Whether you’ve just gone Google or have been using Google Apps for years, IT departments always have a need to train new users and keep them up to date on the latest technologies. In a perfect world, each employee would have helpful IT staff by their side to guide them every step of the way, but that’s not always possible, nor is it really practical. That’s why we are excited to announce Training for Google Apps, the newest training resource available to all Google Apps organizations.

What is Training for Google Apps?

Designed to be simple and efficient, Training for Google Apps is a new interactive in-app learning experience to help users get quickly up and running with Google Apps. Built on the Google Cloud Platform, Training for Google Apps acts like a virtual coach inside of the Google Apps interface. Users have access to voice and text interactive modules that are searchable by topic within any of the Google Apps products, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Google+, and even Classroom.

Modules are available in Japanese, German, Chinese, English, French, and more.


How can Training for Google Apps help me?

Based on our customer studies, we’ve seen that organizations that deploy Training for Google Apps see an average of 35 percent higher adoption across Apps products. Here are a few examples of things you can quickly get your admins and end-users trained on:

• Setting up your email signature
• Recovering Deleted Email
• Set Expiring Dates for Shared Documents
• And hundreds more

Whether it’s to master Google Apps, Google Classroom or the Google Apps Admin console, Training for Google Apps can help your entire organization.


Here’s how to get started

Training for Google Apps can be deployed quickly and easily to all your Chrome and ChromeOS users, all from the Google Apps Admin console. You can use Chrome Management (available to all Google Apps customers) to centrally manage installation of the extension. Please see our Help Center article for more information.

We look forward to hearing how you’ll use Training for Google Apps to help your users with the critical task of change management and application support.


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 (if deployed by Administrator)

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI
(Resources provided below in the Help Center.)

More Information
Help Center: Training for Google Apps Overview
Chrome Webstore: Training for Google Apps

Financial statements are a crucial means by which businesses report their profits, losses, assets, and expenditures. Today, with accounting software company Xero, we’re making it easier for organizations to create financial statements in Google Sheets on the web and mobile.

Simply access the Financial statements template from the Sheets homescreen, and get started by entering and categorizing your business transactions. The template will automatically update charts and graphs illustrating your company’s sales, expenses, revenue, and more. For more information, check out this video.


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: Docs, Sheets, and Slides templates
Video: Financial Statements template | Xero

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

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Previously, when you made a copy of a Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides file, that copy would be automatically added to your My Drive folder—instead of the original file’s folder as most people would expect. Going forward, when you make a copy of a Docs, Sheets, or Slides file on the web, you’ll be able to choose which folder to place the file in. This should reduce confusion and make it easier to organize your Docs, Sheets, and Slides files.


Update (August 5th, 2016): Please note that this feature is only available when making copies in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides; the option does not appear in Google Drive.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in two weeks

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 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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Google recognizes that delegated admins have highly important responsibilities at many organizations, from creating users to managing Google Groups to turning services on and off. And we understand that it’s important for them to perform as many of these functions as possible from anywhere, at any time. That’s why, starting today, we’re granting access to the Google Admin app on Android to all delegated admins (previously, only super admins could use the app).


Delegated admins can download the app from the Google Play Store. Once downloaded, those admins will only have access to those features that correspond to their delegated responsibilities. For instance, an admin who does not have permission to manage Google Groups will not see the Groups option in their app.

For more information, check out the Help Center.

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 Apps from an Android device

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

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In the past year, we’ve launched support for single sign-on for dozens of third-party applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Workday, and Dropbox, making it easier for end users to sign into these services and for Apps admins to manage their end users’ IDs and passwords. The process of creating, modifying, and deleting end user identities in third-party applications, however, has remained manual, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Starting today, we’re using SCIM 2.0 to make those processes simpler and quicker for admins.

Following this launch, admins will be able to set up automated user provisioning and deprovisioning for Salesforce.com and other apps (with support for more applications coming soon). Once auto-provisioning is enabled for a third-party application, an admin will be able to add, modify, or delete a user in the Admin console, and that user’s info will be added, modified, or deleted from the third-party application as well. Admins will also be able to check the status of and pull reports on user provisioning for all configured apps.

Admins will have even greater control when deprovisioning these apps. For instance, an admin will be able to specify how many days after a user’s Google account is deleted that their third-party application account should be suspended and deleted as well. This configurability will allow admins to remove a user’s access immediately, while also providing them the time necessary to review an account and save or transfer any important data.




For specific details on how to set up auto-provisioning, check out the Help Center.

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: User provisioning

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

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(Cross-posted on Google Apps Developer Blog)

Posted by Hodie Meyers, Product Manager, Google Drive and Steve Bazyl, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Apps

Last year, we announced the deprecation of Google Drive web hosting for users and developers, and that the service will be shut down on August 31, 2016. We’d like to remind remaining users that websites hosted via googledrive.com/host/[id] will become unavailable from that date.

For those who haven’t switched yet, please consider the following alternatives.

• Google Drive API: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide logged-in users access to public Drive items, you can use the API instead.
• Firebase Hosting: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide users access to static web pages whose content lives on Drive, you can migrate to Firebase by uploading the content to Firebase and serving pages via Firebase-specific URLs.  Please see this video to learn more!
• Google Cloud Platform: If you’re already a Google Cloud Platform customer, we recommend migrating to Google Cloud Platform static-website hosting.

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

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In order to deploy two-step verification (2SV) to your organizations, you need to have insight into which end users have and have not enrolled for the feature. Starting today, you can view the real-time status of an individual user’s enrollment in 2SV directly from the user list in the Admin console. To get started, you’ll need to add the 2-step verification enrollment column to the Users page.









For more details and instructions, check out the Help Center.

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: View user security settings and revoke access

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 June 2016.

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


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

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Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS) version 1.6 is now available for download:

What’s New

• Added support for Windows Server Core 2008 and 2012 installations. 
• Added Service Account support for Google Apps authentication. This is required for Core Server installations and is optional on non-Core Server installations. 
• GAPS can now be installed and configured from the command line. 
• LDAP configuration can now use the GAPS service security context removing the need to provide Active Directory administrator credentials. 
• Improved error messages in the configuration wizard. 
• Added crash reporting. These are stored on the GAPS server and not transmitted to Google.
• Windows Server 2003 is no longer supported. 

What’s Fixed

• The GAPS UI now correctly displays an egg timer icon while performing tasks triggered by other actions such as the user pressing the Previous, Next and Authorize Now buttons. 
• GAPS will retry network timeouts and 5xx server errors encountered when trying to refresh its OAuth access token. 
• Users who are not Windows domain admins can no longer start the GAPS configuration wizard. Previously, they could open the wizard but receive an error when trying to save the configuration. 

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 required (download the latest version)

More Information
Help Center


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

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Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates