We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced Quick Access for Google Docs. Below are some admin-specific details about Quick Access for Docs to help you get started.

Quick Access for Docs uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant files based on signals like Drive activity and information in your documents, so you can work with the most up-to-date information and create new material quickly.
Please note that Quick Access for Docs is only available in domains with Google Cloud Search enabled.
For more information on turning Cloud Search on or off for you users, visit the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions with Cloud Search enabled only

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

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: See and use suggested content in a document
The Keyword: New ways to help teams work faster and smarter with G Suite


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

We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced automatic room suggestions in Google Calendar, which will be launching to all G Suite editions in the coming months. Below are some admin-specific details about automatic room suggestions to help you get started.

This tool will automatically suggest rooms optimized for each attendee based on their building and floor location, previous booking history, audio/video equipment needs and room capacity requirements. To unlock this feature, admins will have to add detailed meeting room information into Calendar. G Suite administrators can use this resource to learn more about inputting their organization’s room information into Calendar.

Closer to the launch, there will be more information on how to enable this feature, such as adding main user work locations to user profiles. Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for more information.

Launch Details
Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: How updating resources affects display, search, and browse
The Keyword: New ways to help teams work faster and smarter with G Suite
G Suite Updates: Time for a refresh: meet the new Google Calendar for web


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

We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced Google Vault support for Hangouts Chat. Below are some admin-specific details to help you get started.

The newly launched Hangouts Chat is an intelligent and secure tool that makes team collaboration easy. An enterprise-ready solution, Hangouts Chat gives G Suite admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure their organization’s data, including full support in Google Vault—a tool that can help with their eDiscovery and compliance needs.

Set retention policies for Hangouts Chat messages
As a G Suite admin, you can now set retention policies that apply to all Hangouts Chat messages, including those sent directly and those sent in rooms.

You can set a default rule that applies to all users in your domain. This can be an indefinite retention policy (such that messages are never expunged), or one that expunges messages at the end of a specific time period. The default rule applies to all direct messages and rooms in your domain.

You can also set custom retention rules for specific organizational units (OUs), which apply to direct messages only, and/or for all rooms, which apply to room conversations only. This allows you to manage the lifecycle of direct and room messages separately. Custom rules override the default rule and, if multiple custom rules apply to a message, the rule with the longest retention coverage period takes precedence.


Place legal holds on Hangouts Chat messages
In addition to setting retention policies, you can now place legal holds on your employees' Hangouts Chat conversations, whether they take place via direct message or in rooms.

Doing so will preserve room conversations in which a held user is a participant (i.e. they’ve sent a message) and direct messages in which a held user is a member (i.e. they’ve sent or received a message), regardless of whether that user deletes those messages. If a user on hold deletes a message, it will appear deleted to them—but it will be available in Vault until the hold is removed. Remember that holds always take precedence over retention rules.


Search, preview and export chat content 
Finally, you can now search, preview, and export your employees’ Hangouts Chat messages. This enables you to apply the same eDiscovery programs you use for other G Suite services (like Gmail and Drive) to content stored in Hangouts Chat direct messages and rooms.

To learn more about how Vault's support for Hangouts Chat can help your organization meet its legal obligations and archiving needs, check out the Vault Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and 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: Google Vault
Help Center: Supported data types
The Keyword: New ways to help teams work faster and smarter with G Suite
The Keyword: Move projects forward from one place—Hangouts Chat now available
G Suite Updates: Hangouts Chat now generally available



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

We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced Hangouts Chat as a core service. Below are some admin-specific details about Hangouts Chat to help you get started.

The Hangouts Chat service will launch default on, unless you’ve chosen to manually opt in to new services. To start using Hangouts Chat on the web, go to https://chat.google.com. To download the app on your desktop or mobile device, go to https://get.google.com/chat.

Please note:

• If you currently have forced chat history off, you will need to actively enable Hangouts Chat in your Admin console regardless of your setting for opting in to new services. This is because “room” conversations in Chat always retain Chat history, regardless of your settings, so it's important that you understand this before enabling the service.
• If both classic Hangouts and the new Hangouts Chat are enabled for an organizational unit (OU), the classic Hangouts history on or off settings are used in chats in which participants use a mix of classic and new Chat. If the history settings are different for chat participants of different OUs, the chat conversation can’t be created. Please review your chat history settings for both products (more info).
• If your domain participated in the Hangouts Chat Early Adopter Program, your settings will be retained. These settings will be accessible at Apps > G Suite > Hangouts Chat in the Admin console.

Hangouts Chat is compatible with the classic version of Hangouts, and you’ll still be able to use classic Hangouts—making sure you don’t miss a message from anyone in your organization. All one-to-one direct messages will forward both ways between Hangouts Chat and classic Hangouts by default.

Additionally, if you require Vault support for use of Hangouts Chat, please see our post for details on that launch.

If you have any further questions, check out the get started guide or visit the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions except Government

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Turn Hangouts Chat on or off
Help Center: Sign in to Hangouts Chat
Help Center: About bots
The Keyword: New ways to help teams work faster and smarter with G Suite
The Keyword: Move projects forward from one place—Hangouts Chat now available
The Keyword: Meet the new Hangouts
G Suite Updates: Google Vault support for Hangouts Chat


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

With Single-Sign-On (SSO), users can access all of their enterprise cloud applications—including the Admin console for admins—after signing in just one time. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and there are more than 800 applications with pre-integrated SSO support in our third-party apps catalog already.

