To create a more consistent, streamlined Google Contacts experience, we’re removing the embedded contacts feature in Gmail, which gives users access to their contacts from the top left corner of the UI. This feature doesn’t appear in the new version of Gmail that recently launched, and it will soon be removed from the old UI as well.

Going forward, G Suite users can access Contacts via their web browser at contacts.google.com or the app launcher. This will direct them to the new Contacts (a.k.a. Contacts preview) or the classic Contacts Manager, depending on which is enabled for their domain.

Unfortunately, many customers are unaware that they previously disabled access to the classic Contacts Manager, because their users can still access the contacts feature embedded in the old Gmail UI (as it isn’t controlled by the Contacts on / off switch). In response to feedback from these customers, and so that their users can continue to access their contacts, we’ve now enabled access to the classic Contacts Manager for all G Suite domains.

Note that this change doesn’t impact domains with Contacts preview enabled; users in such domains will continue to see the Contacts preview UI when they navigate to contacts.google.com or select Contacts from the app launcher.

Since launching Contacts preview in 2016, we’ve made steady improvements to the product. We’re continuing to work toward feature parity with the classic Contacts Manager, with delegation functionality planned for later this year. We highly recommend that all G Suite customers migrate their users to the Contacts preview, provided it meets their needs.

If Contacts preview doesn’t yet meet your needs and you’re required to disable access to the classic Contacts Manager, please fill out this form and we’ll do our best to accommodate this need. Please note that this means your users will lose access to Contacts via their browser.


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In Gmail, replies to emails are grouped together as “conversations,” to make them easier to digest and follow. Some users, however, prefer to see each of their emails listed individually in their inbox. This is possible on the web by toggling “Conversation View” off in the Settings menu.

We’re now bringing this same feature to the Gmail Android and iOS apps. If you currently have Conversation view turned off on the web, it will be turned off on your mobile app as well.


Visit the Help Center for more information on how to disable Conversation View in your Gmail mobile app.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Group emails into conversations


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We’re adding new tools to help admins identify suspicious activity and see the impact of security policy changes. G Suite admins have an important role in protecting their users’ accounts and ensuring their organization’s security. To succeed, they need visibility into user account actions. That’s why we’re adding reports in the G Suite Admin console that surface more information on user account activity.

Monitor suspicious account behavior 

G Suite admins can use the reports to audit and set alerts for critical user actions including:

• Password changes 
• Two-step verification enabling or disabling 
• Account recovery info changes (phone number, security questions, and recovery email) 

Filter actions taken by a specific user account 

Visibility into these actions will help admins identify suspicious account behavior and detect when user accounts may have been compromised. For example, an admin might see that a user has recently changed both their password and their password recovery info. This can be a sign of a hijacker taking over the account. Using these reports an admin could track time and IP address of the changes to see if it seems suspicious. Depending on their investigation, they could then take appropriate action (eg: password reset, disable 2-step verification) to restore the user account.

Visit the Help Center to find out how to monitor user account activity and set alerts for suspicious actions.

See the impact of security policy changes 

The new reports can also be used to provide visibility into an organization's security initiatives. For example, an admin could monitor the progress of a domain-wide initiative to increase the adoption of two-step verification.

To see this report, go to the Admin console > Reports > Audit > Users Accounts.


Filter actions by date and type 

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

Editions: 
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact: 
Admins only

Action: 
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information 
Help Center: User Accounts audit log



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In October 2017, we announced the rollout of international Hangouts Meet dial-in phone numbers for G Suite Enterprise domains. This option helps your team to stay connected, wherever they are. We’ve added this functionality for eight additional countries (with more to come!):

• Argentina (AR)
• Bulgaria (BG)
• El Salvador (SV)
• Georgia (GE)
• Iceland (IS)
• Malta (MT)
• Slovenia (SI)
• Thailand (TH)

For a complete list of currently supported countries, visit this Help Center article.

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

Editions:
Available to G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education editions only

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Dial in from a phone
Help Center: Join a video meeting

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We launched the Google Vault API in 2017 so that customers could integrate Vault with the other tools and processes critical to their business. We’re now improving the API by making it possible to programmatically create and manage exports, in addition to legal matters and holds.

With this launch, you can use the Google Vault API to:

• create an export—send a request to export messages and files that match your criteria.
• list exports—retrieve the status of all exports associated with a matter.
• get an export—retrieve the status of an export anytime, and if the export is completed, download that export using the standard Cloud Storage API.
• delete an export—remove an export from a matter when it’s no longer needed.

For more information, check out the Google Vault API Developers Guide.

