Google Workspace Changes

Google Vault now supports Hangouts Chat for retention, legal holds, and eDiscovery.

Google Vault has introduced support for Hangouts Chat, providing G Suite admins with essential governance controls. Admins can now set default and custom retention policies for direct messages and room conversations, place legal holds to preserve data regardless of user deletion, and search, preview, and export chat content to meet legal and compliance obligations.

Quick Access for Google Docs is now available.

Quick Access for Google Docs uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant files based on signals like Drive activity and information within documents, helping users work with the most up-to-date information and create new material quickly. This feature is available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions with Google Cloud Search enabled.

Hangouts Chat is now generally available as a core service.

Google has launched Hangouts Chat as a core service for G Suite, making it available to all editions except Government. The service is enabled by default for most organizations and is compatible with classic Hangouts, ensuring seamless communication across both platforms. Admin controls for chat history and service activation are available in the Admin console.

Automatic room suggestions in Google Calendar

Google Calendar is introducing automatic room suggestions to help organizations collaborate more effectively. The tool suggests rooms optimized for attendees based on their building and floor location, previous booking history, audio/video equipment needs, and room capacity requirements. To unlock this feature, administrators must input detailed meeting room information into Calendar.

Twelve third-party applications added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML apps catalog

We’re now adding SAML integration for 12 additional applications: 15Five, 4Me, Clarizen, Deskpro, Heroku, Hightail, moxtra, ScreenSteps, Targetprocess, Tinfoil, UserEcho, xMatters

Twelve third-party applications added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML apps catalog

Google has added SAML integration for 12 additional third-party applications—15Five, 4Me, Clarizen, Deskpro, Heroku, Hightail, moxtra, ScreenSteps, Targetprocess, Tinfoil, UserEcho, and xMatters—to the G Suite pre-integrated apps catalog. This update simplifies the process for admins to set up Single-Sign-On (SSO) for these specific enterprise cloud applications.

S/PDIF audio support for external speakers

Jamboard devices now support the attachment of external speakers via the S/PDIF optical audio port located on the rear of the device.

USB camera support for Jamboard kiosks

Users can now connect a USB camera to the Jamboard kiosk and select their preferred camera feed (USB or internal) via the settings panel.

Animated frame changes with page numbers on Jamboard devices

Jamboard devices now display a distinct frame-change animation along with the page number whenever a user changes a frame.

Email confirmation for claiming unclaimed Jams

Admins can now enable a setting that requires users to confirm ownership of an unclaimed Jam via email before being added as an owner, preventing the sharing of content before an owner is assigned.

Autodraw added to Jamboard

AutoDraw is a new drawing tool in Jamboard that auto-detects sketches made by users and pairs them with professional images, allowing teams to make their ideas more visual.

Admins can now limit the bandwidth used by Drive File Stream.

Administrators now have the ability to limit the bandwidth of Drive File Stream for both uploads and downloads to manage network usage within their organization.

Admins can now customize the content cache location for Drive File Stream.

Administrators can now customize the content cache location for Drive File Stream to any directory on a connected APFS, HFS+, or NTFS file system.

End users can now pause Drive File Stream syncing.

End users now have the ability to pause Drive File Stream syncing. While paused, the application will not upload local changes to Google Drive, and new versions of files made available offline will not be downloaded.

Improvements to menus in the web versions of Google Docs editors.

Google is updating the menus in the web versions of Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets to make items easier to find. Changes across all editors include renaming 'Spelling' to 'Check Spelling' in the Tools menu and removing 'Select none' from the Edit menu. Specifically for Google Sheets, 'Filter' is renamed to 'Create a filter' and 'Validation' to 'Data validation' in the Data menu, with various reordering of items in the File, Edit, Tools, Data, and Format menus.