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What’s changing

You can now import and convert sensitive Excel files into Google Sheets with client-side encryption. When collaborating with external and internal stakeholders, you may find yourself working across both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. This update keeps your work moving by layering interoperability on top of the privacy benefits of client-side encryption: users are in direct control of their encryption keys and the identity service that they choose to authenticate for those keys.


This feature was previously announced in August 2023 as part of an open beta.

Additional details 
With this release: 
  • You can only import .xslx Excel file types. 
  • Additional Excel and tabular file types are not supported. 
  • During import, unsupported Excel features in Sheets will be ignored. 
  • The maximum file size is 100MB. 
  • The maximum number of cells that can be imported is 10 million. 
Getting started
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What’s changing 
One of the challenges of joining a virtual meeting from a conference room, is that the people in the room are identified by the name of the conference room rather than as individuals. Google Meet’s room check-in feature helps ensure everyone in the meeting can see your name and be aware of your presence. If you’re using companion mode on the web, you can now check in to your meeting room directly from the green room. Then, when you enter the call, everyone will immediately see your name alongside the conference room you’re joining from. Previously, you were prompted to check in once you were on the call, which is still available if you did not check in from the green room.


Checking in from the green room ensures that everyone in the meeting can see your name when you join

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers with Meet Hardware devices

Resources

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What’s changing 
In November 2023, we announced the availability of the Google Meet API through our Developer Preview Program. Beginning today, the Google Meet API is generally available. You can use the Meet API to: 
  • Programmatically create and configure Meet calls 
  • Retrieve information about past meetings, such as the meeting times and attendees. 
  • Access meeting artifacts, such as transcripts and video recordings 
  • Subscribe to real time updates on meetings, such as when a participant joins or leaves 

For more information, please reference our original announcement.


Who's impacted

Admins and developers


Why you’d use it
Integrating the Meet API in your product with the Google Meet API streamlines workflows and provides your product with Meet information that easily enhances your product offering. For example, partners such as Hubspot, Outreach, Salesforce, and Salesloft currently integrate the Meet API into their solutions to pull meeting recordings and artifacts into their conversational intelligence tools for analysis and sales coaching.



Getting started

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What’s changing 
We’re updating the look and feel of our sign-up and sign-in pages with a more modern look, which is in-line with the Material Design across our other products. You'll see the updated interface across web and mobile devices. Note that this is strictly a change in visual appearance, there are no functionality impacts or changes.

The new Google sign-in page on web



Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature — users see these improvements automatically. Visit the Help Center to learn more about the new Google sign-in page.

Rollout pace 

Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts
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What’s changing
We’re introducing an improved comments experience in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to help you find and take action on comments easier than ever before. While you will continue to see and interact with the comments experience you’re familiar with, you’ll also notice updates to our comment cards, icons, and more. 

You can explore new and familiar ways to interact with comments by going to View > Comments and selecting: 
  • Show all comments: opens up a full-length view to deep dive into multiple comments more easily in Docs, Sheets or Slides. Now you can use updated search and filter functionality to focus on the most relevant comments. You will also notice a curated ‘For you’ list, which surfaces all the comments you need to take action on. 
  • Expand comments (in Google Docs and Slides): shows comments next to the document or presentation content so you can review comments and content together. 
  • Minimize comments (in Google Docs and Sheets): reduces comments to icons so you can have a more focused view of your work in Docs and Sheets. This setting provides a quick preview with high level information about who is commenting when you hover over the minimized icons. 
  • Hide comments: hides comments from view when you want to focus solely on the content in Docs, Sheets or Slides. 
manage comments faster in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why you’d use it 
With this update, you can now find and organize comments more easily, enabling seamless collaboration with others on Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. 

Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default and cannot be disabled. To open the full-length panel, go to View > Comments > Show all comments. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using comments, action items, & emoji reactions 
Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts
Resources 
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What’s changing

We’re giving admins more granular control over how mobile device management privileges are delegated. Specifically, admins can be assigned privileges for specific organizational units (OUs). This adds yet another layer of security by ensuring that access is scoped to the necessary OUs only. This feature is available as an open beta, which means you can use it without enrolling in a specific beta program.

Creating a custom role, which is assignable at the OU level.

Assigning permissions at the OU level



Example experience for an admin with OU level permissions





Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

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What’s changing
Starting today, speaker spotlight in Slides, an experience that lets presenters insert their video feed directly into their Slides content, is generally available for select Google Workspace editions. 

With speaker spotlight, you can deliver your message with greater impact by embedding your Meet video feed directly into your Slides presentations. This feature helps keep your audience focused on you and can help make your content more compelling. 