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

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Education, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions, as well as any G Suite users with the Vault add-on license

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Google Vault API Developers Guide


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You can already control the Apps Script projects that run in your organization using the G Suite API permissions settings located in the Admin console (at Security > API Permissions). Using these settings, you can block applications that request access to certain APIs—unless you’ve specifically whitelisted them. App Maker apps, add-ons, and scripts that request certain OAuth scopes (like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc.) are just some of the Apps Scripts projects that these settings control.

Now you can also control access to projects that request the following scopes:

• Apps Script Runtime - Control access to projects that request certain high-risk scopes specific to Apps Script projects (e.g. UrlFetch, Container UI).
• Apps Script API - Control access to any project (e.g. Apps Script, GCP, AWS, etc.) that requests scopes for Apps Script API (e.g. Manage Projects, Manage Deployments).

See the Help Center for instructions on whitelisting connected apps.

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 only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Whitelisting connected apps

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We want to help organizations make the best use of their space. To do that, we’re consolidating all features related to managing buildings and resources in a single dedicated place in the Admin console. We’re also introducing two new tools, room release and room insights, to help you understand your organization’s resource utilization and optimize occupancy.

A single destination for building and resource management
All features related to managing buildings and rooms are now united in a new and more prominent entry point in the Admin console called “Buildings and resources.” You can access this directly from the home screen or via Directory > Buildings and Resources in the navigation menu.



Room release based on event declines
According to an internal study, up to 40% of rooms are booked but go unused. To help your users reclaim those unused rooms, we’ll now automatically free up meeting rooms when all but one of the guests has declined the Google Calendar invitation. When the room is released, the event organizer will receive an email informing them of the change and suggesting that they reschedule or delete the meeting.



You can enable this feature for structured rooms in the Admin console by navigating to your resources and selecting the rooms you wish to enable for room releases. You then need to click "EDIT" and turn Calendar-based room releases on for your selection.



Please note, room release is only available for G Suite Business, Enterprise, Enterprise for Education, and Education editions and can only be enabled for structured rooms that are categorized as “CONFERENCE_ROOM.”

Room insights dashboard
We’re also adding a new dashboard in the Admin console for room insights. Here, you can see data such as:

• The most and least frequently booked rooms
• The usage and bookage rates of rooms across time zones and various room sizes
• How many rooms could be freed up automatically with Calendar’s room release feature

You can filter this data by building, floor, room, room capacity, room features, or time period for more granularity.



With these reports, you can make better decisions about improvements to your workspace. They provide signals on where to investigate further. Some examples of insights include:

• What are your most popular rooms?
• Are your rooms under-utilized or over-utilized?
• Which room sizes are most popular?
• Which equipments drive room usage? Which A/V equipment should you invest more into?
• When are the best times to schedule repairs and maintenance work?
• At which times are rooms most booked, and can you educate members of your organization to shift the times when they schedule meetings?

You can access this dashboard in the Admin console in the “Buildings & resources” section.

With this launch, we’re also adding a new admin privilege, “room insights,” to grant other admins or your dedicated facilities managers the right to only view this dashboard and other resources.

Please note, this data is only available for structured resources.

Launch Details
Release track:
Both features launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:

• Room insights: available to all G Suite editions
• Room release: available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, Enterprise for Education, and Education editions only

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

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Structuring resources

• Help Center: Set up buildings, features, and other resources
• Help Center: Switch to structured resources
• Help Center: Impact of using structured resources
• Detailed Guide: Structuring Google Calendar Resources

Room release

• Help Center: Release unused rooms

Room insights

• Help Center: See how meeting rooms are used

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We’re adding a feature in the Admin console that can alert admins if we believe a user’s account has been targeted by a government-backed attack. If an admin chooses to turn the feature on, an email alert (to admins) is triggered when we believe a government-backed attacker has likely attempted to access a user’s account or computer through phishing, malware, or another method. It does not necessarily mean that the account has been compromised or that there was a widespread attack on an organization.

Admins can turn the feature on and off, choose to share information about the alert with others, and help secure the user’s account. Specifically admins can:

• Turn alerts on or off. 
• By default, no alerts will be sent. Admins can choose to turn these on in the Admin Console > Reports > Manage Alerts > Government backed attack. 
• Set up default notifications for these alerts. 
•  Admins can decide who gets notified when attacks are suspected. When the feature is first turned on, the default setting is for alerts to be sent by email to super admins of the G Suite domain. To change this, go to the Admin console > Reports > Manage Alerts > Government backed attack. 
• Choose actions to take on individual alerts. 
• Secure the account: Admins may want to take actions to secure the account. 
• Alert the user: Admins may want to let the user know about the alert and any actions they have taken.      

Admin console settings for Government-backed attack warnings

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information 
Google Security blog: Reassuring our users about government-backed attack warnings
Help Center: Fix or stop government-backed attack alerts
Help Center: Administrator email alerts


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Archive and translated versions (coming soon for July issue)


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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.