In the Sheets app, there will be larger tap targets and tapping once exposes the formula bar, tab bar, and a contextual formatting toolbar.
In the Slides app, you will now see the filmstrip on the left-hand side and selecting an object exposes the contextual toolbar and an on-screen keyboard.
Paste HTML into document on Android
In continuing our mission to provide a top-class user experience on large screen devices, we’re introducing the ability for users to paste copied HTML elements into a document on Android. You can now copy HTML elements to clipboard and paste the elements into a Doc, all while maintaining the formatting elements.
Easily duplicate groups and objects in Google Sites
Currently, Google Site editors can duplicate a section of their Site, and the duplicated section appears directly below the section it was duplicated from. Starting this week, we’re extending the duplicate feature by enabling you to easily duplicate objects (images, buttons, text boxes) and groups when editing a Site. | Learn more about adding or editing text & images in Google Sites.
Previous announcements
The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
Quickly access more features during meetings, available for Google Meet on the web
We’ve introduced a new quick action to access popular features in Google Meet. By hovering the mouse on top of your own video feed, you can access video effects such as immersive backgrounds or fun filters to bring more fun to your meetings and a reframing option to improve your visibility. | Learn more about features in Google Meet.
Apply background blur when joining a call using a virtual desktop
If you’re using a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to join a Google Meet meeting, you can now use background blur and light adjustment. Background blur will intelligently separate you from the background, blurring your surroundings while keeping you clear and in focus. | Available to Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Individual customers only. | Learn more about background blur in Google Meet.
Google Sheets now integrated with mail merge in Gmail
Mail merge will support Google Sheets in the web version of Gmail. This integration will allow you to link a Sheet with up to 1,500 recipients and use any data column from your Sheet as a mail merge tag. | Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus customers and Nonprofits only. | Learn more about mail merge with Sheets in Gmail.
Simplified access controls coming to Google Meet beginning July 17, 2023
We’re introducing simplified controls for meeting access in Google Meet. These will replace the existing Quick access meeting settings and the admin setting to turn Quick access on or off by default will be removed. This update will begin rolling out on July 17, 2023. | Learn more about access controls coming to Google Meet.
Use polls or Q&As during Google Meet live streams
If you’re live streaming a video meeting, meeting hosts can now enable the Q&A and poll features, which previously were only offered in traditional Meet meetings. Expanding these features to live streamed meetings will help take your meetings to the next level with a more feature-rich, collaborative experience. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Education Plus, and the Teaching and Learning upgrade customers. | Learn more about polls and Q&As during Google Meet live streams.
Making focus time more productive with new Google Calendar setting
To increase concentration and bridge the gap between do not disturb and focus time, you can now mute notifications for the duration of your focus time directly in Calendar. | Available to Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Business Standard, Business Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Nonprofits only. | Learn more about the new Google Calendar setting.
See read receipts for messages in Google Chat group direct messages
We’re introducing read receipts in group direct messages. With this feature, you can now quickly identify if other members of a group have read your latest message within a Chat stream. | Learn more about read receipts in Google Chat.
Improvements for client-side encryption in Gmail
We’ve introduced two new features for client-side encryption in Gmail which will help you quickly identify ineligible recipients and any attachments that may be blocked. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers. | Learn more about client-side encryption in Gmail.
When you’re composing a Gmail message using client-side encryption, any recipient who is not able to receive encrypted messages will be denoted with a red chip. The email will not be able to be sent until those recipients are removed.
Email recipients who cannot receive encrypted messages will be highlighted in red.
Gmail blocks attachments that may spread viruses, like messages that include executable files or scripts. If you receive a client-side encrypted message in Gmail, we’ll automatically check if any attachments are blocked file types. If there are blocked file types, you’ll see a warning banner and you won’t be able to download the file.
You'll see a warning banner if you receive an email with a blocked attachment type
If enabled by your Workspace admin, to add client-side encryption to any message, click the lock icon and select additional encryption, and compose your message and add attachments as normal.
If you include a recipient in the “To” or “CC” fields who cannot receive an encrypted message, their email address will appear as a red chip.
