Google Workspace Changes

Enhanced control over chart data labels, including totals for stacked charts and customizable placement.

Google Sheets is introducing new features to improve how charts represent data. Users can now add total data labels to stacked charts to display the sum of all content in a data set. Additionally, new alignment options for data labels have been added for column, bar, line, point, and area charts, allowing users to position labels in locations such as Center, Inside end, Inside base, Outside end, Left, Right, Above, or Below.

All G Suite customers can now create Hangouts Meet meetings with dial-in phone numbers.

Google has expanded dial-in capabilities for Hangouts Meet, allowing all G Suite users to include a US dial-in phone number in meetings created via Google Calendar. While all G Suite editions now have access to US dial-in, international dial-in numbers remain exclusive to G Suite Enterprise users. Administrators maintain the ability to disable the dial-in feature through the Admin console.

Session length controls are now available for domains using SAML federation.

Google is extending session length controls for Google services to domains that federate to another Identity Provider (IdP) using SAML. This allows G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education admins to specify the duration of web sessions (e.g., four hours, seven days, or infinite) regardless of the browser used. Additionally, session-based cookies for SAML-federated customers will be removed on May 7th, 2018, to ensure consistent behavior across different browsers.

Comment on specific text within individual objects in Google Slides

Collaboration in Google Slides is improved by allowing users to comment on specific text within an object, such as a text box, rather than being limited to commenting on the entire object or the whole slide.

New guides and rulers for precision design in Google Slides

Google Slides has introduced guide lines for consistent placement and alignment across all slides, with objects snapping to these guides. Additionally, a new visual ruler provides fine-grained control over the alignment of text, lists, objects, and guides, including indentation markers for bullets and text.

Insert and link Google Slides into Google Docs

Users can now insert a slide from a Google Slides presentation directly into Google Docs. These slides can be linked to the source presentation, allowing users to sync any changes with a single click, ensuring document content remains up to date.

US dial-in feature for Hangouts Meet is now available to all business and education customers.

The US dial-in feature in Hangouts Meet, which allows users to join meetings via phone, is being made available to all business and education customers and will be rolled out in the coming months.

Receive Google prompts on iOS devices via the Gmail app

Making it possible for users with iOS devices to receive prompts via their Gmail app as well. This should encourage more people to use Google prompt, which is an easier and more secure method of authenticating an account.

New security features are rolling out to the free version of G Suite for Education.

Google is introducing several new security tools to the free version of G Suite for Education over the next few months. These updates include Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Gmail and Drive to prevent the sharing of sensitive content, Hosted Gmail S/MIME for digital signatures and encryption, security key management and enforcement for 2-step verification, and the ability for administrators to control user session lengths for services like Gmail and Drive.

G Suite Enterprise for Education is now generally available in the United States.

G Suite Enterprise for Education is now generally available to educational institutions in the United States. This new edition offers enterprise-grade capabilities including the Security Center for better visibility and control over security, Advanced Mobile Device Management (MDM) for automated device tasks, Cloud Search for unified search across G Suite, Gmail logs in BigQuery for deep analysis, and enhanced Hangouts Meet capabilities supporting up to 50 participants and recordings saved to Google Drive.

Admins can now allow users to install any app from the managed Google Play store on managed Android devices.

Google is introducing an option for admins to allow users on corporate-owned Android devices or those with work profiles to install any app from the managed Google Play store, removing the previous requirement to whitelist every app. Admins can enable this in the Admin console under Device management > App Management > Manage apps for Android devices. Even with 'Allow all apps' enabled, admins can still whitelist specific apps to feature them on the managed Google Play homepage.

Add custom links to the navigation bar in the new Google Sites

Google Sites now allows editors to add custom links to the navigation bar, enabling links to external URLs such as company social media profiles, HCM tools, other Google Sites, project trackers, or Drive folders, in addition to internal site content.

Group data by time frame in Google Sheets pivot tables.

When creating pivot tables in Google Sheets, users can now group their data by specific time frames, such as week, month, or year, to facilitate better temporal analysis of their data.

Ability to add checkboxes in cells in Google Sheets.

Google Sheets has added the ability to insert checkboxes directly into cells, making it easier for users to create checklists and track task completion within their spreadsheets.

Expanded options for row and column grouping in Google Sheets.

Google Sheets now provides more options for grouping rows and columns, enabling users to organize and manage their data more effectively.