We’re updating the User lists interface in the Admin console to make it easier to see, find, and manage users. These user list improvements build on the improvements to the user details experience we recently announced.

Find users with improved search and new filters

The new user list view lets you view users in all or some organizational units (OUs), search for and filter users, and take actions on specific users. You can:

• Find users with filters: You can now filter by admin role, job title, department, user status, and more.
• Download or export filtered lists: Once you filter, you can download a list of users with those filters applied.
• Improved search: Find users quickly using powerful new search features, including the ability to search within specific OUs and by user attributes.
• Customize your view: Customize the columns displayed in the table to see all the info you need in a single view.

Learn more about filtering and searching here.

Take quick actions on users directly from the list

• Change individual user info: Hover over a user to take quick actions including reset password, rename user, suspend, delete, or restore user account, change organizational unit, and more.
• Update multiple users with bulk actions: Quickly edit info for multiple users with bulk actions such as add to group, email users, delete accounts, and more.

Easily manage organizational units

There’s a new section dedicated to simpler management of organizational units. Here, you can easily create, move, and manage organizational units.



Learn more about managing user accounts in the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add users
Help Center: Manage user accounts
Help Center: Apply policies to different users

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Last summer, we announced improvements to Google Calendar Interop for Microsoft Exchange. We simplified the setup process, introduced detailed logs in Admin console, and made free/busy lookups available on mobile as well as web.

To continue enhancing the coexistence of these two systems, we’re rolling out the support for event details in availability lookups. Now, G Suite admins can opt in to sharing event details when users use Calendar's Find a Time or Outlook's Scheduling Assistant. Event details include:

• Event title
• Event location
• Guest’s response status

We have also improved our authentication mechanism recently, paving the way to a simplified Calendar Interop setup in the future. To be able to use the event details feature, you will likely have to regenerate Exchange credentials using the credential generation tool and update your availability address space as explained in steps 3 through 5 here.

For more information on how to enable these new interop features, check out this Help Center article. 

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and all end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: How Calendar Interop works


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We’re updating the Google bar to feature your brand. Along with some small changes to the bar’s look and feel, we’ll soon show your domain’s logo next to a user’s picture (or initials or avatar) at the top of many G Suite services, like Calendar and Drive.


You can add an image for your organization in the Admin console at Company profile > Personalization; until you’ve done so, we’ll show the G Suite logo instead.

Note that this will roll out across G Suite services slowly, so you may not see it in all of your apps for some time.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add your logo


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If your organization uses SAML to sign users in to G Suite services*, those users will soon see an additional step in the process when using Chrome as their web browser. Starting on May 7th, 2018, after signing in on a SAML provider’s website, they’ll be brought to a new screen on accounts.google.com to confirm their identity. This screen will provide an additional layer of security and help prevent users from unknowingly signing in to an account created and controlled by an attacker.


To minimize disruption for the user, this feature will only be shown once per account per device. We’re working on ways to make the feature even more context-aware in the future, meaning your users should see the screen less and less over time.

Protecting against phishing attacks
This new screen is intended to prevent would-be attackers from tricking a user (e.g. via a phishing campaign) into clicking a link that would instantly and silently sign them in to a Google Account the attacker controls. Today, this can be done via SAML single sign-on (SSO), because it doesn’t require a user interaction to complete a sign-in. To protect Chrome users, we’ve added this extra protection.

Creating a consistent identity
This new security feature is part of a larger project to create a consistent identity across Google web services (like Gmail) and native Chrome browser services (like Chrome Sync). This consistency will make it easier for signed-in G Suite users to take advantage of native Chrome browser features, but it requires additional protection during authentication. This new screen adds that protection and reduces the probability that attackers successfully abuse SAML SSO to sign users in to malicious accounts.

Disabling the new screen
If you wish to disable the new screen for your organization, you can use the X-GoogApps-AllowedDomains HTTP header to identify specific domains whose users can access Google services. Users in those domains won’t see this additional screen, as we assume those accounts are trusted by your users. This header can be set in Chrome via the AllowedDomainsForApps group policy.