Users can insert a variety of speaker spotlight shapes directly into their slides and then format them to their liking. Once in slideshow mode, your camera feed will appear in that shape so you can deliver a captivating presentation. Speaker spotlight also integrates seamlessly with Meet and Slides Recordings for more engaging virtual or recorded presentations. 
speaker-spotlight in slides


Who’s impacted 
End users 


Why it’s important 
Speaker spotlight helps you better connect with audiences using video during live presentations, which is especially useful when working in a hybrid environment. 


Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: To add the spotlight shape into Slides, go to Insert > speaker spotlight or click the speaker spotlight button in the toolbar. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using speaker spotlight. 

Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus 
Resources 
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What’s changing 
Companion mode in Google Meet is designed to seamlessly connect those in meeting rooms with their remote teammates, giving everyone access to interactive features and controls, while leveraging the best of in-room audio and video conferencing capabilities. Currently, you can use companion mode from a laptop or desktop device. Beginning today, you’ll be able to use companion mode with your Android and iOS devices. 


Using Companion mode from your mobile device is a quick, light-weight way to participate in meetings without opening a laptop. This can be particularly useful in meeting spaces where room for a laptop is limited, or as an easy, discreet way to participate during large in-person meetings, such as all hands or town halls. 


Specifically, you can use companion mode to:
  • Check-in to the room to be identified by name.
  • Share an emoji reaction without interrupting the speaker.
  • Raise your hand to indicate that you’d like to speak.
  • Turn on captions to view subtitles as everyone speaks during a meeting.
  • Exchange chat messages with other meeting participants.
  • View and zoom in on presented content to easily follow along with the presenter on your own device.

You can also use the room check-in feature on mobile as well, making it easier for other attendees to see your name alongside the conference room you’re joining from.


Share an emoji reaction without interrupting the speaker.


Raise your hand to indicate that you’d like to speak.

Turn on captions to view subtitles as everyone speaks during a meeting.

Exchange chat messages with other meeting participants.

View and zoom in on presented content to easily follow along with the presenter on your own device




Getting started
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: 
    • This feature will be available by default. You can join a meeting using companion mode from the green room before your meeting. Use this Help Center article and video guide to learn more about using companion mode in Google Meet.
    • Note: Your audio and mic will automatically be muted—we recommend using meeting room hardware for audio and video to avoid feedback. 

Rollout pace

Note that the following minimum builds are required:

  • Minimum Android Build: 
    • Meet - 229. (Android Settings > Apps > Meet > [App Info > Version])
    • Gmail - 2024.01.28. (Android Settings > Apps > Gmail > [App Info > Version])

  • Minimum iOS Build: 
    • Meet - 225.0. (Meet App > Settings > About, terms, privacy)
    • Gmail - 6.0.231231. (Gmail App > Settings > About Gmail)

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers
  • Also available to Google Workspace Individual customers, as well as users with personal Google accounts

Resources



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What’s changing
Last year, we expanded smart canvas by introducing smart chips in Google Chat on web. Since then, you’ve been able to share information in a more usable, structured way by accessing and previewing rich, context-setting information and files directly in your message threads. 

Today, we’re announcing the ability to search for and insert a smart chip that links to a space. These new smart chips will make it easier to share and collaborate on content related to specific spaces. 

When composing a message in Chat, typing “@” will now display a list of suggested spaces to include as a smart chip, based on your membership. You can search for a space by typing the space name, and the results will be determined by spaces you’ve accessed most recently. Once a space is selected, you can insert the space smart chip into your message. You can also paste the link (URL) of a space into a message and press the Tab key to convert it into a space smart chip. 
Share spaces smart chips in Google Chat

Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • In Google Chat on web, you can choose from the following options: 
      • Type “@” followed by a space name to search for the space and insert the space smart chip directly into a message. 
      • Paste a link to a space (or link to a message within the space) into a message and press the Tab key to instantly convert it into a space smart chip. 
    • Mobile users can receive and click on space smart chips, but cannot insert them on the Chat mobile app at this time. 
    • You must be a member of a space to search for and share that space smart chip. 
    • A recipient of the space smart chip must be a member of the space to access it. If they are not a member, they will not have access.  
Rollout pace 

Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources
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What’s changing 
If you’re a meeting host or co-host, you can now pin up to three specific tiles for all meeting participants. By doing so, you can help ensure the meeting is focused on key presentations and speakers. This is especially helpful for large meeting scenarios like webinars where hosts need to focus everyone on particular content. Note that meeting participants can unpin these tiles on their screen if they wish.



This feature will be available for Google Meet on the web and mobile devices.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

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What’s changing 
You can now pin messages to the top of the meeting chat. Pinned messages will appear for all users, even if they join the meeting after the message was initially sent. This makes it easy to ensure that important messages - like links to presentations - are displayed prominently and easily accessible by meeting participants.


Getting started
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: 
    • Meeting participants can pin and unpin their own messages. Meeting hosts can unpin anyone’s message.
    • You can pin a message by hovering over it in the chat window and selecting the pin icon. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sending chat messages.
 
