G Suite administrators who want their employees to use their own mobile devices at work face a challenge: all Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions available today require an agent or profile to mandate corporate mobile policies, but employees are uncomfortable setting up these agents and profiles on their personal devices. Oftentimes, they choose not to add their corporate accounts to their personal devices at all.

To meet the needs of both admins and employees, today we’re introducing an agentless way to manage iOS devices: Basic Mobile Management.



Basic Mobile Management allows admins to mandate basic security on iOS devices without requiring users to install an MDM profile. It also relieves admins of the need to set up an Apple Push Certificate and the hassles of renewing that certificate regularly.

With Basic Mobile Management, admins can:

• Enforce a screen lock.
• Wipe a corporate account (but not the entire device).
• View, search, and manage their device inventory.

Basic Mobile Management makes it easier for employees to use their personal devices at work as well, by allowing them to set up their corporate accounts just like they would their personal accounts.

Organizations that require additional restrictions, mobile audit, or application management on iOS devices should continue using the Advanced Mobile Management option.

For more details on Basic Mobile Management and how to get started, check out the Help Center.

Please note that agentless management is only available for iOS devices at this time. Users will still need to install the Device Policy app on their Android devices, even if their admin has chosen Basic Mobile Management.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set up mobile device management


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If you've ever had to troubleshoot your Gmail users' mail, you know that getting message headers and interpreting bounce messages can sometimes be a chore. That's why Gmail will be rolling out some user-facing features to make bounce messages and message headers easier to read and understand. Here's what's new:


Bounce messages are now easier for your users to understand

When users' mail has problems being delivered, this new format will have user-friendlier text, as well as translations into the user's language (if the language has been set on the account.) Below the improved bounce message, you can find the original bounce message, just like you're used to from before.



Message Headers that are clear and readable

To prevent the errors that sometimes plague complex calculations, today we’re launching a new setting in Sheets on the web (File > Spreadsheet settings > Calculation > Iterative calculation) that allows you to set the maximum number of times a calculation with a circular reference can take place. In addition, you can specify a “convergence threshold,” and when results from successive calculations differ by less than that threshold value, the calculations will stop (even if the maximum number of calculations has yet to be reached).


Over the course of the week, we’ll make additional improvements to your Sheets experience on the web and Android devices. First, we’ll update the Sheets Android app UI to make it easier for users with right-to-left language settings to read and navigate. Second, we’ll make it possible to search the menus in Sheets on the web, much like you can in Google Docs and Slides.



For more details on these features, please visit the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:

• Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on January 9th, 2017
• Iterative calculation setting
• Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release
• Right-to-left language improvements
• Menu search

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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: Change a spreadsheet's locale, time zone, calculation settings, and language


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In September 2016, we launched Explore in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to give you the insights, design tools, and research recommendations you need to do your best work. Today, we’re improving upon the feature by allowing you to easily cite those findings. Students writing research reports, analysts crafting whitepapers, and others looking to credit their sources can now insert citations as footnotes with the click of a button in Explore in Docs on the web. You can even change the format of your citation, switching between the MLA, APA, and Chicago styles. For more information on how to use citations in Docs Explore, check out the Help Center.



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: See and use suggested content in a document


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Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" newsletter [pdf] for a roundup of all G Suite launches from November 2016.

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


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(Cross-posted from The Keyword) 

Posted by Elissa Murphy, Vice President of Engineering, G Suite

G Suite is designed to help you do your best work, whether that’s through real-time collaboration that brings your teams together or machine intelligence that speeds up everyday tasks. But we understand your company has unique needs and workflows that G Suite alone wasn’t built to address. We also know your teams rely on many third-party apps for things like CRM, support, and project management to get their job done. So today, we’re announcing two new ways to customize and extend your experience on the G Suite platform: App Maker, a new low-code developer tool for building custom enterprise applications, and the addition of seven new partners to our “Recommended for G Suite” third-party partner program.

Introducing App Maker, a new way to build powerful apps for your business. 
App Maker is a low-code, application development tool that lets you quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months.

• Go from idea to app, fast: App Maker makes it easy for IT or even citizen developers (including analysts and system administrators) to quickly iterate from a prototype all the way to deployed app. It offers a powerful cloud-based IDE that features built-in templates, a drag-and-drop UI, and point-and-click data modeling to accelerate your app development efforts. App Maker also embraces open, and popular standards like HTML, CSS, Javascript and Google’s material design visual framework, so developers can build apps quickly, in a development environment that leverages their existing skills and knowledge. 

• Build integrated, tailor-made solutions for every need: App Maker lets you build a range of applications customized to meet the needs of your organization and connects to a wide range of data sources and APIs. This unique flexibility starts with built-in support for G Suite products as well as popular services such as Maps, Contacts, Groups and more. You can also leverage other Google Cloud services such as the Directory API and Prediction API, or third-party APIs, to create richer, more intelligent application experiences.
• Focus on delivery, not infrastructure: App Maker is built on the same secure and trusted infrastructure as G Suite apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs. Developers can safely deploy custom apps in the cloud without worrying about servers, capacity planning, infrastructure security and monitoring that would otherwise require internal support from IT. 

Over the past few months, we’ve previewed App Maker with a handful of large G Suite customers and many have already built and deployed applications to their organizations. We’re also working with the following consulting partners to help deliver solutions to our joint customers: Appsbroker, gPartner, G-Workplace, Ignite Synergy, Maven Wave, PwC, SADA Systems, and Tempus Nova.

