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Update, April 24, 2020: We've updated this post to correct the rollout schedule. The feature is fully rolled out to Rapid Release domains, but Scheduled Release domains will get the feature between April 29 and May 1, 2020. The post previously said it was already fully rolled out to all domains. 

What’s changing You can now share higher-quality video with audio content in a Meet video call. You can do this through a new present a Chrome tab feature. Now, when you use this feature with video content playing, everyone in the meeting will see and hear the video and audio being shared. This means you can confidently use videos, gifs, animations, and other media in your meetings.

Who’s impacted End users

Why it matters Videos can be a critical part of meetings and presentations. As more meetings are taking place online, it’s important that presenters can share smooth videos with audio to all attendees, wherever they are. Situations where you may benefit from high-quality video and audio in presentations include:

  • A business meeting to review promotional videos. 
  • An engineering meeting to share pre-recorded product or feature demonstrations. 
  • Teachers sharing videos as part of a lesson plan to students.
  • Presenting slides with embedded videos or GIFs, or with animated transitions between slides. 

Additionally, by adding the ability to present a tab rather than a window or your full screen, we’re providing more control to presenters to make sure they can minimize distractions while they’re presenting.

Additional details 
Present a tab and easily switch between tabs 
With this launch you can now present an individual Chrome tab. When you present a tab, it will be highlighted so you can clearly see which one you’re presenting. If you change your view to a new tab, a pop-up will ask if you want to switch to presenting the new tab or keep presenting the previous tab, making it easy to move between tabs and control what information you share with the meeting. 

Use “present a tab” to share high-quality video and audio 
The high-quality video and audio playback only works when you present an individual tab feature in Chrome (see above) on desktop devices. It does not work if you’re presenting a full window or your whole screen.

Upgrading previous Meet video presentation experience 
Until now, users have been able to play video while presenting in Meet, but may have noticed choppy playback and no audio. Some users chose to use the Cast feature to present audio and video, but that had several limitations as well. This launch will mean users can avoid workarounds and limitations and easily include high-quality video in their meetings.

Users can already present high-quality audio and video to meetings using an HDMI cable with some Meet hardware kits. This will continue to work.

Getting started Admins: This feature will be ON by default. There is no admin control for this feature. You may want to review your organization’s Meet video settings.

End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about presenting videos during meetings.

Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to all G Suite customers 

Resources 

Roadmap 
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What’s changingYou can now see up to 16 people at the same time in the tile layout option in Google Meet.
See up to 16 other meeting participants in the tiled layout

Who’s impactedEnd users
Why you’d use itSeeing more people at the same time can help improve the dynamics of larger group meetings and classes. Whether it's seeing everyone's reactions to what's being discussed, or more easily tracking multiple speakers, it can help remote meetings feel more like in-person meetings and encourage participation.

We hope that this helps individuals and teams feel more connected while apart.
Additional detailsThe layout will adjust to show active speakers. If you’re in a meeting with more than 16 other people, there’s an option to open the list of participants and see who else is in the meeting. As a reminder, all G Suite customers can host meetings with up to 250 participants through September 30, 2020.

This feature is currently only available in Meet on the web. More updates are coming for larger meetings, better presentation layouts, and support across more devices.
Getting startedAdmins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: To use the tiled layout in a meeting, follow the instructions in the Help Center.
Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all G Suite customers

Resources
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What’s changingGoogle Meet is now available in Gmail, which means you can start and join meetings right from your inbox, making it even easier to stay connected.
Options to start or join a Google Meet video meeting now in Gmail

Enter a meeting code or nickname to join a Google Meet video meeting

Who’s impacted
Admins and end users

Why you’d use itWith more and more people working and learning from home, we want to make it easier for you to connect and keep things moving forward. With Meet in Gmail, you can easily start or join a meeting in seconds. Our goal is to help you follow the flow of the day, seamlessly switching between email and video meetings—whichever form of communication you need.

