Google Workspace Changes

To give teams greater control over the timing and pacing of automated workflows, Google Workspace Studio is introducing a new “Wait until” step. Users can pause a flow at any point—including inside conditional branches (Check if) and loops (Repeat for each)—and automatically resume it at a specified future date and time or after a set duration of up to 14 days. The step supports modes such as a specific day next week, a specific day and time, or a custom duration, and paused flows can be monitored in real time in the Workspace Studio Activity tab.

Google Workspace is rolling out skills—reusable, custom instructions that guide Gemini to apply team rules, templates, and reference files—across Workspace Studio and Workspace apps. Users can build skills from scratch or templates in Workspace Studio, draft them in Google Docs, create and edit them in context within Gmail, Docs, Slides, Drive, and Chat, and invoke them automatically or via @mention. Skills can also trigger Workspace Studio flows. The rollout begins November 9, 2026 for Rapid Release domains and November 30, 2026 for Scheduled Release domains, with gradual visibility over up to 15 days for each track.

With help from Gemini, Google Chat now makes it easier to schedule meetings directly from conversations. When someone in a chat with up to five members suggests finding a time to meet, Gemini detects the intent and underlines the relevant text. Hovering reveals a scheduling card with up to three suggested times based on Google Calendar availability, attendees filled in from the conversation, and a suggested meeting title. Users can select a time and click Schedule to create the meeting in one click, or click Open in Calendar to configure additional details.

Google is making it faster to confirm automatically applied classification labels in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Previously, files labeled by AI classification or default classification rules only showed a Review button; now, when a single label is automatically applied, users with permission to modify it see Accept and Edit buttons directly in the banner. Accept confirms the label in one click, while Edit opens the Labels side panel. A new Accept label button is also available in the side panel. If multiple labels are automatically applied, the banner continues to show Review. The feature is ON by default for eligible editions and begins gradual rollout on November 9, 2026, for both Rapid and Scheduled Release domains.

Users now have access to Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash directly within Google Vids. Omni 1.2 provides longer duration videos up to 15 seconds and improved quality resulting in higher character consistency and vocal realism. Users can customize clip duration from 3-15 seconds, benefit from improved reference consistency for characters or products, and enjoy greater speaker variety with wider dynamic ranges.

Google Forms is introducing actionable insights powered by Gemini, allowing users to generate insights directly from the Responses tab. Gemini analyzes responses by writing and running Python code to ground findings like counts, percentages, and comparisons in actual response data, spots patterns and cross-question correlations, summarizes key takeaways, and suggests recommended next steps for use cases such as event and product feedback, research surveys, and registration or application forms.

Google Workspace administrators can automatically enforce client-side encryption (CSE) on sensitive files across their organization using Policy-Based Enforcement, now available in beta. Integrated with the Google Workspace Rules Engine, the feature applies encryption in place while preserving original file URLs across My Drive and shared drives, supporting Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Microsoft Office files, PDFs, and images. End users receive in-product contextual notifications when opening encrypted files, and administrators can monitor encryption activity in the security investigation tool with alert center notifications for external Key Access Control List Service (KACLS) issues. The feature requires Assured Controls or Assured Controls Plus licenses and beta enrollment, and is off by default.

A new Google Classroom integration lets teachers add Guided Learning—a Gemini app mode designed to deepen understanding with step-by-step guidance rather than giving answers—to any assignment, rolling out globally in all Gemini-supported languages. Educators can embed structured, curriculum-informed AI-guided sessions into lesson plans by selecting specific Classroom sources as context, grounded in Google's LearnLM research. The feature provides actionable AI-generated insight summaries at both class and individual student levels, access to individual student chat transcripts, a focused student view that hides the Gemini side navigation and disables new chats, and seamless integration with Class Tools on Chromebooks for a secure, locked-down environment. It is available for Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus editions.

To help ensure end users are familiar with organizational policies for handling meeting artifacts like recordings, transcriptions, and notes by Gemini, Google is introducing the ability to set custom policy text from the admin console that is displayed prior to users joining Google Meet calls. Admins can display a custom short message in the Green Room prior to users joining a Meet call and include a URL to a webpage with more information about company policies. The policy can be set to always display or only when the meeting is being recorded, transcribed, or notes are being taken by Gemini. The feature is OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU level under Meet Safety Settings.

Google Vids users can upload images from their local computer, Drive, or Photos to create custom avatars, refine them within Vids to clean up backgrounds, lighting, or add festive decorations, and save them for reuse in projects, enabling greater customization and precise creative control alongside building avatars from scratch.

Users can now use Gemini in Google Slides to edit multiple slides or an entire presentation at once via a single prompt in the side panel. The feature supports refreshing visual styles, updating content throughout the deck using Google Drive files, combining or expanding slides, and making styling consistent across all slides. Gemini applies edits directly to native, editable slides and provides a summary of changes, with full undo and version history control. The feature launches in English only, with extended rollout to Rapid and Scheduled Release domains starting October 29, 2026, and promotional higher usage limits through at least December 1, 2026.

Google is introducing new ways to create and refine files and code in the Gemini app. Users can generate, preview, and edit files right within Gemini app chat—expanding to full screen to type edits directly, highlighting text to ask questions, or having Gemini refine them. PDF preview and editing is supported on both web and mobile, while all other formats (documents, spreadsheets, slide decks, Markdown files, TXT files, and code) are supported on the web only. Users can generate slide decks and open them in Google Slides or download as PPTX/PDF, build and export Google Sheets, and edit documents and PDFs with inline edits on web or full-screen view, plus upload to Drive.

Fill with Gemini in Google Sheets now provides cell-level citations for web sources, giving users full visibility to audit, verify, and cross-reference AI-generated data directly within each individual cell. The update also delivers upgraded processing with faster response times, improved cell-over-cell consistency, and expanded capacity supporting up to 3,000 cells per request, performing up to 55 times faster than manual entry for 500-cell tasks.

Google Sheets now supports compact form layout for pivot tables, keeping multi-level pivot tables readable while reducing excessive horizontal scrolling. Users can choose between Outline form and Compact form directly from the pivot table editor. The update also preserves compact form pivot table structure when importing from and exporting back to Microsoft Excel.