Here are a few ways that enterprise customers and partners have used App Maker to make everyday business processes simpler and more efficient--whether it’s to track suspicious login activities, take analog claims processes and make them digital, or track office inventory orders.


If you’re interested in trying out App Maker, it’s available today through our Early Adopter Program for G Suite Business customers. Apply for the EAP here.

Announcing new apps for the ‘Recommended for G Suite’ program
While G Suite helps your teams communicate and collaborate more easily, we get that you also rely on third-party apps to manage other aspects of your business including sales, marketing, and operations. We want to make it easy for you to integrate these solutions with G Suite, and that’s why we introduced the Recommended for G Suite program last year. The program selects market leading applications, built by independent software vendors (ISVs), in a range of categories like project management, customer support, finance and accounting.

Today, we’re adding seven new apps to the program that can help you be more productive. These apps solve critical business problems and offer deep integration and direct support with G Suite. Each app also goes through rigorous security testing and quality measures to qualify for the Recommended for G Suite program.

Our new recommended partners include:

• Asana for project & process management 
• DocuSign for eSignature 
• Freshdesk for customer support 
• LumApps for corporate & social portal
• Virtru for encryption 
• Xero and Zoho Invoice for finance & accounting 

Since we launched this program with our first eight apps last year, we’ve seen many examples of how our customers have incorporated them with G Suite to drive more value for their business. We’ve created a webinar series to show first-hand examples of this, and you can sign up here if you’re interested in attending. In addition, if you’re an ISV that’s interested in becoming a Recommended for G Suite partner, please submit your application here.

Try these new solutions today
We’re committed to helping you get the most out of your G Suite experience by fostering the best ecosystem of cloud applications and partners. App Maker enables you to build powerful apps tailored to your organizational needs, while the Recommended for G Suite program helps your teams select leading apps to grow your business. Both solutions are available today, and we encourage you to try them out.


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Check out the following new features in the latest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps:

• Trash view in the Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps - You can now view and restore previously deleted files in the Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps. Just select “Trash” from the menu on the left side of the screen.

• GIF insertion in the Docs Android app - Using the Google Keyboard in the Docs Android app, you can now search for and insert GIFs into documents.

Download the latest versions of the Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps from the Google Play Store and the App Store today.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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: Delete a document, spreadsheet, or presentation


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In September, we announced that we would soon launch an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the Team Drives feature in Google Drive. We’re now ready to accept applications for that EAP, which will kick off shortly.


Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can store their files and guarantee that every member has the most up-to-date information, no matter the time or place. Team Drives make onboarding easy, because every person and Google Group added to a Team Drive gets instant access to that team’s documents. Moreover, Team Drives are designed to store the team’s work collectively, so if a document’s creator moves off of the team that document doesn’t go with them. Advanced access controls make Team Drives even more robust, preventing team members from accidentally removing or deleting files that others need.

Before applying for the Team Drives EAP, please note the following restrictions:

• The Team Drives EAP is only open to G Suite Business and Education customers.

• Only G Suite admins can sign up for the Team Drives EAP. If you are not the G Suite admin for your organization, please contact that individual and ask them to sign up.

• Admins will need to enroll their entire primary domain in the EAP. They will be able to restrict Team Drives creation to certain organizational units, but all users in the domain will be able to see and access Team Drives. They will not be able to enroll secondary domains.

• At the moment, Team Drives does not support some features, including adding members from outside of one’s domain, syncing to a desktop computer, and Vault capabilities.

Apply for the Team Drives Early Adopter Program (EAP) today, and help teams of all sizes at your organization work better together.

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Starting on November 28, 2016, some small but important changes are coming to the way that Google Drive sends notification emails. Your users will not see any visible changes, but if you use Gmail's advanced smart hosting features, then you may notice a difference in the way new emails are archived or filtered by your mail solutions.


What's changing:

• Google Drive will no longer store a 'courtesy copy' in the mailbox of the sender. Gmail's comprehensive mail storage feature will now place a copy of Drive sharing notification emails in the sender's Sent folder.
• If you use smart hosting (through an outbound mail server), you can now capture and deliver these emails through your preferred mail gateway.
• If you previously relied on outbound gateway settings to route Drive notifications, you can now use content compliance rulesor sending routing rules to route these messages, making it consistent with other mail routing features.

What's not changing:

• The "from" field is not changing. It will continue to be the sender when the recipient is a group, or drive-shares-noreply@google.comin all other cases, as it is today.
• The message header fields are not changing. The envelope sender will still be [string]@doclist.bounces.google.com, not the actual account of the sender.
• Request access notifications will not behave differently.

These changes will roll out to G Suite customers over a few days, starting on November 28, 2016.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid 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


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Being able to save Google Slides in the OpenDocument Presentation (.odp) file format has been a popular request from the open-source community and organizations that use open-source office suites, such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Starting today, you can download your Google Slides presentations in the ODP file format.

From a Google Slides presentation, click File > Download as > ODP Document (.odp) to download your presentation as an ODP file. The file will be saved to your default download folder.

With this update, you can now import and export all three major OpenDocument file formats: .odt files for documents, .ods for spreadsheets, and .odp for presentations.



Please note that some formatting (e.g. tables and complex shapes) may be lost during file conversion.

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

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center


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