*This won't impact individuals who sign in to G Suite services directly and those who use G Suite or Cloud Identity as their identity provider. The screen is also not shown on devices running Chrome OS.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on May 7th, 2018

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


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We recently announced an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the new Gmail. Below you’ll find additional details on the EAP, including how to opt in, the related Admin console settings, and the implications of certain features. If you haven’t yet checked out our post on the G Suite blog, we encourage you to do so before reading the information below.


There’s no need to sign up for the new Gmail EAP; you can simply turn it on in the Admin console. You can enable the new Gmail EAP for your entire domain or for specific organizational units (OUs) only. Please note that it may take up to a day for the setting to appear in your Admin console.



If they choose to, your users can continue to use the classic version of Gmail instead of the new UI. When we launch the new Gmail to general availability, you’ll have the option to force your users into the new UI. Note that if a user tries the new Gmail and wants to switch back to the classic version, he or she can do so from the Gmail settings menu.


Native offline support will only be available to domains and users who’ve opted in to the new Gmail. At launch, it will be off by default for those domains, and admins will need to turn it on before it becomes available to their users.

Please monitor the G Suite Updates blog for more information.


Turn on the new Gmail EAP today. For more information, check out the resources below.

More Information
G Suite Blog: With new security and intelligent features, the new Gmail means business
Help Center: What's new in Gmail
Learning Center: New Gmail Cheat Sheet
Learning Center: New Gmail FAQ


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(Cross-posted from The Keyword)

Since the beginning, our aim with G Suite has been to help companies transform the way they work with our suite of cloud-based collaboration and productivity apps.

Today we’re announcing major updates to help the more than 4 million paying businesses that use G Suite work safer, smarter and more efficiently. This includes an all-new Gmail, with a brand new look on the web, advanced security features, new applications of Google’s artificial intelligence and even more integrations with other G Suite apps. We’re also introducing a new way to manage work on the go with Tasks.


Keep sensitive data secure with new Gmail security features

Keeping your data secure is our top priority, which is why last month, we introduced new phishing protections to help address Business Email Compromise (BEC) threats—or when someone impersonates an executive to get sensitive information. With these new protections, Gmail has helped block 99.9 percent of BEC attempts by warning users or automatically moving messages to spam for them.

Today, we’re introducing a new approach to information protection: Gmail confidential mode. With confidential mode, it’s possible to protect sensitive content in your emails by creating expiration dates or revoking previously sent messages. Because you can require additional authentication via text message to view an email, it’s also possible to protect data even if a recipient’s email account has been hijacked while the message is active.

Built-in Information Rights Management (IRM) controls also allow you to remove the option to forward, copy, download or print messages. This helps reduce the risk of confidential information being accidentally shared with the wrong people. Confidential mode will begin to roll out to consumer Gmail users and a limited number of G Suite customers in the coming weeks (broader rollout following).

We’ve also redesigned our security warnings within Gmail so that they are simpler to understand and give a clear call to action to employees. These bigger, bolder warnings will help you be even more informed when it comes to potentially risky email.


And it’s always worth a reminder: we do not scan Gmail for the purposes of targeting ads, and there are no ads shown in Gmail for G Suite customers.


Stay on top of email effortlessly using artificial intelligence in Gmail

New AI-powered features in Gmail, like Nudging, Smart Reply and high-priority notifications, can now help you spend more time on work that matters.

Most of us get more emails than we can deal with at one time, and sometimes things slip through the cracks. With Nudging, Gmail will proactively remind you to follow up or respond to messages, making sure you don’t drop the ball.


Last year, we introduced Smart Reply to our Gmail mobile apps. Smart Reply processes hundreds of millions of messages daily and already drives more than 10 percent of email replies on mobile. Today we’re bringing Smart Reply to Gmail on the web to help you respond to messages faster.

