Automatically provide users with four additional applications

What's New in G Suite April 2018. When auto-provisioning is enabled for a supported third-party application, any user created, modified, or deleted in G Suite is automatically added, edited, or deleted in the third-party application. This feature is very popular with administrators because it eliminates the overhead of managing users across multiple third-party SaaS applications.

We've received continued positive feedback from administrators, so we're adding automatic provisioning support for four new applications:

Kudos
15Five
Rollbar
Honey

Customers subscribed to G Suite Education, G Suite Business, and G Suite Enterprise editions can enable user auto-provisioning for all supported applications. G Suite Basic, G Suite Government, and G Suite Nonprofit customers can configure auto-provisioning for up to three applications from the supported list.

Find shared content with the new file organization in Google Drive

G Suite is designed for collaboration: teams create and share files all the time. However, when there are hundreds or thousands of files, finding them later can be difficult. Therefore, we're improving how you find files that have been shared with you in Google Drive.

The "Shared with me" section displays the files that have been shared with you. We'll start by intelligently organizing this section so you can also see the people on the list, along with the files they've shared with you. Simply click on a document to open it quickly.

Owner search is the most popular way to find content in Drive today. The new interface will use artificial intelligence to predict which people and files you're most likely to search for and make them more visible. We hope this will help you find the files you're looking for faster.

Predictions will improve as the system learns how it's used. We're also working on more features that will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make it easier to find files and collaborate more efficiently in Drive. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

Improve collaboration in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides with the activity board

G Suite makes it easy for users to collaborate efficiently and effectively. An important part of collaboration is deciding how and when to follow up with others. To help inform these decisions, we're introducing the Activity Dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It's a feature that lets users with editing access see who has viewed the file and when.

For example, a user can check if a coworker has already viewed a file and alert them that it has been updated. Or an account manager can determine the best way to follow up with a partner, depending on whether that partner has viewed the materials they previously sent.

Starting March 7, G Suite administrators have access to the new Admin Console settings to control the Activity dashboard for their domain or the organizational units (OUs) within it. On March 21, end users will begin seeing the Activity dashboard in Docs, Sheets, and Slides. See the “Delivery Calendar” section below for more information.

Understand when user display data will be visible

A file's Activity panel contains view data, which is information about who viewed the file and when. The view data shown in the dashboard depends on your organization's management console settings and each user's individual settings.

As an administrator, you can determine whether user visibility data for your organization is displayed on the Activity dashboard. Specifically, you can choose to make user visibility data for your organization visible, invisible, or visible only within your organization. See the "Review and change your organization's Activity dashboard settings" section below for more information.
If you make view data visible to your organization, your users can still choose to exclude their individual view data from appearing on the Activity dashboard through their personal privacy settings. If an administrator makes their organization's view data invisible, their end users will not be able to choose to share their view data. See the "End-User Controls for the Activity Dashboard" section below for more information.

Users with editing access to a file and who belong to the same domain as the file owner will be able to see the Activity panel for that file and any display information that is available in it.

Review and modify your organization's activity dashboard settings.

The administrator controls for the Activity dashboard are now available in the Administrator Console. There are three options:

Activated: Activity panels display all user views, unless individual users hide their information.
Enabled: only within your domain: Your users' viewing information is only visible in the activity dashboards of files owned by users in your domain and other users within your domain, unless individual users hide their information. Your users' viewing data will not be visible in the activity dashboards of files owned by users in other domains.
Disabled: User viewing data will not be displayed in the activity dashboard for any file. Your users may be able to see if external users have viewed their files, depending on those external users' activity dashboard settings.

Learn how to change your organization's settings in our Admin Activity Dashboard Help Center article. Nota The activity dashboard and its settings do not affect the data collected in your G Suite Drive audit log. End-user controls for the Activity panel When the panel When Activity is available to your users, they will see a notification in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides explaining the feature and its control options. The Activity dashboard will only display a user's viewing data after they see this notification. It will not show any activity from before they saw it.