Use the pin icon to pin or or unpin a message.



Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s changing
Last year, we announced a Google Classroom beta that simplifies lesson planning with shareable class templates and classwork. We’re excited to announce that this is now globally available for Google Workspace for Education Plus customers in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. 

Curriculum leads and verified teachers can now share links to high-quality classes and class templates so other educators in their organization can preview and import classwork to an existing class or to a new class. This will provide educators with ideas for instructional design and enable them stay up-to-date with the best materials. 
Shareable class templates and classwork

Who’s impacted 
End users 

Why you’d use it 
This feature enables curriculum leads and teachers to easily distribute standardized curricula or classroom content to others in their organization. As a result, fellow educators can easily preview, select, and import high-quality classwork into their classes. 
easily preview, select, and import high-quality classwork into their classes.
Additional details 
  • Student information, such as assignment submissions, comments, and grades, will not be visible when previewing a shared class. 
  • Imported class materials will be saved in draft mode for the selected class. 

Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature, however, Admins should make sure the following is set up for end users: 
    • In order to share classes, educators must have a Google Workspace for Education Plus license assigned to them. 
    • To preview and import classwork from shared classes, educators must be verified teachers. 
  • End users: 
    • To share a class, click the “Share classwork” button on the Classwork page. 
    • After receiving a class link, open it in your browser. When previewing the shared class, select the classwork items you want to export to a class. 
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing class templates and classwork. 

Rollout 

Availability 
  • Available to Education Plus 

Resources 
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What’s changing
Last year, we introduced new appointment scheduling features to help you set more relevant meeting durations and tailor your calendar view to match your preferences. In our effort to further improve upon the current appointment scheduling experience, we’re adding the options to: 
  • Add up to 20 co-hosts to your appointment schedule during the setup process so you can host appointments with others. 
Add up to 20 co-hosts to your appointment schedule
  • Create appointment schedules on secondary calendars. Prior to this update, you could only create appointment schedules on your own primary calendar. Now, you can create the schedule and receive booked events on secondary calendars as well. This can be particularly useful when multiple users, such as a team, need access to the same set of office hours. Everyone with permission to use the secondary calendar can make changes to the schedule and view incoming bookings. The appointment schedule can check the secondary calendar for availability, but cannot check the availability of all users with access to the secondary calendar. 
Create appointment schedules on secondary calendars

  • Expand the delegate access functionality to appointment scheduling. Currently, delegate access enables you to let someone else, such as an administrative assistant, access your Google Workspace account to send mail or manage calendar invitations and events on your behalf. Now, the person with delegate access can edit or delete your appointment schedules on your primary calendar. 
  • Select “Check calendars for availability”, which enables you to decide whether or not you want to check the availability of calendars added to the appointment schedule. Unchecking this setting means even if there is a conflict on one of the calendars, users will still be able to book that time. This may be useful if you want to prioritize incoming bookings over existing meetings. 
Select “Check calendars for availability”, which enables you to decide whether or not you want to check the availability of calendars added to the appointment schedule.
Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • You cannot add groups or users outside of your domain as a co-host.
    • Co-hosts are not able to see appointment schedule details or make changes. However, if the schedule was created on a shared calendar, the co-host will have access to see details or make changes.
    • Bookings will be visible on the host and any additional co-hosts’ primary calendars.
    • The “Check calendars for availability” feature will be ON by default and can be disabled by unselecting the “Check calendars for availability” box in the appointment schedule editor. 
      • Co-hosts calendars are not automatically checked for availability. You can select your co-host's calendar in the "Check calendars for availability" section to have their availability considered (as long as you are subscribed to that calendar).
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating an appointment schedule and customizing your appointment availability.
Rollout pace 
Availability
Co-hosts, secondary calendars and delegate access: 
  • Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits 
Check Calendars for availability: 
  • Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Nonprofits, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 
Resources 

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What’s changing

We’re making changes to the terminology that refers to  when a Meet hardware device is no longer supported:

  • ‘End of Meet support date’ replaces Auto-Update Expiration (AUE) in the Meet hardware Help Center.
  • The Admin console will show ‘end of Meet support’ instead of ‘EOL (end of life)’ in both device information and fleet overview pages.
  • The field name for “end of life” in Admin console’s CSV downloads will change from “eolDate” to “endOfMeetSupportDate”
End of Meet support as indicated in the device information page


End of Meet support as indicated in the Google Meet hardware fleet overview


Additional details

The end of Meet support date for Intel 10th generation devices have been extended from June 2028 to June 2029 to reflect their continued availability.


Getting started


Rollout pace


Availability

  • This update impacts all Google Workspace customers with Meet hardware devices. 


