Meeting with teammates, clients, or customers around the globe is critical to getting your job done. For those times when you need to meet with a larger group, Hangouts Meet now allows G Suite Enterprise users to organize meetings with up to 100 participants and G Suite Business users to host up to 50 participants. This participant count includes people from both inside and outside of your organization.



This new extended participant limit supports people joining from any mixture of video and dial-in entry points so you can flexibly bring together even more people from all over the world. It is now fully rolled out across all domains.

If you need to host an even larger meeting, you can enable live streaming, allowing up to 100,000 viewers to watch at once.

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

Editions:

• 100-person meetings available to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education editions only
• 50-person meetings available to G Suite Business and G Suite 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: Get Started with Meet
Help Center: Hangouts Meet Benefits and features
G Suite Learning Center: How many people can join a video meeting?

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We’re offering two new beta programs for G Suite for Education customers to improve their quizzing and grading experience.

Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms 
This summer, we announced locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms as a new way to keep students focused during assessments. Available only on managed Chromebooks running operating system 68 or higher, locked mode prevents students from navigating away from the Quiz in their Chrome browser until they submit their answers. Once enabled, teachers can enable locked mode with a simple checkbox, giving them full control over assessments.




Better grading in Classroom 
Earlier this year, we introduced new grading tools and a comment bank for richer, better feedback. Today, we’re continuing to strengthen the grading process in Classroom with a beta for a new Gradebook to better enable teachers to keep their assignments and grades in one place, and keep this important task more organized.



Express interest in the betas 
Beta programs for locked mode and Gradebook are now available to G Suite for Education customers. All teachers and G Suite for Education admins can express interest by completing this form. Check out the full post on the Google for Education blog and the Help Center for more details. 

Launch Details

Editions:
Available to G Suite for Education editions only

Action:
Admins and teachers can express interest by completing this form

More Information
Help Center
Google for Education blog post



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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 many applications with pre-integrated SSO support in our third-party apps catalog already.

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

• Automox   
• Boomi
• GoodData    
• LinkedIn Learning   
• LiquidFiles    
• Proxyclick  
• Sigma Computing
• TextExpander  
• VersionOne 
• Zimbra

You can find our full list of pre-integrated applications, as well as instructions for installing them, in the Help Center.

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

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


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Google Classroom makes it easy for teachers to create classes, distribute assignments, give quizzes, and communicate with students. Today, we’re expanding the walls of Classroom and making the platform available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. Admins can decide whether to opt in or out of new services. Classroom is on by default, unless you’ve chosen to manually opt in to new services.

Just as Classroom helps teachers and students save time, improve organization, and enhance communication, it can also help academies, tutoring centers, and for-profit institutions that manage groups of learners in an instructor-led setting. Explore the possibilities of Classroom for your organization, today.


What to expect from Classroom 

Classroom is designed for schools and is not an enterprise learning management system, but it is now available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. It remains a core service for G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers. Note that users in G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits domains will not be able to join classes created by users in G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise domains.

Have an idea for Classroom? We encourage you to submit your feedback through the “Send Feedback” button in the application. For more information, check out the Help Center and Help Forum.

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

Editions:
Available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise editions; available as a core service to G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits editions

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

Impact: 
All end users

More Information 
Help Center: About Classroom
Help Forum: Classroom

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Contacts hovercards provide lots of useful information about the people within your organization. We’ve heard from you that you’d like better visibility into Google Groups across G Suite, so we’re adding more information to these hovercards when the contact itself is a group.



When you mouse over the name of a group in Gmail, you’ll now be able to see essential information, like group members, as well as take some actions, such as:

• Schedule an event with the group
• Email the group
• See more members

You can also select “More info,” which will take you to the Groups membership details page on groups.google.com. The group members will only appear on the hovercard if the user has permission to view them. This functionality will be added to other G Suite apps in the future.

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

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We’re making secure LDAP generally available. See our post on the Google Cloud Blog for the full announcement, or read a summary of what this means for G Suite organizations below.

Secure LDAP lets you manage access to traditional LDAP-based apps and IT infrastructure using the G Suite identity and access management (IAM) platform. This means organizations can use a single user directory to manage access to both SaaS apps and traditional LDAP-based apps and IT infrastructure, and users can use the same login credentials for more apps and services. The benefits to your organization can include:

• Simpler administration: Manage applications and users in one place, decreasing complexity and cost for IT teams. 
• Improved security: A single place to set up identity and access policies. 
• Minimized legacy infrastructure: Reduce your dependency on legacy identity infrastructure such as Microsoft Active Directory. 