We’re also introducing new features on mobile to help you minimize interruptions and clutter. High-priority notifications is a new setting that only notifies you of important messages, keeping interruptions to a minimum. Gmail can also recommend when to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Using intelligence, unsubscribe suggestions appear based on cues like how many emails you get from a sender and how many of them you actually read. You’ll start to see these notifications show up in your inbox over the coming weeks.

Over the past few months, Salesforce has tested the new Gmail to collaborate on global projects. “As the global leader in CRM, the ability to quickly and securely communicate with our stakeholders around the world is critical,” says Jo-ann Olsovsky, executive vice president and chief information officer of Salesforce. “Gmail’s new easy-to-use interface and built-in intelligence enable our employees to collaborate faster and smarter, spending less time managing their inboxes and more time driving our customers’ success.”


Accomplish more from your inbox with easy-to-use tools

We redesigned the Gmail web application to help you take action even quicker. Now you can see and click attachments in your inbox before ever opening a thread. You can also hover over messages (you don’t have to click into them) to do things like RSVP to a meeting invite, archive an email thread or snooze an email until the time is right.

As a part of the redesign, we’re also tightly integrating Gmail with other G Suite apps you use every day. Now you can quickly reference, create or edit Calendar invites, capture ideas in Keep or manage to-dos in Tasks all from a side panel in your inbox.

The side panel also makes it easy to access Gmail Add-ons, like third-party business apps you might use. This way you don’t have to switch between tabs or apps to get work done. You’ll start to see the new side panel integration in other G Suite apps in the coming months—like inside of your Calendar, Docs, Sheets and Slides apps.


New native offline capabilities in Gmail on the web can help you work without interruption when you can’t find Wi-Fi. Search, write, respond, delete, or archive up to 90 days of messages, just as you would working online, but offline. Teams can start using offline capabilities in coming weeks.

Like we mentioned, we’re introducing an all-new Tasks on web, as well as new mobile apps to help you handle work on the go. You can use Tasks to create tasks and subtasks, and even add due dates with notifications to help you stay on track.


And because Tasks closely integrates with G Suite, you can simply drag and drop an email from Gmail into Tasks to create a to-do. Tasks with due dates can also appear in your Calendar. You can download the new Tasks mobile apps from the Google Play Store or iOS App Store today.

The all-new Gmail experience is available for businesses to start using today in the G Suite Early Adopter Program (EAP) and can be turned on in the Admin console. Read more detail on how to turn on the experience in this post. Heads up: you’ll start to see offline support, confidential mode (limited release), Nudging, high-priority notifications and unsubscribe suggestions appear in the coming weeks. Keep up with the latest news on these features in the G Suite Updates blog. 

Personal Gmail users can opt-in to the new experience, too (Go to Settings in the top right and select “Try the new Gmail.”).

Finally, if you need help getting started with the new Gmail, check out this Help Center article or this cheat sheet on our Learning Center. 


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Whether your users are scheduling a meeting or catching up on Google+ posts, it’s important that they can easily see who they’re interacting with. That’s why we’ve added new person information cards that appear inside your G Suite apps on the web, like Google+ and Calendar, when relevant.

These cards surface profile information when a user hovers over another user’s name or profile picture with their cursor. The information can include data points such as:

• Job title
• Desk location
• Department
• Contact information (email, phone number, etc.)
• Call-to-action links to internal directories, social media profiles, and more

To get the full value of these cards, you, as a G Suite admin, can populate this data for users in your organization in a few locations:

• “Users” section of the Admin console
• Google Cloud Directory Sync, or
• Admin SDK

You can also delegate editing rights for some profile fields to end users in the Admin console at Apps > G Suite > Directory. Users can then edit their profile at aboutme.google.com. Additionally, in the future we’ll be providing support for you to delegate editing of other fields, such as Manager and Job Title.

Other Benefits to Populating Profile Data

We recommend populating user profiles to unlock additional benefits for your users. For example, in the near future, Calendar will start using work location to intelligently suggest meeting rooms for guests.