Additional detailsWhen you start a meeting, a new window pops up with a secure, unique meet.google.com URL. Choosing to join a meeting lets you enter a meeting code (provided by the organizer) or use a meeting nickname to quickly get everyone into an ad hoc meeting. Simply choose a nickname (ex: “catchup” or “kevin-priya”), share it with anyone inside your domain, and type it into “Join a meeting” to get everyone in your meeting.

Once in the meeting, you can invite more people to join.

This feature is currently only available in Gmail on the web with mobile coming soon.

Getting startedAdmins: This feature will be ON by default for all domains with video calling enabled. You can disable Meet by turning off video calling in the Admin console. Alternatively you can turn it off by turning off the Hangouts Meet and Google Hangouts service, but this will turn off classic Hangouts as well.

End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about starting or joining a video call from Gmail.
Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all G Suite customers

Resources


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What’s changing

Going forward, Google Meet hardware devices, including Series One Board 65 and Desk 27 devices will now adhere to the following service statuses:

This change could impact access to Calendar and Jamboard across your Meet hardware fleet — we strongly recommend reviewing these settings before April 22, 2024 to ensure there are no disruptions.


Getting started
Admins: 

Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware licenses. 

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What’s changingLast month, we made our advanced Google Meet video-conferencing capabilities available at no cost to all G Suite Basic, Business, Education, and Nonprofit customers. We’re extending that availability to September 30, 2020, to ensure businesses, organizations, and educators continue their work during this crisis. See our previous post for more details on these features.

In addition, we’re dropping “Hangouts” from the Google Meet name. You’ll start to see this change reflected in the product and across resources over the next few weeks.
Who’s impactedAdmins and end users
Why it’s importantWe hope this extension makes it easier for our customers to operate during this crisis. We also recognize that as work and learning are increasingly done from a distance, maintaining security and control across your organization is all the more critical. Check out our post on the G Suite blog to learn more about how Google Meet keeps your organization’s information safe.
Getting startedAdmins: If you haven’t yet done so, enable Meet video calling for your organization. You can then turn on live streaming and recording.

  • G Suite Basic, Business, and Nonprofit customers: These advanced features are OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain, OU, or group level.
  • G Suite for Education customers: These advanced features are OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain, OU, or group level. Please see our FAQ in the Help Center for additional education-specific considerations when enabling Meet and these features.
  • G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education customers: These features are already available in your domain and will continue to respect your current settings.

End users: Once enabled in the Admin console, end users can live stream and record meetings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to live stream and record a meeting.

Rollout pace
  • Free access to advanced features is available now to all G Suite customers.

Availability
  • Available to all G Suite customers.

Resources


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What’s changingRecently, the Google Security blog outlined how the usage of Transport Layer Security (TLS) has grown to more than 96% of all traffic seen by a Chrome browser on Chrome OS. The blog post also highlighted a significant goal: to enable TLS by default for our Google products and services, and to ensure that TLS works out of the box.

Gmail already supports TLS, so that if the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) mail connection can be secured through TLS, it will be. However, in order to encourage more organizations to increase their email security posture, and to further the above goal of enabling TLS by default, we’ve made the following changes:

  • TLS for mail connections will now be enabled by default
  • Admins are now able to test their SMTP outbound routes’ TLS configuration in the Admin console before deployment. They no longer need to wait for messages to bounce.

While admins have always had the ability to require TLS encryption for mail routes, it was previously off by default. Note that existing mail routes will not be impacted by these changes.

Who’s impactedAdmins
Why it’s importantWe always recommend that admins enable existing mail security features, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, to help protect end users. We also recommend that admins turn on MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS), which improves Gmail security by requiring authentication checks and encryption for email sent to their domains. Enabling TLS by default on new SMTP mail routes enhances the security posture of our customers while enabling admins to test connections before enforcing TLS on existing routes makes it easier for them to deploy best practice security policies.

This change will not impact mail routes that were previously created.

