Tag: G Suite

Google is in the process of rolling out a new folder specific search function for Google Drive online.  The new feature will allow you to right-click a folder stored on your Drive and search only within that folder, not your entire cloud storage.

The idea of course it give you quicker search results if you have a lot of content stored in Google Drive or on Team Drives if you are a G Suite domain utilizing that feature.  It is a feature that has been sorely missed by many, especially customers who are utilizing Team Drives in their organization.

Google has announced the dates when G Suite customers will begin getting the new Google Calendar.  To this point, G Suite admins have been able to manually force the update on domains or to delay the release of the new Material Design calendar on their domains.  Now that is changing with several key dates coming up.

For domains that are in the Rapid Release schedule, users will start getting update next Monday, January 8th if their domain is set to automatic updating.  Users can still opt out, for now.  For those domains in the Scheduled Release bracket, you will get the update following Monday, January 15th.  Again, users can opt out for now.

Google has announced that several new features are coming to Google Sheets online that are aimed at bringing more Artificial Intelligence into the spreadsheet service.  All of the features are aimed at increasing productivity, be it through automatic suggestions on formulas or, in natural language, being able to build a pivot table in the Explorer tab.

For most users, the easier creation of pivot tables is the big improvement in this update to Sheets.  Now by typing in a simple question into the Explorer tab in a Sheets file, it will suggest and auto-create a pivot table based on the data in that spreadsheet.  As Google says…

In the Explore panel, you can also ask questions of your data using everyday language (via natural language processing) and have the answer returned as a pivot table. For example, type “what is the sum of revenue by salesperson?” or “how much revenue does each product category generate?” and Sheets can help you find the right pivot table analysis.

This is a powerful way to interact with your data and builds on the already impressive data mining tools that can be found in Explorer.

Google has begun the rollout of several big changes to the G Suite of apps, Google Docs, Sheets & Slides.  The updates are rolling out to the web-based versions of the apps currently but you can expect some of this functionality to eventually make it to the mobile apps.

According to the announcement from Google, there are four improvements that are rolling out now.

1. Name versions of a Doc, Sheet or Slide. Being able to assign custom names to versions of your document is a great way to keep a historical record of your team’s progress. It’s also helpful for communicating when a document is actually final. You can organize and track your team’s changes in one place under “Version history” (formerly known as “Revision history”) on the web. Select File > Version history > Name current version. For even quicker recall, there’s an option to select “Only show named versions” in Docs, Sheets or Slides.
2. Preview “clean versions” of Docs to see what your Doc looks like without comments or suggested edits. Select Tools > Review suggested edits > Preview accept all OR Preview reject all.
3. Accept or reject all edit suggestions at once in your Doc so your team doesn’t have to review every single punctuation mark or formatting update. Select Tools > Review suggested edits > Accept all OR Reject all.
4. Suggest changes in a Doc from an Android, iPhone or iPad device. Click the three dots menu in the bottom right of your Doc screen to suggest edits on-the-go. Turn on the “Suggest changes” toggle and start typing in “suggestion mode.”

All of these changes are aimed at making it quicker and easier for you to collaborate on documents and work through the change process on them.

Google has sent notifications out to G Suite customers that in starting next week, a warning will show up in Google Hangouts that SMS will no longer be supported.  That support will end on May 22nd.  The notification and change is part of the overall strategy of Google to move their G Suite customers to the new Google Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat while leveraging Android Messages for SMS on Android devices.  For consumers, the focus is on Google Allo and Duo to meet these communications needs.

For those readers who are on Project Fi (I am one of them) or using Google Voice, this change does not impact you.  This change only impacts G Suite customers who are using carrier numbers to send and receive SMS messages.  This fits along with what Google told me earlier this month at the Google Next Cloud event in San Francisco.

Google today announced that what has been known as Google for Work has been rebranded as Google Cloud.  The new name encompasses many Google apps, platforms and services into one cloud-centric solution for businesses.

Google Cloud spans every layer. It includes all of Google Cloud Platform; our user facing collaboration and productivity applications — now named G Suite; all of our machine learning

tools and APIs, the enterprise maps APIs; and the Android phones, tablets and Chromebooks that access the cloud. All of this, built for the cloud from the get-go.

Moreover, Google Cloud has been engineered in an enterprise appropriate way, with integrated systems that include guarantees at the service level — all components integrated and meeting the SLA for whatever price point the customer chooses.

The change in name and direction of the solution isn’t just about products.  It is also the backend support that Google will provide to their customers to go through the digital transformation that Google Cloud can offer.  As they put it, “We are in it together”.  Customers won’t have to figure it out on their own and that, especially for smaller businesses, can be a huge relief and cost savings.