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What’s changing 

You can now view embedded Microsoft Office files in your documents when you’re working with Office files in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.. This feature allows you to:  
  • View the files in preview mode, 
  • Copy an embedded file directly to Drive, or download it.  

View your embedded files from Office in your documents
 View your embedded files from Office in your documents
Who’s impacted 
Admins and end users 

Why it matters 
We’ve heard your feedback that it’s important to be able to access embedded files within your Microsoft Office files. This feature enables you to access embedded Office files within your existing Office files from Docs, Sheets, and Slides for a seamless work experience. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 
Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers. Also available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources
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What’s changing
You can now use Time Insights in Calendar, a personalized, analytical experience on the web, to see how your time is spent across meetings and collaborators.
Time Insights in Google Calendar appearing on the right side of a week view
Time Insights experience for an example calendar week view




Please note, you can only view Time Insights on a computer.

Who’s impacted
Admins and end users

Why you’d use it
With the changes to our working environments in the past year, some people have more meetings and may feel less control over how their work time is spent. Time Insights can show you this data, and help you plan your time better.

Additional details
With Time Insights, you’ll see information such as:
  • Time breakdown: Based on your working hours and the types of meetings you have
  • Time in meetings: Highlighting meeting-heavy days and time frames, as well as meeting frequencies
  • People you meet with: Showing who you spend the most time meeting with. You can also pin key stakeholders to make sure you’re keeping in touch with them. Hovering over an individual will also highlight the meetings on your calendar that include that person
This information is visible to you, not your manager—so you can assess how you’re spending your time against your own priorities.

If you manage other people’s calendars and have “manage sharing access” permission to those calendars, you can view their Time Insights.

Getting started
  • Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled at the domain/OU level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Time Insights on or off for your organization. Please note, there is no admin control for Google Workspace Business Standard domains.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature but users can close the right hand bar out of view at any time. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Time Insights in Calendar.

Rollout pace
Admin setting
End user feature

Availability
  • Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Nonprofits customers
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, and Frontline, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources
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Quick launch summary
You can now configure the Chat Progressive Web Application (PWA) to "Start app when you sign in" to your computer. This can be done on your Windows, MAC OS or Linux computer by going to chrome://apps, right clicking on Google Chat and then choosing "Start app when you sign in."

App starter window with right-click menu options on Google Chat app
Right click on the Chat app to select this new option


Please note, ​this feature is not supported on Chrome OS.

If you don't have the Chat PWA app already, you’ll first have to install the Chat PWA app.

Before this launch, you’d have to manually start the Chat PWA app by searching for and clicking on it every time you restart your computer. With the new feature, you can simply choose to launch the PWA app at system startup every time.

Getting started
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled by the user. Once turned on, the Chat PWA app will automatically start when the user logs into their computer.
Rollout pace
  • This feature is available now for all users.
Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers
Resources
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Quick summary 
You’ll now see in-line, sequential, context-aware suggestions for formulas and functions when working with data in Google Sheets. 

Formula suggestions will make it easier to write new formulas accurately and help make data analysis quicker and easier.

Simply begin inserting a formula in Sheets—suggestions will be automatically displayed and as you continue to type. You can view additional incremental suggestions in the drop-down menu.





We hope these formula suggestions make it easier and faster for you to work with and analyze your data.

Getting started
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be available  by default and can be disabled by going to Tools > Enable formula suggestions or from the three-dot menu of the suggestion dialog box. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using formulas and functions in Google Sheets. 
Rollout pace

Availability
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers
  • Available to users with personal Google accounts

Resources
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What’s changing 
In addition to replacing your Google Meet background with a static image on web and mobile, you can now replace your background with a video. At the moment, you can select from three Google made videos: a classroom, a party, and a forest — more options will be available soon. This feature is already available on Google Meet on web. 


When using Google Meet on iOS, you have the option to replace your background with a video.
Use a video background to make calls more fun.

Who’s impacted 
Admins and end users 

Why you’d use it 
Custom backgrounds can help you show more of your personality, as well to help hide your surroundings to maintain privacy. With the option of replacing your background with video, we hope this makes your video calls more fun. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 
  • This feature is available now for all users. 

Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 
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Quick launch summary 
When viewing your tasks in the "tasks" tab in a Google Chat room, you can quickly navigate back to the Google Chat message where the task was created or the task creation was indicated. 

Simply hover over the task on the web or select the task on mobile and then select the Chat. We hope this feature makes it easier to surface context for your tasks, and re-engage your stakeholders with updates, questions or further collaboration. 



Select a task in the "Tasks" portion of a Google Chat room — you can select the chat icon to navigate to relevant messages.
The new "View in Chat" icon within the Tasks section of a Google Chat room.