Resources


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What’s changing
We are making two improvements to the space creation flow in Google Chat: preventing duplicate space names and providing a method to configure spaces for specific use cases. 

In order to prevent duplicate space names in Google Chat, you will no longer be able to create a space within your company’s domain if the space name already exists. Similar to the experience in Gmail and Google Groups, if a space name already exists, an error message will appear. The same will happen if a user tries to edit the name of a space to another name that already exists. 

This feature will not immediately apply to space names created via Chat API. Starting June 3, 2024, spaces created via Chat API will also be subject to this error. 
prevent duplicate space names
Starting this week, you will also notice an updated user interface when creating a new space in Chat. In addition to easily determining access settings, you can now designate the space for Collaboration (useful for discussing a topic or team project) or for Announcements (helpful for facilitating one-way controlled communication such as company-wide updates). 
new space creation flow

After creating the space, an updated welcome page will appear with contextual options that provide users with next steps depending on the space type selected. For a Collaboration space, users get the options to add members, share files, assign tasks and create a welcome message that appears when a new member joins the space. You will also have the ability to toggle “History on” and will see contextual suggestions for eligible apps (based on popular apps in your domain) to explore in Marketplace and add into the space. For an Announcement space, users will get the option to add groups, manage space permissions and add guidelines on how to use the space. 
space welcome page

Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • You will receive an error message when editing or creating a space in Google Chat that has the name of a space that already exists. Existing spaces with the same name will not be impacted. 
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about the new space creation flow. 
  • Developers: Update apps created via Chat API to ensure they do not conflict with this new error code for duplicate space names by June 3, 2024. 

Rollout pace 
Duplicate space name

New space creation flow

Web: 

Mobile: 
  • This feature will be available on mobile by the end of Q1 2024 

Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and Google Workspace Individual subscribers 

Resources 

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What’s changing

We’ve expanded support for closed captioning to include the following additional languages:

-Afrikaans

-Albanian 

-Amharic 

-Armenian

-Australian English

-Basque

-Burmese

-Catalan

-English (India)

-English (Philippines)

-Estonian

-Farsi

-Filipino

-Galician 

-Georgian

-Hungarian

-Japanese

-Latvian

-Macedonian

-Mongolian

-Nepali

-Norwegian

-Sinhala

-Slovak

-Slovenian

-Sundanese 

-Tamil (India)

-Telugu (India)

-Urdu

-Uzbek

- Zulu



You’ll notice that the newly supported languages are denoted with a “beta” tag as we continue to optimize performance.

Getting started

Rollout pace
  • This update is available now for all users.

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources


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What’s changing

We’re introducing a centralized location for reviewing and taking action on reported Google Chat content in the Admin console under Apps > Google Workspace > Moderation, alongside the email quarantine tool for Gmail. Here can be found an overarching view of active and resolved reports, as well as additional information and context about reported messages, allowing for more informed decisions to be made.

Super admins will have access to the moderation tool and can also assign users the new “Moderate Chat content report” privilege. The new privilege can be assigned to users in your organization who are best suited to review Chat content, helping to reduce the burden on super admins.


Who’s impacted
Admins and designated moderators 


Why it’s important
Google Chat is key to accelerating productivity and collaboration — content reporting and moderation helps ensure that information exchanged across Chat is safe and appropriate.  When a report is submitted by users, the moderation tool can be used to:

  • See all reports associated with the message (including those resolved in the past).
    • Note that resolved reports will be removed from the Moderation tool after 180 days.
  • Review the edit history of a message and conversation transcript, including up to five messages posted before the reported message.
  • Conversation details provide information about the type of conversation (direct messages, group direct messages, or Spaces) with number of participants, space managers, guidelines, etc.


Using this information, combined with organization policies, admins and moderators can choose the best course of action, whether that be deleting a specific message or deleting an entire space before resolving the report. Additionally, moderators can add comments to the report for prosperity should the content require further auditing in the future.

The moderation tool can be accessed in the Admin console by selecting Apps > Google Workspace > Moderation.

Upon selecting a reported message, you’ll see a variety of information including conversation details and other reports for the message.

You can select “Show more” from the “Reported message” section to view up to five messages sent prior to the reported message.



Additional details
As part of this change, the moderation tool will also include a tab for managing quarantined Gmail messages. Visit our Help Center for more information regarding setting up email quarantine and the admin privileges required to manage quarantined messages. The Gmail tab is available to all Google Workspace customers.


Getting started


Rollout pace

Availability
  • Google Chat content reporting and moderation is available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Education Plus customers

Resources

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What’s changing
Last November, we introduced starred on web, an additional shortcut in the redesigned Google Chat navigation panel that helps you stay on top of your most important messages. Today, we’re excited to announce this is now available on Android and iOS mobile devices. 
star messages on mobile

Getting started 
Rollout pace 
Android: 
iOS: 
Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts
Resources 
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