All users will have access to privacy settings that allow them to control whether their views are displayed on the activity board at any time. For more information and to change these settings, users can refer to the Activity Board Help Center article for users.

Publication schedule

The administrator console settings are now available. The activity dashboard will begin rolling out to users in two weeks.

If your domain is on the Rapid Release path, the Activity dashboard will not be available to end users before March 21. Due to a phased rollout, all Rapid Release domains may not have access to the feature for up to two weeks after that date.
If your domain is on the Scheduled Release track, the Activity dashboard will not be available to end users before April 9. Due to a phased rollout, it's possible that not all domains will have access to the feature for up to two weeks after that date.

Over time, we will add features to the Activity board to provide more information about the activity in the file and to make it easier to communicate with collaborators directly from the Activity board.

Inbox types are now supported by the Gmail app for Android

We could all use a little help organizing our email. Gmail makes it easy, offering web and iOS users several options for sorting their inboxes, including unread first, important first, starred first, and priority inbox. Because many of you rely on your phones for email, we're now bringing these same options to the Gmail app for Android.

In the future, if you selected a specific inbox layout for your Gmail account on the web, you'll see the same email settings in your Android app. For example, if you chose to see unread emails at the top of your inbox and everything else below, you'll see your emails arranged the same way in Gmail for Android.

You can also change You can change your inbox type directly from the Gmail app on your Android phone (in Settings > Inbox type). This inbox type will also be reflected on the web and iOS.

We hope this helps you stay on top of your email, no matter where (and on what device) you read it.

Menu and tool updates in Google Docs editors

Based on usage data and your feedback, we're making some changes to the menus in the web versions of Google Docs editors. These are similar to the changes we made in December, January, and February, and will make it easier to find certain items.

Changes that affect the menus in Google Docs and Google Slides:

In the Format menu, the text formatting options (including bold, italic, font size, and more) will be moved to a new "Text" submenu.

Changes that only affect the Google Slides menus:

The table menu will be removed. Options to add or remove a table will be in the Insert menu. Options to format tables will be in the Format menu.
In the Slide menu, four options for moving slides will be moved to a new "Move" submenu.
In the Arrange menu, “Align Horizontally” and “Align Vertically” will move to a new “Align” submenu.

Changes that only affect the menus and toolbars of Google Docs:

In the toolbar, the text color and highlight color will be divided into separate controls for each.
A new option will be added to the toolbar under “Insert Image”
The table menu will be removed. Options to add or remove a table will be in the Insert menu. Options to format tables will be in the Format menu.

Changes that affect all Docs editor menus (including Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets):

The items in the Insert menu will be reordered.

These changes will only affect the visual menu in the web version of these products. All options will still be available via keyboard shortcuts and the search box in the Help menu.

Twenty-five third-party applications were added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML application catalog

With Single Sign-On (SSO), users can access all their enterprise cloud applications, including the admin console, after signing in just once. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and many applications already have built-in SSO support in our third-party app catalog. We're now adding SAML integration for 25 additional applications:

Adobe Sign (formerly EchoSign)
AppDynamics
Apteligent
Artifact cloud
Autotask Workplace
Betterworks
bugcrowd
Cisco Umbrella (formerly OpenDNS)
CloudHealth
Digicert
Agenda
Engagedly
Submitted
Fresh service
contact
Kapost
LearnCore
Life-size
Namely
PeopleHR
Reflection
rightscale
Robin
Skyhigh
UserVoice

Note that, in addition to the pre-built SAML apps, G Suite also supports the installation of "Custom SAML Apps," meaning administrators can install any third-party application that supports SAML. The advantage of a pre-built app is that installation is much easier. You can learn more about installing custom SAML apps in this Help Center article.

Add a custom favicon to new Google sites

The new Google Sites offers a simple and elegant way to create websites. To help your site stand out, you can now customize your favicon—the icon that appears in a browser tab or bookmarks list—to match your site. This can help viewers recognize your site more easily and help strengthen your brand.

