 2016, if users attempt to connect to Gmail from mail clients using SSLv3 or RC4, they may see connection errors for short periods of time.
• If your mail clients only support SSLv3 and RC4, please update them so that they use recommended TLS configurations. See our announcement from last year in the Google Security Blog to see the recommended standards for TLS clients.

After June 16, 2016, IMAP and POP clients using SSLv3 or RC4 will gradually no longer be able to connect with Google’s mail servers. As a more general reminder, we plan to deprecate SSLv3 and RC4 across all of Google and any other systems relying on these less secure protocols over time. We suggest proactively updating to the recommended standards for TLS clients as a best practice.

Thank you for helping us keep mail safe for Google Apps users around the world.

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

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 30 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
Mail clients or business software using SSLv3 or RC4 to connect to IMAP/POP

Action: 
Admin action required for domains using insecure TLS connections on their IMAP/POP mail clients

More Information
Help Center
Disabling SSLv3 and RC4


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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(Cross-posted on Google for Work Blog)

Posted by Rahul Sood, Managing Director, Apps and Search for Work

For six years, the Google Apps Marketplace has helped businesses do more by being the number one source to find third-party apps and integrations that extend what's possible with Google Apps. But with hundreds of popular apps to choose from, it’s sometimes hard for customers to discover the newest and most innovative ones.

Enter New & Notable, a new section in the Google Apps Marketplace that surfaces the latest and best third-party apps and integrations for Google Apps, and the developers behind them.

Here’s a preview of some of the products highlighted this month:

• Asana Dashboard: The new Asana Dashboard integrates with Google Sheets, allowing users to export task completion and performance information for wider tracking across teams. Read more here. 
• Hubspot CRM: With the new HubSpot CRM app, users can now log emails sent from Gmail into HubSpot with one click, and automatically sync meetings between Google Calendar and HubSpot, no matter which system they came from. Read more here. 
• Xero: With their latest integration, Xero — a provider of online accounting software for small businesses — lets users view Gmail messages alongside Xero transaction and activity details. Users can also save emails in Xero for reference, start a quote or invoice from within a Gmail message. Read more here. 
• Zendesk: With their latest integration, Zendesk automates the Google Apps admin tasks of forwarding support e-mails into Zendesk and listing Google users within Zendesk. Read more here. 
• Zoho People: Zoho People is a new HR management app for small businesses that lets users manage their HR portal directly from their Google Apps account, as well as add users directly to Zoho People, saving them from having to manually re-enter employee information. Read more here. 

Find these apps and many more (like AppSheet, GQueues, ZipBooks, Any.Do, Infogram, and LogoMix) in New & Notable. If you’re on the hunt for killer apps that help you get more done with Google Apps, it’s the best place to start.

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Check out the latest "What's New in Google Apps" newsletter [pdf] for a roundup of all Apps launches from May 2016.

Newsletter Archive & Translated Versions (coming soon for May issue)

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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In March, we introduced the document outline in Google Docs on the web and Android devices. This feature simplifies and speeds up the process of navigating long, complicated documents. Today, we’re excited to announce that you can also use the document outline in the Docs app on your iPhone or iPad.

Displayed in a pane at the bottom of the page, this outline features headings for each section of your document, making it simple to quickly jump from place to place. If you haven’t manually applied headings, the feature will intelligently detect the logical divisions within your work. You can then edit or remove those headings as necessary.



This functionality, coupled with the fast scrolling feature launched for the Docs iOS app in April, will make it even easier for you to move through your work in Docs.

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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Edit and use document outline

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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