We’re now adding SAML integration for 12 additional applications:

• 15Five 
• 4Me 
• Clarizen 
• Deskpro 
• Heroku 
• Hightail 
• moxtra 
• ScreenSteps 
• Targetprocess 
• Tinfoil 
• UserEcho 
• xMatters 

Note that apart from the pre-integrated SAML applications, G Suite also supports installing “Custom SAML Applications,” which means that admins can install any third-party application that supports SAML. The advantage of a pre-integrated app is that the installation is much easier. You can learn more about installing Custom SAML Applications in this Help Center article.

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

Editions: 
Available to all G Suite editions and Cloud Identity customers

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Using SAML to set up federated SSO

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

As we continue to add new features to the overall Jamboard experience, the latest Jamboard release brings several new features―to both devices and the Jamboard app―to help people more easily and efficiently get their ideas out. We’re also adding a new feature to help admins to manage the ownership of Jams within their domain.

Autodraw
As we announced earlier this month, we’ve added Autodraw to Jamboard. AutoDraw is a new drawing tool in Jamboard that auto-detects sketches you make and pairs them with images. This gives teams the ability to make their ideas even more visual—whether you’re a creative designer working with clients or even a teacher working with students.



Ownership sharing configuration for unclaimed Jams
To ensure that Jams get assigned to the correct owner, we’re adding an email confirmation step to claim an unclaimed Jam. Once an admin has enabled this option, when working with an unclaimed Jam, users will need to confirm ownership via email before they are added as an owner. Users can enter multiple in-domain email addresses to confirm ownership, directly from the Jam. Those user(s) will receive an email asking if they’d like to claim the document and the first user to confirm becomes the owner.

This feature prevents sharing of content before an owner is assigned.

Admins can configure this setting (which is off by default) for the domain in the Jamboard Admin console.



Animated frame changes with page numbers
Whenever you change a frame on your Jamboard device, we now will show a distinct frame-change animation along with the page number.



USB camera support
Users can connect a USB camera and select which camera feed they want to use (either USB camera or internal camera) in the settings panel of the Jamboard kiosk.

S/PDIF audio support
Users can attach external speakers to the board via S/PDIF (a rear port on the back of the device for optical audio). For a full list of new features and improvements from this month’s release, check out the What’s New in Jamboard page in the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, and Education customers

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center

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

Last year, we introduced a new resource for admins: What’s new in G Suite? Don’t forget to visit the page regularly for a list of the most recent launches across G Suite.

Feedback? Let us know.

Drive File Stream lets you stream files directly from the cloud to your computer and select files to be available offline. Based on your feedback we’re adding several features to Drive File Stream which will help you:

• Control when changes are synced to Google Drive (all end users) 
• Customize the cache location (admins only) 
• Limit the bandwidth used (admins only) 
• Customize drive letter or mount point (admins only)  

For more details on these features and how to use them, see below.

Control when changes are synced to Google Drive 

End users can now pause Drive File Stream syncing. While paused, Drive File Stream will not upload local changes to Google Drive, and new versions of files made available offline will not download. 

To pause syncing, open the Drive File Stream menu and click More > Pause Syncing.

Customize the cache location 

Admins can now customize the content cache location for Drive File Stream to any directory on a connected APFS, HFS+, or NTFS file system.

For details, see our Help Center on how to configure Drive File Stream.

Limit the bandwidth used 

Admins can now limit the bandwidth of Drive File Stream for uploads and downloads.

For details, see our Help Center on how to configure Drive File Stream.

Customize drive letter or mount point 

In a previous release, we added a feature that allows Admins to customize the default letter drive on Windows, the mount point on macOS, and proxy settings. These configurations can be set at the user or host-wide level, and persist when Drive File Stream restarts.

For details, see our Help Center on how to configure Drive File Stream.

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 and change management suggested/FYI

More Information 
Help Center: Configure Drive File Stream
Help Center: Drive File Stream release notes


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

Based on usage data and your feedback, we’re making some changes to the menus in the web versions of the Google Docs editors. These are similar to the changes we made in December and in January and will make it easier to find certain items.

Changes that affect all Docs editors menus (including Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets):

• In the Tools menu, “Spelling” will be renamed “Check Spelling.”
• In the Edit menu, “Select none” will be removed. 
• Items in the File, Edit, and Tools menus will be reordered. 

Changes that only affect Google Sheets menus:

• In the Data menu, “Filter” will be renamed “Create a filter.”
• In the Data menu, “Validation” will be renamed “Data validation.”
• Items in the Data menu will be reordered. 
• Items in the Format menu will be reordered. 

These changes will only affect the visual menu on the web version of these products. All options will still be available via keyboard shortcuts and the search box in the Help menu.


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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs
Help Center: Keyboard shortcuts for Google Sheets
Help Center: Docs editors homepage

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

Team Drives make it easier for teams to store, search, and access important files, especially as team members change over time. To improve collaboration in Team Drives, we’re adding the ability to email all the members of a Team Drive.



There are two ways to email members of a Team Drive:

• From the Team Drive: Navigate to the Team Drive, click the drop-down menu next to the Team Drive name, and click “Email members.” 
• From within a file that is in the Team Drive: While editing or viewing the document, open the File menu, and click “Email Collaborators.” 

When you select to email members, you can easily customize who your email is sent to. Use checkboxes to include or exclude “Members” who have access to the full Team Drive, “Guests” who only have access to that specific document within the Team Drive, and users with different Team Drive access levels, such as “Full,” “Edit,” “Comment,” and “View.”

For more information on Team Drives, see how to manage Team Drives. For information on user permissions in Team Drives, see our Learning Center article on Team Drives.


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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions. Team Drives is available on G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business, and G Suite for Education editions. G Suite Basic users can’t create Team Drives, but can use the feature if they have access to a Team Drive.

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
G Suite Learning Center: Get started with Team Drives
Help Center: Get started with Team Drives

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