New ways to comment on Microsoft files (and more) in Google Drive

Google Drive makes it easy to store and share files in the cloud so you can securely collaborate with your teams and clients on the go. And we understand that teams work with all kinds of files and tools to get things done. Starting today, we're enabling you to comment directly on more file types, including Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, and images, without having to convert them to Docs, Sheets, or Slides.

When you collaborate with an external agency, negotiate a contract with a client, or coordinate a sales agreement with a supplier, you're likely dealing with multiple file formats. With this update, you can now comment on those files in Drive the way you're used to in Google Docs. In the Drive preview pane, comment, assign tasks, or mention colleagues, and the people you work with can respond, even if they aren't using G Suite. Let's say your colleague opens a file on their Windows laptop using MS Word; they'll see your comment in the file and be able to reply from there.

With comments in Drive Preview, you won't need to open other tools to complete tasks. Instead, open Microsoft Office files, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, in Drive Preview, add comments, and then get back to work.

AODocs, a company that helps businesses replace their legacy document management applications and automate business processes integrated with Drive, has been testing Drive's new comments feature for the past few months. Because AODocs helps businesses transition from legacy systems, they often collaborate on several licensed programs.

“We frequently use the comments feature in Google Docs and Slides when preparing specification documents, reviewing project proposals, and creating marketing materials,” says Stéphane Donzé, CEO and founder of AODocs. “With comments in Drive Preview, we can now extend the same collaboration, review, and validation processes to Microsoft Office applications, images, and PDFs.”

The ability to comment in Drive's preview mode is just one example of interoperability between G Suite and Microsoft Office products. You can also use a Drive add-in for Outlook to easily insert files stored in Drive into Outlook emails and save incoming attachments to your Drive from within Outlook. Our help center has more details on how to enable the add-in for administrators.

Of course, you can also convert Microsoft Office files to Docs, Sheets, or Slides. In Google Drive, right-click an Office file, click Open with, and then select Docs (or Sheets or Slides). Finally, you can choose to edit Microsoft files without fully converting them using Office Compatibility Mode (OCM).

With G Suite, you can work the way you're used to. Get started.

Additional information for G Suite administrators

As part of this release, we're also changing the "Can View" permission settings for MS Office files. This creates greater interoperability between Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and other popular applications. What is changing? :

Users with "Can View" access to MS Office files they will begin to see Comments added after this change was launched will be allowed, but users will not be able to reply to those comments or create new ones.
MS Office files with comments added before this change (i.e., using the Google Drive API or an earlier version of this feature) will not be affected.
Comments, action items, and suggested edits in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files will continue to be invisible to users with "Can see" access.

In addition to making and responding to file-level comments while previewing a file in Google Drive Preview, users can now make new inline comments (also known as pinned comments), for example:

Draw a rectangle on a PDF or PowerPoint (.pptx) or image file and add an anchored comment.
Select a sentence in MS Office Word (.docx) or PowerPoint (.pptx) or PDF file and make a pinned comment (similar to comments in Google Docs).
Select a cell in the MS Office Excel file (.xlsx) and make a comment based on the cell.

This new feature also supports importing and exporting comments to the underlying file for certain OOXML file formats, such as MS Office file formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and PDF files. This means that existing comments in these file formats will be imported and displayed in Drive Preview. Furthermore, comments made in Drive Preview will be exported to the underlying file so that when you open the file with the local client application, you can see the comments made in Drive Preview.

Quick access to documents now available

We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced Quick Access for Google Docs. Below are some administrator-specific details about Quick Access for Docs to help you get started.

Quick Access for Docs uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant files based on signals such as Drive activity and information in your documents, so you can work with the most up-to-date information and create new material quickly.
Please note that Quick Access for Docs is only available on domains with Google Cloud Search enabled.
For more information about enabling or disabling Cloud Search for your users, visit the Help Center.

