Tag: G Suite

The new Google Tasks app & service will become a core service of G Suite later this month.  Tasks, as you may recall, is a replacement for setting up tasks in Google Calendar and has a stand alone app for both Android and iOS.  Google has announced that starting June 28th that Tasks will be an on-by-default service in G Suite.

The change makes sense in that Google is trying to get everyone to move over to Tasks instead of using the task settings in Google Calendar, despite the fact that Google Tasks is still limited when you compare it to the old reminders feature in Calendar.  Tasks, for example, won’t let you setup recurring tasks while you can do that in reminders in Calendar.

A new, cloud-side update is currently rolling out to Google Calendar that is going to make it much quicker to see when an event has been declined by all invitees.  If you have sent out an invite and all attendees have declined it, you will now see a small exclamation point next to the event in Google Calendar.  You can then tap on that event and will see a prompt to reschedule the event given it has been declined.

The idea is that at a glance, you can look at your calendar on your phone and see the decline without having to actually open up the invite on your calendar to see who has accepted and who has not.

Some improvements to the Activity Dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are in the process or rolling out to G Suite domain customers.  The updates bring an easier way to email contributors on shared files right from the dashboard as well as a file activity chart to see access and editing information of a file.

The update is rolling out to G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, and Nonprofit editions and everyone should see the new information in the Activity Dashboard over the next couple of weeks.

A new and handy new feature is rolling out to Google Calendar on the web that allows you to add messages to updated calendar invites.  Currently, when you updated an invite in Calendar, it sends the updated information (date, time, etc) but it does not include the ability to add a message for why the meeting was moved or the updated content of the meeting.

This new feature will be rolling out to all G Suite customers as well as consumers and while the focus is on the web portion, the ability to add notes to an updated invite is also available in the Android version of Google Calendar.

A new set of content security features have begun to roll out to a wide range of G Suite domains today, allowing for greater control of what content within Google Team Drive are shared with others both inside and outside their domain.  The features, which were previewed back in March, are now rolling out to G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, and Nonprofit domains today for Admins while users will get controls starting on June 4th.

The features are aimed at keeping confidential and sensitive intercompany data from being leaked or accidentally shared with those who should not have access to it.  Now admins can set domain level restrictions on what can be shared while individual Google Team Drive owners can select specifics for specific files – but the domain controls will override everything.

For those that don’t recall, Google Team Drive is the G Suite equivalent (with a lot more features) of the consumer oriented Google Drive.

G Suite has a new feature rolling out to the service’s Mobile Device Management functionality that allows for admins to configure specific Android apps on devices.  The feature gives admins the ability to pre-configure the apps that are available for Android devices in their domain.  Once that app is download, it is configured and ready to go for the end user.

The feature should cut down on configuration errors by end users.  Consider the example of a VPN where users are having to typing often lengthy and odd-for-them configuration information.  In this scenario, under this new feature, that could be configured before the user installs the app and be ready for them to use it almost instantly after it is installed.