Tag: G Suite

A new Activity Dashboard has started rolling out to G Suite domains that allows admins and users to see when shared files have been viewed by others.  The idea behind the dashboard is to improve collaboration by letting users know when someone who is working with them on a file has actually viewed that file.  Think of it as read receipts for files.

The new feature works for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files and the feature will be rolling out in two phases.  First, admins will have the ability to enable or disable the feature starting today and only they can see the Activity Dashboard.

Adding to an already impressive list of apps that can be auto provisioned by G Suite admins, Google has added four more popular apps to the mix.  For those that are new to auto provisioning, this allows an admin to provision an account in a popular service or services along with their G Suite account at the time it is setup or later if the service is added to the domain.

The announcement today brings auto provisioning support for

• Kudos
• 15Five
• Rollbar
• Honey

That brings the total number of auto provisioning supported apps to 22.

Dropbox has announced a major integration plan with Google Cloud that ultimately will result in users of the cloud storage service to be able to access their G Suite files from it.  The news essentially means that Dropbox would replace Google Drive as the storage location for these files and access to them.

In the announcement, the San Francisco based Dropbox outlined a series of integrations that will be happening this year.   There were no specific timelines announced other than later in 2018.

Google has announced that the Quick Access feature will be rolling out to Google Docs for G Suite business and enterprise customers.  Functionally, it is very similar to the Quick Access feature that is found in all versions of Google Drive.  For Google Docs however, it is more AI driven based on Drive activity as well as the content of the files themselves.

Quick Access for Docs uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant files based on signals like Drive activity and information in your documents, so you can work with the most up-to-date information and create new material quickly.

Google points out that for this feature to work, customers must have Google Cloud Search enabled on their domain.

For the third month in a row, Google has begun rolling out menu tweaks to some of the G Suite apps today.  The update that is rolling out today impacts Google Docs and Google Sheets online and will be coming to all G Suite customers over the course of the next week or two.

Like the updates from last month, these tweaks are aimed at making navigation within Google Docs and Google Sheets easier by clarifying what a function does.  These are all visual changes and not changes in function.

Team Drive, the G Suite equivalent of Google Drive with a lot more sharing and searching functionality, is getting a new email feature added to it.  The new feature will allow users to email all members of a Team Drive.

The feature will work two ways according to the announcement by the G Suite team:

• From the Team Drive: Navigate to the Team Drive, click the drop-down menu next to the Team Drive name, and click “Email members.”
• From within a file that is in the Team Drive: While editing or viewing the document, open the File menu, and click “Email Collaborators.”

Once you have selected to email everyone, you can customize the list of recipients.