What's new for G Suite administrators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L37bHJl0bi4&feature=youtu.be

Warning message shown to iOS users who do not have Hangouts Meet enabled

Meet allows G Suite users to connect across any device, at any time. Users with iOS devices whose accounts aren't enabled for Meet can still join meetings they're invited to, but they can't create them. To ensure these users understand why this functionality is missing, we'll begin showing them the following message the first time they open the Meet app on their iOS device:

This message is already being displayed to users on the web. It will primarily reach the accounts of users who are not part of G Suite, but administrators may receive requests from users who do not have meetings enabled for their domain and/or organizational unit.

Automatic document closure, custom backgrounds, and more with the latest version of Jamboard

Jamboard helps businesses collaborate more efficiently by harnessing the power of the cloud for team brainstorming sessions. With this latest version of Jamboard, we're adding new features to help you customize that experience to your organization's unique needs.

Now, the automatic document closing jams

Documents can be automatically closed if left open in a Jamboard kiosk for longer than the time configured by administrators. This feature can be configured on the Jamboard admin console settings page under “Document timeout”.

Custom backgrounds
Users can now select custom backgrounds for their jams. There's a list of 7 unique backgrounds and patterns to choose from. Each background will be applied to the jam on all devices.

Personalized screensaver messages

The Administrators can now create a custom message on the Jamboard admin console settings page under “Screensaver Message”. This message will be displayed as a ticker on the Jamboard screensaver.

Object connectors
Now you can connect shapes on the Jamboard together by drawing lines between them.

Support
horizontal for mobile devices Users can now interact with traffic jams in landscape mode on the Jamboard mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Helping G Suite customers stay safe with new proactive phishing protections and management controls

Security tools are only effective at stopping threats if they are implemented and managed properly. scale But getting everyone in your organization to adopt these tools depends on how easy they are to use. That's why G Suite has always aimed to provide IT administrators with simpler ways to manage access, control devices, ensure compliance, and maintain data security.

Today we're announcing more than 20 updates to deepen and expand Google Cloud customers' control over their security. Many of these features will be enabled by default for G Suite, so you can be confident that the right protections are in place for your organization. Even better, in most cases, your users won't have to do anything. Here's the breakdown.

1. Helping to protect your users and your organization with new advanced anti-phishing capabilities

We're applying machine learning (ML) to billions of threat indicators and developing our models to quickly identify what could be an impending phishing attack. The information from these self-learning ML models helps us flag suspicious content. At the same time, updated phishing security controls can be configured to automatically activate the latest defenses recommended by Google.

These new protections can:

Automatically flag emails from untrusted senders that have encrypted attachments or embedded scripts.
Beware of emails that attempt to impersonate employee names or that come from a domain that looks similar to your own.
Offer enhanced protections against spear phishing attacks by flagging unauthenticated email.
Scan images for phishing indicators and expand shortened URLs to uncover malicious links.

With the protections we have implemented, more than 99.9% of Business Email Compromise (BEC) scenarios—or when someone impersonates an executive to obtain sensitive information—are automatically moved to the spam folder or flagged with anomaly warnings for users.

2. It gives you more control over mobile devices with the default mobile management.

Securing endpoints like mobile devices is one of the best ways for businesses to maintain data security. More than 7 million devices are already managed with the G Suite mobile management solution for businesses. With the new proactive security setup, basic device management for your mobile devices accessing G Suite is now easier. automatically enables .

This means employees don't have to install profiles on iOS and Android devices. It also means administrators gain additional security management controls to help them:

See which devices are accessing corporate data in a single dashboard.
Apply access codes and erase sensitive data with selective account deletion for Android and iOS.
Automatically protect Android and iOS devices, without user intervention or device profile.

For more details, G Suite administrators should read our related post on the G Suite Updates blog.

And you may have noticed that we released updates for Cloud Identity, a way for businesses to centrally manage users, applications, and devices. Cloud Identity includes user lifecycle management, account security, SSO, robust device and application management, and unified reporting.

3. To offer you greater visibility and knowledge to stay ahead of potential threats

IT administrators operating in the cloud are looking for tools, visibility, and support insights to stop threats or operational gaps before they become security incidents. That's why we introduced the Security Center for G Suite earlier this year. The Security Center is a tool that brings together security analysis, actionable insights, and best practice recommendations from Google to help you protect your organization, data, and users.