You can see these cards now in Google Calendar and Google+ on the web. They’ll start to appear in other G Suite products over the course of the coming months.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launched in Google Calendar and Google+ to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Update a user profile
Help Center: Set up your sync with Configuration Manager
G Suite Admin SDK: Directory API


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Hangouts Meet makes it easier to connect with your team from anywhere with easy-to-join video calls. This includes when you’re away from your computer, like if you're commuting or don't have a data connection, and you need to call into your Meetings while on the go.



Now, all meetings created in Google Calendar by G Suite users will have a US dial-in phone number that anyone can use to join the meeting, even non-G Suite users.

Meetings created by G Suite Enterprise users will also have international dial-in phone numbers available. Phone number dial-in was previously only available for meetings set up by G Suite Enterprise users. Please note, administrators can turn off the dial-in feature in the Admin console.

For more information on ways to connect using Hangouts Meet, check out the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in 2 weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Dial in from a phone
Help Center: Turn Meet on or off
G Suite Updates blog: Dial into a Hangouts Meet video call with an international phone number

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We’re adding new features to help the charts you create in Google Sheets better represent the data they contain. These features include showing total data labels for stacked charts and controlling where data labels are placed.

Show totals in stacked charts
You can now add total data labels in stacked charts, which show the sum of all content in a data set.



Choose the alignment of your data labels
You can also choose where data labels will go on charts. The options you have vary based on what type of chart you’re using.

For column and bar charts, the data label placement options are:

• Auto - Sheets will try to pick the best location
• Center - In the middle of the column
• Inside end - At the end of the column
• Inside base - At the base of the column
• Outside end - Past the end of the column

For line, point, and area charts, the placement options are:

• Auto - Sheets will try to pick the best location
• Center - over the middle of the plot point
• Left - to the left of the plot point
• Right - to the right of the plot point
• Above - above the plot point
• Below - below the plot point

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Edit a chart in Sheets

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Update (April 24, 2018): Please note that this post has been updated with new instructions for replicating previous behavior.

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In March, we introduced a setting that allows G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education admins to specify the duration of web sessions for Google services (e.g. four hours, seven days, or infinite). At the time, this setting only applied to domains where Google was responsible for the login (i.e. where Google was the Identity Provider). We’re now extending the reach of this setting and making it applicable in domains that federate to another Identity Provider (IdP) using SAML.


Note that these settings apply to all desktop web sessions, as well as some mobile browser sessions. Native mobile apps, like Gmail for Android and iOS, aren’t impacted by these settings.

Removing session-based cookies on May 7th, 2018

In the past, in order to give more control over session lengths to a G Suite customer’s preferred IdP, we set cookies for sessions created by federating to another IdP via SAML as transient, or session-based. These cookies were intended to expire whenever the browser was closed, meaning the user would be redirected to their primary IdP whenever they reopened the browser and visited a Google site.

Over time, however, this behavior has become increasingly inconsistent across browsers. We believe that G Suite admins are better served by explicit session length controls, like the ones we just launched. Unlike session cookies, these controls are respected regardless of the user’s browser.

With this in mind, we’ll be removing session-based cookies for G Suite customers who federate to another IdP via SAML on May 7th, 2018. Please consider setting a custom session length for your organization if your workflows depend on it.

Replicating previous behavior

If it’s critical to replicate the previous behavior, where all sessions expired when a browser was closed, you can change the browser settings on impacted machines to delete all local data when the browser is exited. Instructions to configure this on Chrome can be found here. To deploy this policy on multiple machines, use Chrome policies to configure ephemeral mode.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education editions only

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set up session length for Google services

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Today we’re introducing several features in Google Slides on the web that will make it easier to create, collaborate on, and share presentations. Read on for more information.

Insert slides from Google Slides into Google Docs

You can now insert a slide from a Google Slides presentation directly into Google Docs. If you want, you can then link that slide in Docs to its source presentation in Slides and sync any changes with just one click—similar to the way you can insert and link charts from Google Sheets. This should save you from doing duplicative work and ensure that the content in your documents is always up to date.