Additional details

TLS enabled by default on new mail routes
With TLS enabled by default for new mail routes, all certificate validation requirements are also enabled by default. This ensures that recipient hosts have a certificate issued for the correct host that has been signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). See more details about how we’re changing the requirements for trusted CAs below.

Admins will still have the ability to customize their TLS security settings on newly created mail routes. For example, if mail is forwarded to third-party or on-premise mail servers using internal CA certificates, admins may need to disable CA certificate validation. Disabling CA certificate validation, or even disabling TLS entirely, is not recommended. We encourage admins to test their SMTP TLS configuration in the Admin console in order to validate the TLS connection to external mail servers before disabling any recommended validations. See more details about how to test TLS connections in the Admin console.

Certificate Authority distrust in Gmail
In the past, the Google Security Blog has highlighted instances where Chrome would no longer trust root CA certificates used to intercept traffic on the public internet and where Chrome distrusts specific CAs.

If these scenarios occur in the future, these certificates will also be distrusted by Gmail. When this happens, mail sent using routes that require TLS with CA-signed certificate enforcement may bounce if the CA is no longer trusted. Although the list of root certificates trusted by Gmail can be retrieved from the Google Trust Services repository, we encourage admins to use the Test TLS Connections feature in the Admin console to confirm whether certificates have been distrusted.

Test TLS connections in Admin console
Admins can now use the new Test TLS Connection feature to verify whether a mail route can successfully establish a TLS connection with full validation to any destination, such as an on-premise mail server or a third-party mail relay, before enforcing TLS for that destination.
Getting started

Admins:

TLS settings
TLS will be ON by default for all new mail routes. We recommend that admins review all of their existing routes and enable all recommended TLS security options for these routes as well.

Testing TLS connections
Admins who want to require a secure TLS connection for emails can now verify that the connection to the recipient's mail server is valid simply by clicking on the “Test TLS Connection” button in the Admin console; they no longer need to wait for emails to bounce.

Learn more about requiring mail to be transmitted via a secure (TLS) connection and adding mail routes in the Help Center.

All certificate validations are now enabled by default when creating a new TLS compliance setting.

TLS and all certificate validations are now enabled by default when creating a new mail route.

End users: There are no end user settings for these features.

Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all G Suite customers

Resources


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UPDATE: 
September 29, 2023: We're ready to move forward with this change — please refer to this announcement for the latest timeline and information.

October 8, 2020: We updated the post to clarify timelines, adding "please be reassured that when we restart the turn-off timelines, you will still have a 12 month window from that start date to review and complete your migration."

Last December, we announced that we’d be turning off less secure app (LSA) access to G Suite accounts, and that you should migrate to OAuth authentication instead. The first phase of the LSA turn-down was scheduled for June 15, 2020. As many organizations deal with the impact of COVID-19 and are now focused on supporting a remote workforce, we want to minimize potential disruptions for customers unable to complete migrations in this timeframe.

As a result, we are suspending the LSA turn-off until further notice. All previously announced timeframes no longer apply. Please be reassured that when we restart the turn-off timelines, you will still have a 12 month window from that start date to review and complete your migration.

This applies to all categories of applications and protocols outlined in our original blog post, including Apple iOS Mail (whether syncing through IMAP or Google Sync). We’ll announce new timelines on the G Suite Updates blog at a later date.

Despite these timing adjustments, Google does not recommend the use of any application that does not support OAuth. We recommend that you switch to using OAuth authentication whenever possible for your organization. OAuth helps protect your account by helping us identify and prevent suspicious login attempts, and allows us to enforce G Suite admin-defined login policies, such as the use of security keys. See our original blog post for details and instructions on migrating to OAuth. 

Getting started 
  • Admins: No action required. However, we do recommend switching to OAuth authentication. See our original blog post for details on migrating to OAuth.
  • End users: No end user impact.
  • Developers: Update your app to use OAuth 2.0 as soon as possible.
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What’s changing Last year, we announced a beta for shortcuts in Google Drive. This feature is now generally available and has started rolling out to all G Suite customers and users with personal Google Accounts. 