Today, we're introducing additions to the Security Center for G Suite, including:

New security charts to show OAuth activity and Business Email Transaction (BEC) scam threats that specifically focus on phishing emails that may not have links.
New mobile management charts to help IT administrators examine activity analytics and show when devices have been hijacked, rooted, or jailbroken, as well as when other suspicious device activity has been detected.
Ways to reorganize the board to focus on what is most important to your organization.
Ways to analyze your organization's security status and get personalized advice on implementing key security and protection against phishing scams.

If you are not familiar with using the G Suite Security Center, please refer to these instructions To begin. Note that only administrators with G Suite Enterprise licenses can access the security center.

4. Provides built-in protections and controls for Team Drives.

Businesses share and store a massive amount of content, which means administrators need more controls to keep this data protected. That's why we're enhancing Team Drives with new security controls to give you more ways to protect highly sensitive content. Now, your data can be protected by Information Rights Management (IRM) controls so you can be confident that your company's ideas remain "yours."

Specific updates include the ability to modify the configuration of equipment units to:

Limit file access privileges to Team Drives members, or only to users in your domain.
Add IRM controls to prevent users from printing, downloading, and copying files within computer drives.

These new security features for Team Drives will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Start

Phishing and mobile management controls are now available in all versions of G Suite, and you'll be able to use Team Drives controls in the coming weeks. If you're a G Suite Enterprise customer, you can access the Security Center in the Admin Console.

All G Suite customers can now manage security keys for two-step verification

We encourage all our customers to use two-step verification for added protection when signing in to their G Suite accounts. In particular, we recommend security keys, which are easy to use and better prevent some common attacks, such as phishing.

Previously, we allowed G Suite Enterprise domain administrators to enable only security keys as the two-step verification factor for users. We also provided them (and G Suite Business administrators) with tools to manage the deployment of security keys and to view usage reports. Because we believe security keys can be critical in the effort to protect may be made by each organization, we are now bringing these management capabilities to all editions of G Suite.

In the future, all G Suite administrators will be able to do the following in the Admin Console:

Jamboard files now appear in Google Drive

With Jamboard, it's easy to enrich your team's ideas with the power of G Suite. For example, you can take images and content from the web and bring them directly into your Jam, access work from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, or add photos stored in Drive.

To further integrate Jamboard with G Suite, your jam files will now appear in your Drive folder. This means you can easily open, copy, and share jam files from My Drive and Team Drives, and save Jamboard jam files to My Drive.

With this launch you can:

Share jammed files directly from Drive.
Open Jam files from Drive on the Jamboard website and mobile apps.
Search for jammed files in Drive (by entering “type:jam” in the Drive search bar).

Subscribe to featured notifications for Google+ communities and collections

Google+ communities and collections help people connect with the things they care about. To help you stay on top of these connections, we've added more options for how often you receive notifications about new posts in the Google+ communities and collections you're subscribed to. Instead of receiving all or no notifications, you can now choose to receive only "starred" posts.

When you select the Highlights option, we'll send you a summary notification of the most important posts from all your Google+ communities and collections. This will help you save time and ensure you're seeing the posts that matter most to you.

Control session duration for Google services on the web

To protect your organization's data, we automatically sign in any G Suite user to Google services they're using on the web (like Gmail and Drive) after two weeks. However, we've heard that some organizations need different session durations for different use cases. For example, if users are accessing work data outside your corporate network, a shorter session duration might be justified. In other cases, a longer session duration might be appropriate, and not requiring users to continually enter their password makes for a much better experience.

That's why we give G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education administrators the ability to specify the duration of web sessions for Google services (for example, four hours, seven days, or indefinitely). Unless a user signs out beforehand, their session will automatically close at the end of that duration, and they will be prompted to re-enter their login credentials.