Use our Help Center to learn how to insert and link slides in Docs.


Design your slides with precision using new guides and rulers

You can now add guide lines for consistent placement and alignment throughout a presentation. These guides will show on all slides in a presentation, and text and objects will snap to a guide to ensure they’re aligned.

We’ve also created a new visual ruler, which gives you fine-grained control over the alignment of text, lists, objects, and guides. Indentation markers in the ruler can help you control the alignment of text or bullets within objects.

Use our Help Center to find out how to use guides and rulers in Slides.


Comment on text within individual objects

You can now comment on specific text within an object, such as a text box, on a slide. Previously, you could only comment on the whole object or the whole slide. We hope that this extra control over what you’re commenting on will make it easier to collaborate on presentations.

For more information on working in Slides, please visit the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Link a chart, table, or slides to Google Docs or Slides
Help Center: Insert and arrange text, shapes, diagrams, and lines
Help Center: Add a bulleted or numbered list

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(Cross-posted from The Keyword)


Since launching G Suite for Education, we’ve heard a common request from colleges, universities and large school districts: the need for more advanced tools to meet their complex technology needs. In January, we announced G Suite Enterprise for Education, a new edition of G Suite for Education that offers additional enterprise-grade capabilities designed for large institutions and customized for education. Starting today, G Suite Enterprise for Education is generally available to educational institutions in the United States, and is coming to more countries soon.

Additionally, new tools—such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP), security key management and enforcement, and Gmail S/MIME—will start rolling out to all G Suite for Education users over the next few months. G Suite for Education, a suite of tools used by 80M teachers and students, has been and will remain free for schools and we’ll continue to add new features to that edition at no additional cost.


New security features added to free version of G Suite for Education

Admins can expect increased security and greater controls with new tools that are being made available over the next few months to the free version of G Suite for Education:

1. Gmail and Drive Data Loss Prevention (DLP) lets admins prohibit users from sharing sensitive content with people outside their institutions. It checks for sensitive content like personal student information or preset keywords, and alerts admins so they can intervene.
2. Hosted Gmail S/MIME offers schools an additional line of defense to protect sensitive emails. With this tool, institutions have the option to digitally sign and encrypt emails. In addition, it also adds verifiable account-level signatures authentication to better protect against email spoofing. It’s easy to manage for administrators and seamless for users.
3. Security key management and enforcement offers an additional layer of security for user accounts by requiring a physical key. Admins can now require faculty, staff and students to use physical keys that use cryptography as a part of 2-step verification when signing into G Suite.
4. Admins can control session length for users accessing Google services like Gmail and Drive, which means that users will be automatically logged out after a specified amount of time. If specific groups of users require certain session lengths, admins can apply different web session duration settings to different groups.

Enterprise-grade tools for educational institutions

For educational institutions with administrative needs similar to businesses, G Suite Enterprise for Education offers robust tools customized for education. Here’s what users can expect:

Advance your institution with advanced controls

The Security Center in G Suite Enterprise for Education gives organizations more visibility and control over security. To prevent institutions from potential threats, we’re arming IT admins with actionable insights to protect sensitive data against attacks. With security center tools, IT departments gain insights into how data may be exposed with external file sharing, can see phishing messages targeting users within their organization, and access metrics to demonstrate the organization’s security effectiveness.

With Advanced Mobile Device Management (MDM), universities and institutions have scaled control over devices in their domain. Using customizable MDM rules, admins can automate mobile device management tasks, like approving all Android devices that enroll for management at the start of a new school year. Once the rules are in place, pre-specified events trigger actions like sending notification emails to administrators, blocking or approving a device, or even wiping account data from devices if its lost by a student. And with Mobile Audit, admins can see a report of device activities, including device policy compliance.