Shortcuts in Drive make it easier to organize content and point users to relevant information and files across various drives.
Who’s impacted Admins, end users, and developers

Why you’d use it 
Shortcuts are pointers to content that can be stored in another folder or drive, a shared drive, or an individual user's “My Drive.”

For example, Paul, a marketing manager, creates a “Marketing Strategy” document and shares it with the sales team. Greta, the sales manager, can now create a shortcut to the document in the “Sales” shared drive, enabling everyone on the sales team to quickly and easily access the file.

Additional details 
Shortcut visibility and sharing permissions 
Shortcuts are visible to anyone who has access to the folder or drive containing the shortcut. Even if someone can see the shortcut, however, they can only open it if they have the appropriate access to the original file or folder.

Simplifying how files and folders appear in multiple locations 
In order to create a consistent experience for managing and viewing reference files across Drive, we’ve changed the “Add to My Drive” option to “Add shortcut to Drive.”


Changes to Drive’s folder structure and sharing model starting September 30 
Starting September 30, 2020, it will no longer be possible to place a file in multiple folders in My Drive, including via the Drive API. Going forward, every file will live in a single location.

After September 30, 2020, all files already living in multiple locations in My Drive will gradually be migrated to shortcuts.

No admin or end user action is required. We recommend developers read more about this and other Drive API changes on the Cloud blog.

Getting started 


Rollout pace Drive Web



Drive Android/iOS

  • Gradual rollout starting on March 26, 2020. Requires app version 2.20.10 and up for Android and 4.2020.08 and up for iOS 


Drive File Stream

  • This feature is already available and requires app version 37.0 and up 


Backup and Sync

  • This feature is already available and requires app version 3.46 and up 


Availability 
  • Available to all G Suite customers and users with personal Google Accounts 


Resources 


Roadmap 
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What’s changing We recently extended Hangouts Meet premium features to all G Suite customers through July 1, 2020 to support employees, educators, and students as they move to work and learn remotely.

To improve the remote learning experience for teachers and students using Hangouts Meet, we’re making several improvements:

  • Only meeting creators and calendar owners can mute or remove other participants in a meeting
  • Meeting participants will not be able to re-join nicknamed meetings once the final participant has left
Who’s impacted Admins and end users

Why it’s important We hope these added controls and improvements will enhance Hangouts Meet for our Education users.

Additional detailsImproved meeting control features: 'mute' and 'remove' For our Education customers, only the meeting creator, Calendar event owner, or person who creates a meeting on an in-room hardware device will be allowed to mute or remove other participants in a meeting. This ensures a teacher, as a meeting creator or Calendar event owner, can't be removed or muted by students participating in the event.

Check out our Help Center to learn how to assign meeting creation privileges to teachers and staff members. We recommend that you assign these privileges to the organizational units (OUs) that contain your faculty and staff members.

Improved teacher controls for nicknamed meetings Participants will not be able to re-join a meeting after the final participant has left if:
  • The meeting was created using a short link like g.co/meet/nickname 
  • The meeting was created at meet.google.com by entering a meeting nickname in the "Join or start a meeting” field 
  • The meeting was created in the Meet app by entering a nickname in the “Meeting code” field

This means if the teacher is the last person to leave these types of meetings, students cannot join later without the teacher.

We’ve also heard from some admins that they don’t want students to be able to create meetings. To do so, use this Help Center article to assign meeting creation privileges to teachers and staff only.

Additional resources for getting started with Hangouts Meet 
Visit our Help Center to learn more about using Meet with low bandwidth and tips for training teachers and students.

Getting started Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about assigning meeting creation privileges to users in your domain.

End Users: No action is required.

Rollout pace 
  • Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: These features have started rolling out and should be available to all G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers within 2-3 weeks. 
Availability 
  • Available to G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers 
  • Not available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business and G Suite for Nonprofits customers
Resources 
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