This setting applies to all desktop web sessions, as well as some mobile browser sessions. Native mobile apps, such as Gmail for Android and iOS, are not affected by these settings. This setting only applies to domains where Google is responsible for sign-in (i.e., where Google is the identity provider) and not to domains federated with another identity provider that uses SAML. Support for these domains will be added in the future.

2-Step Verification Frequency (2SV)

When a user signs in to their G Suite account today, they have the option to "Remember this computer." When this box is checked, they won't be asked for their second authentication factor, even if they sign out of Google and sign back in.

As part of this launch, we are giving all administrators the option to show their users this checkbox or make them present a 2SV challenge every time they enter their password.

When “Allow user to trust device for two-step verification” is selected, the checkbox will be displayed. This is the default. When “Do not allow user to trust device for two-step verification” is selected, the user will be required to submit to a 2SV challenge each time they log in. This setting can be found in the Admin Console. Security > Basic settings > Go to advanced settings to enable two-step verificationThey have no impact on users who are not enrolled in 2SV.

An invitation you'll want to accept: G Suite meeting room hardware updates

We're working closely with customers and industry experts to shape the role of technology in meetings, and we want to make it easier for teams to work together face-to-face, anytime, anywhere. A big part of doing this well is working closely with IT, AV, and facilities leaders to understand how we can solve some of their challenges, and that's why we're at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) conference in Amsterdam this week to learn from AV and systems integration experts about how we can help them make meetings easier.

Over the past few years, our team has worked diligently to develop Google Hangouts, create reliable and cost-effective meeting hardware, and reimagine how teams exchange ideas. Today at ISE, we're announcing updates to make these meeting solutions even better for businesses, including:

Jamboard and Hangouts expansion Meet hardware to new countries
Add AI-powered autodraw to improve your jamming
Offering more Hangouts Meet hardware options for larger rooms

This is the new thing. Jamboard updates: EU expansion and addition ofbusiness of AutoDraw powered by AI Teams in North America and the UK are using Jamboard to collaborate, and now teams in Europe can join in too. Next month, Jamboard will be available for purchase in eight additional countries: Republic of Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain and Finland. Along with Jamboard's expansion into new markets, we're also adding an AI-powered feature called AutoDraw. AutoDraw is a new drawing tool in Jamboard that automatically detects your sketches and matches them with images. This gives teams the ability to make their ideas even more visual, whether you're a creative designer working with clients or even a teacher working with students.

We also recently welcomed the Jamboard app as a core service in G Suite. For everything else about Jamboard, check out google.com/jamboard. Hangouts Meet hardware updates: more options for larger rooms Fast video conferencing is most effective when it's available everywhere. Today, we're also expanding Hangouts Meet hardware, our latest meeting solution, to Two additional countries: the Netherlands and Denmark , which brings the total to 14 countries.

Until now, the Hangouts Meet hardware kit consisted of a touchscreen controller, speaker, ASUS Chromebox, and a 4K camera, ideal for capturing small rooms. While this has made it easier for some businesses to collaborate directly, we want to ensure the kit is scalable for any room size. So today, we're adding options for larger rooms:

A new Hangouts Meet room kit It comes with the Logitech PTZ Pro 2 and can accommodate up to 20 people. The camera can capture details with a 10x optical zoom and can pan and tilt to focus on participants.
An independent speakermic Meet To maintain crystal-clear audio quality in larger rooms. Custom-designed and built by Google, the speaker intelligently reduces echoes and manages background noise. It's easy to daisy-chain up to 5 speakers together to deliver high-quality audio to every corner of the room.

Change how you view photos and videos in Google Drive

Today, in Google Drive, you can view your Google Photos directly through a tab in the left navigation panel and from the folders within My Drive.

Twenty-three third-party applications were added to the G Suite pre-integrated SAML application catalog

With Single Sign-On (SSO), users can access all their enterprise cloud applications, including the Admin Console for administrators, after signing in just once. Google supports the two most popular enterprise SSO standards, OpenID Connect and SAML, and many applications with built-in SSO support are already available in our third-party app catalog.