Enhanced analytics and search capabilities

Cloud Search is coming to G Suite Enterprise for Education soon, and with it, institutions will benefit from a unified search experience across G Suite—powered by machine intelligence. This tool helps educators and students stay on top of schedules, documents and emails, and can even suggest files that need attention. By searching through everything from a lecture presentation to the school corporate directory, users can spend less time searching for information and more time focusing on teaching and learning.

Gmail logs in BigQuery allow institutions to run sophisticated custom queries, conduct deep analysis and build custom dashboards. Gmail logs contain valuable information that can help administrators diagnose issues. The integration with BigQuery makes it easier for administrators to analyze the logs and unlock insights to help they run their organizations.

Collaborate. Coordinate. Communicate.

Advanced capabilities in Hangouts Meet improve internal and external collaboration, allowing for meetings with up to 50 participants and recordings saved to Google Drive. With these communication tools, instructors can save lecture and lesson recordings straight to Drive and collaborate from anywhere.

Since announcing G Suite Enterprise for Education in January, we've opted to make the U.S. dial-in feature in Meet available to all business and education customers, and will be rolling it out in the coming months. This lets users join meetings via phone from anywhere, without worrying about poor Wi-Fi connections. With G Suite Enterprise for Education, Meet dial-in is available in dozens of countries, allowing educators to easily connect if their institution has a footprint around the globe.

Get G Suite Enterprise for Education for your institution

If you’re interested in purchasing individual licenses, G Suite Enterprise for Education is $4/user/month for faculty and staff, and $4/user/month for students. If you’re purchasing licenses for all faculty and staff in 2018, we’re offering a special introductory price of $2/user/month for faculty and staff, and free for eligible students. Renewals at the introductory price will be honored for 3 years. Learn more about pricing, renewals, and features for this edition on our Help Center.

For help choosing the edition that’s right for your institution, explore what’s included with G Suite Enterprise Education and fill out an interest form to be contacted by a partner.

Last year, we introduced a new resource for admins: What’s new in G Suite? Don’t forget to visit the page regularly for a list of the most recent launches across G Suite.

Feedback? Let us know.

In 2017, we made Google prompt the primary choice for G Suite users turning on two-step verification for the first time. Back then, we noted that users with iOS devices would need to install the Google app in order to use the feature. Today, we’re 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.


Note that if users have both the Google and Gmail app installed on their iOS device, they’ll see prompts from Gmail.

For more information, visit the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Sign in faster with 2-Step Verification phone prompts

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Until now, G Suite users with company-owned Android devices and those with work profiles could only install mobile apps that had been specifically whitelisted by their admin. In some organizations, however, such restrictions weren’t critical, and whitelisting required unnecessary time and effort. That’s why, going forward, we’re giving admins the option to allow their users to install any app in the managed Google Play store on Android devices that are corporate-owned or have work profiles.

Admins can select this option in the Admin console under Device management > App Management > Manage apps for Android devices.


If an admin selects “Allow all apps,” he or she can still whitelist specific apps. These whitelisted apps will appear on the managed Google Play homepage, but users will be able to find any app using the search tool.


For more information, visit the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Manage apps on mobile devices


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The navigation bar is how users get around a website, and it helps them find important resources quickly. The new Google Sites automatically creates an intuitive navigation bar that links to content within your site, but there may be times when you want to create your own links that go somewhere else. That’s why we’re adding a new feature where you can link to any URL from the navigation bar.

You can use this new custom link creator to add an item in the navigation bar that goes to:

• Your company’s social media profile or homepage.
• Your company’s HCM tool.
• Another Google Site with different access permissions.
• Your team’s project tracker.
• Your team’s Drive folder.
• Any other website. 

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add, delete, & organize pages


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In our earlier post, we provided an overview of some of the ways we’re making Google Sheets better for business. This included several new feature announcements. This post will provide some more specific feature and rollout information that may be useful to G Suite admins.

Record macros in Sheets
To help save your team time when completing repetitive tasks, you can record macros in Sheets. When you record a macro, it’s saved as an Apps Script that you can run in the cloud whenever you need to perform the task. You can also edit the script to change it, or import existing Apps Scripts as new macros. See the previous post for more details, or the Help Center for the specific how-tos.