When viewing tasks on mobile, the chat icon will be in the top right hand corner.
When viewing tasks on mobile, the chat icon will be in the top right hand corner.


Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: This feature will be available by default. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 
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Quick launch summary
In 2017, we introduced Smart Reply in Gmail to save you time by suggesting quick responses to your messages. Now, Smart Reply in Google Docs saves you time replying to comments in Docs by suggesting relevant replies. 

Smart Reply suggestions appear below the reply box on comment threads in English. You can choose a suggested reply or write your own. Smart Reply joins Smart compose and spelling autocorrect announced in January 2021 to help you compose comments in Docs quickly and with confidence. 

Smart reply suggests replies to comments in Google Docs
Smart Reply can help saves you time replying to comments in Docs by suggesting relevant replies


Getting started 
  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default To turn it off, go to Tools > Preferences > Show Smart Reply suggestions. If turned on, click on a comment thread in Google Docs, and Smart Reply will suggest responses if available. It may not present suggestions in all cases, and the comment thread must be in English. Simply click on a suggestion to use it, once you click, you can send it as-is or edit it before sending. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Smart Reply in Google Docs, and replying to comments in Google Docs. 
Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers. Also available to users with personal Google Accounts 
Resources 

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What’s changing

In 2020, we launched security groups to beta. Beginning today, this feature is now generally available. Security groups help you easily regulate, audit, and monitor groups used for permission and access control purposes. They enable admins to: 

  • Apply a label to any existing Google Group to distinguish it from email-list groups. 
  • Provide strong guarantees that: 
    • External groups (owned outside your organization) and non-security groups cannot be added as a member of a security group. 
    • Security labels, once assigned to a group, cannot be removed. This ensures that once a group is used for security purposes, it will remain in that state. 


Why it’s important
Groups are used in a variety of ways. This can include groups that help teams communicate and collaborate, as well as groups that control access to important apps and resources. Security groups can help customers manage these categories of groups differently to increase their overall security posture. 

For example, if you have compliance or regulatory requirements for managing access control, you may have set up naming conventions to keep track of which groups were used for this purpose. With security groups, you can now assign a security label to these groups and more easily manage them without having to use workarounds like naming conventions. 

Getting started

Rollout pace
  • This feature is available now.

Availability
  • Available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials and Frontline customers

Resources

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Quick launch summary 
We’re making it easier to identify and fix when an echo is happening in Google Meet video calls. ‘Echo’ can happen when your system feeds back audio into a call. Most of the time, Meet will intelligently control the audio to remove the echo. However, sometimes it still happens, and causes others to hear an echo from your device when they speak. Until now, it has been difficult for you to know when your device is causing an echo. Now, we will notify you when we detect a notable echo from your system which may be heard by other call participants with a red dot on the more options button, along with a text notification. Clicking on the notification will go to our Help Center, where you can find recommended steps which can help prevent echo. 


Users may see a notification alerting them when they’re causing an echo
Users may see a notification alerting them when they’re causing an echo 




If you click on the notification, there’s troubleshooting steps you can take which might help reduce the echo

If you click on the notification, there’s troubleshooting steps you can take which might help reduce the echo 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 
Resources
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New updates 

Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time (if not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers.


Block shares option added to Google Drive sharing emails
Last month, we announced that you could now block shares from another user in Google Drive. es from another user in Google Drive. Now, we're also adding the option to block a user from the sharing notification emails sent from Google Drive. With this addition, you'll be able to start the workflow directly from the email. | Learn more. 


Previous announcements 

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

View more insights and take quick action on the Users, Domain, and Billing home cards in the Admin console
You’ll notice important notifications and improved guidance within the cards to help you easily take action on user, billing, and domain management activities on the Admin console homepage. | Learn more. 


Upload customized audio prompts and greetings to Google Voice automated attendant
You can now upload your own pre-recorded prompts and greetings when setting up an automated attendant at Google Voice, in addition to the standard text-to-speech voice ability you currently have. | Available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers with Google Voice standard and premier licenses. | Learn more.


Easily customize theme colors in Sheets and Slides
Now it’s easier to find and select theme colors in Sheets and Slides. | Learn more.


Share where you’re working from in Google Calendar
Starting August 30, 2021, you’ll be able to indicate where you’re working from directly on your calendar. You can add a weekly working location routine and update your location as plans change. Starting August 18, admins will be able to control how the feature is used in their organization. | Learn more.


Limit external messaging to trusted domains in Google Chat
Now, you may choose to limit external chat to people in trusted domains for your entire organization, or set different policies for different OUs. | Learn more.


Dark mode for Google Chat on web
You can now enable dark mode for Google Chat on the web (chat.google.com) and the Google Chat Progressive Web App (PWA). | Learn more.


For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).

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