Using secure LDAP doesn’t change end user workflows—applications and IT infrastructure that use LDAP can be simply reconfigured to use the secure LDAP service.

Works with a wide range of apps and IT infrastructure 

Virtually any app that supports LDAP over SSL can work with secure LDAP, whether it’s hosted on-premises or in the cloud. We’re actively working with many companies to validate their apps for this use case, including Aruba Networks (HPE), Atlassian, itopia, JAMF, Jenkins (Cloudbees), OpenVPN, Papercut, pfSense (Netgate), Puppet, Softerra, Sophos, Splunk, and Synology.

For more information, see our Cloud Blog post on the announcement. You can also check out our Help Center for more details on how to get started with the secure LDAP service.

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

Editions: 
Available to G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, G Suite for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium 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: About the Secure LDAP service
Google Cloud Blog: Cloud Identity now provides access to traditional apps with secure LDAP


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On December 31, 2018, we will discontinue support for Windows XP and Server 2003 in the following Windows-based G Suite data migration and sync tools:

• G Suite Sync for Microsoft Outlook (GSSMO)
• G Suite Migration for Microsoft Exchange (GSMME)
• G Suite Migration for Microsoft Outlook (GSMMO) 
• G Suite Password Sync (GSPS) 

The Windows XP and Server 2003 platforms are no longer supported by Microsoft. If already installed, the G Suite tools will continue to function on these platforms, but will not be actively tested and maintained, and will not receive security updates. If you are still using one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer version of Windows.

Launch Details
Release track: 
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on December 31, 2018



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Starting on January 7, 2019, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be available. Since Calendar offers in-app notifications, you can still get notified, regardless of your device or connection.

If you had previously been receiving Calendar notifications via SMS, they’ll be replaced with in-app and email notifications. You’ll see these notifications:

• As event notifications in a web browser that has Calendar open or a mobile device if you have the Google Calendar app for Android or iOS.
• In an email if you had set up SMS notifications for new events, changed events, canceled events, or event responses.

We’ll also be making some changes to the Calendar API to support this change. Check out the Google Developers’ page to learn more.

Learn more about different Calendar event & notification settings in the Help Center.

More Information
Help Center: Change or turn off Calendar notifications

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Starting November 27th, 2018, we’ll make some small changes to the appearance of the Google sign-in page. These follow changes made earlier this year, which updated the sign-in page to match the Material Design principles used in other Google products.

Specifically, you might notice outlines around some entry fields, and changes to the spacing and styling of other text on both the web and mobile screens. The changes will start to take effect on November 27th and may take up to two weeks to reach all users.

See the new sign-in UI 

Sign-in page that will start rolling out on November 27, 2018

Sign-in page prior to November 27, 2018

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

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When it comes to protecting online accounts, a strong password is the first line of defense. As such, organizations have various stipulations for their users’ passwords. G Suite admins can already specify minimum and maximum length limits for passwords for their users. With this launch, we’re making it possible to enforce additional rigorous password requirements for increased security and to meet their compliance needs.

Going forward, an admin can do the following:

Require that users set a strong password. 

Admins can already see which passwords in their domain are weak; enabling this setting will allow admins to force users with weak passwords to change them. Direct your users to this Help Center article for tips on creating a strong password. Note that this setting is OFF by default.

Control when password length and strength requirements go into effect. 

You can choose to enforce password length and strength requirements either the next time a user changes their password or the next time they log in. The default is to start enforcement the next time a user changes their password. To change it, check the box next to “Start password policy enforcement at next sign in.” 

Prompt users to change their passwords after a certain number of days. 

If you’re unsure about whether or not you need to do this, we recommend you leave this setting as “Never.”

Prevent users from reusing old passwords. 

To prevent password reuse, we recommend you leave the box for “Allow password reuse” unchecked. This is the default.
Each of these settings can be found in the Admin console under Security > Password management. As part of the launch we are also moving the password length (minimum and maximum) settings from the Basic Settings card to this new Password management card. For more information, visit the Help Center.

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 and end users

Action: 
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information 
Help Center: Manage your users' password settings


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