Group rows and columns in a spreadsheet
There’s a new option to group rows or columns in Sheets. This makes it easier to collapse or expand several rows and columns at once to customize your view. See the Help Center for more on how to manage rows, columns, and cells.


Add checkboxes to a list in Sheets
You can turn a list of items into a checklist with the new checkbox feature. See the Help Center to learn how to add and use checkboxes.


Improved date-based pivot tables
We’re making it easier to work with dates in pivot tables by adding an option to create groupings by time and date, including hour, day, month, quarter, year, and more. See the Help Center to learn how to add and use pivot tables.


Better spreadsheet printing
We’re adding new features to make it easier to print spreadsheets. Specifically, you can specify custom paper sizes and set custom page breaks. This makes it easier to get the right content from a spreadsheet on a printed page. See the Help Center for more about how to print from Google Sheets.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in 4 weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility); rollout to Scheduled Release domains will only start after rollout to Rapid Release domains is complete.

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
The Keyword: Think macro: record actions in Google Sheets to skip repetitive work
Help Center: Automate tasks in Google Sheets
Help Center: Customize a pivot table
Help Center: Print from Google Sheets
Help Center: Edit rows, columns, and cells in a spreadsheet
Help Center: Add and use checkboxes



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(Cross-posted from The Keyword)

Since their debut nearly 40 years ago, spreadsheets have remained core to how businesses get work done. From analyzing quarterly revenue to updating product inventory, spreadsheets are critical to helping companies gather and share data to inform quicker decisions—but what else can you do if they’re in the cloud?

We’ve been focused on making Google Sheets better for businesses for this reason, which is why we’ve recently added new features to help teams analyze and visualize their data. Today we’re adding more updates to Sheets, including a way to record macros in the cloud to automate repetitive tasks, as well as more formatting options. Check it out.

Record macros in Sheets, skip mundane tasks

We want to help companies automate work by approaching macros differently: cloud-first. Starting today, you can record macros in Sheets. Let’s say you need to format new data imports or build the same chart across multiple sheets of quarterly data. Repeating the same steps manually can take hours, but the Sheets macro recorder lets you record those actions and play them back on command without having to write any code.


Here’s how it works: when you record a macro, Sheets converts the macro actions into an Apps Script automatically. If you want to update your macro, you can simply edit the script directly instead of having to re-record the macro from scratch. You can also write your own Apps Script functions and import them as new macros.

The best part about Sheets macros is that they’re built for use in cloud-based files, which means that teams can run macros at the same time that others are working in the sheet without interrupting them. For example, a finance team having a budget meeting can run macros while reviewing the same spreadsheet. It also means that coworkers or clients won’t be forced to download sensitive files to use your macros. Since your Sheets files are in the cloud, you can keep tighter controls over who can view and re-share your data.

More updates to Sheets

You may have noticed that over the past few years we’ve put effort toward building Sheets features to help businesses view, analyze and share their data more easily. This includes adding new chart types (waterfall and 3D), ways to embed charts while keeping data up-to-date in Docs and Slides (even if you move files), more functions (up to 400+ now), additional formatting, print options and more. 

Today, we’re adding even routinely requested features, including the ability to add printing page breaks, custom paper sizes, more options for row and column grouping and a way to add checkboxes in cells. We’ve also made it possible for you to group your data by time frame (like week, month or year) when you create pivot tables.

Speaking of pivot tables, our engineering team has also been hard at work bringing the power of Google’s artificial intelligence into Sheets to help teams know what their data knows. You might have noticed that we recently added intelligent pivot tables in Sheets to help analyze and find new insights, no matter how skilled you are at data analytics.


Companies like Whirlpool Corporation and Sanmina are using Sheets for more collaborative data analysis. These latest additions are designed to make Sheets a go-to resource for businesses and will begin to roll out today. Learn more about Sheets on our Learning Center.



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