With this feature, you can now quickly identify if other members of a group have read your latest message within a Chat stream.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it’s important
Many users rely on Chat for immediate communication with their colleagues, and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with the number of messages sent and received throughout the day. Knowing which of your colleagues have read your message can help set expectations for a response.
Whether you’re waiting for a colleague to read your message or you want to ensure high visibility of a topic in a group direct message, we hope this highly requested feature helps you communicate more effectively in Chat.
Additional details
Read receipts will only be shown in Chats of 20 people or less, and will not be shown in spaces.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: There is no end user setting for this feature and it cannot be toggled ON or OFF. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sending a message in Google Chat.
To increase concentration and bridge the gap between do not disturb and focus time, you can now mute notifications for the duration of your focus time directly in Calendar.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: To mute Chat notifications when adding a Focus time Calendar entry, check the "Do not disturb" box. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using focus time in Google Calendar.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 28, 2023
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 12, 2023
Availability
Available to Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Business Standard, Business Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Nonprofits
Q&A in Meet offers an easy way to better engage audiences and help them get their questions answered, both at work and in school. Educators can use Q&A as a structured way for students to ask questions on class content and get answers from teachers. Businesses can use Q&A to help make meetings more inclusive, giving everyone the opportunity to ask questions. Participants can submit and upvote their favorite questions without disrupting the flow of the call.
Using Q&A's during a live stream
Polls are a great way to quickly gauge the pulse of your audience. You can use polls to identify topics that need more discussion or test understanding of the meeting content. This means business users can easily get real-time feedback from their colleagues, teachers can quiz remote students to ensure they’re absorbing the material, and sales teams can make their sales presentations to prospective customers more engaging and interactive.
Using polls during a live stream
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using polls and Q&As in Google Meet.
Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Education Plus, and the Teaching and Learning upgrade customers
From a Google Calendar invite or Google Meet itself, meeting organizers will now be able to pick from the following three levels of access:
Open:
Anyone with a meeting link will be able to join your meetings.
No one will have to ask to join.
Anyone can dial in.
Trusted:
Anyone within the meeting hosts’ organization will be able to join without having to ask to join (AKA knocking).
Anyone outside the organization but invited via a Google Calendar event, or anyone invited from within the meeting, will also be able to join without having to ask to join.
Anyone can dial in.
Everybody else will have to ask to join.
Restricted:
Only someone who is invited via a Google Calendar event or someone invited from within the meeting by a host will be able to join.
Everyone else will have to ask to join, including participants inside a host’s organization who aren’t included on the invite, and those dialing in.
Additionally, meeting hosts can configure whether guests can join the meeting before hosts.
See below for more information regarding how the new behavior will be applied to new and existing meetings:
Workspace Edition
New Meetings
Existing Meetings with Quick Access “OFF”
Existing Meetings with Quick Access “ON”
Business users
If you use Meet with a paid work account then by default all your new meetings will be set to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
Meetings will default to RESTRICTED and your guests won’t be able to join your meetings until you join
Meetings will default to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
Education users
If you use Meet with a paid school account then by default all your new meetings will be set to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
Any meetings created via Google Classroom will be set to RESTRICTED and your guests won’t be able to join before you.
Meetings will default to RESTRICTED and your guests won’t be able to join before you.
Meetings will default to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
Workspace Individual, Google One Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts
New Meetings
Existing Meetings
By default all your new meetings will be set to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
Anyone who is invited to a meeting via a Google Calendar invite will be considered as “trusted”.
For any meetings previously created by you, those will also default to TRUSTED and your guests will be able to join before you.
You won’t see an option to create Restricted meetings.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why it matters
To help ensure your meetings run as smoothly as possible, we made the decision to replace the Quick access settings with a more intuitive and explicit set of controls for meeting organizers and hosts.
Getting started
Admins:
As part of this update, we will be removing the Quick access setting in the Admin console.
We recommend familiarizing yourself with the chart above, which explains more about the new default access settings, so you can adjust your settings as needed.
Today, we’re excited to announce that mail merge will support Google Sheets in the web version of Gmail. This integration will allow you to link a Sheet with up to 1,500 recipients and use any data column from your Sheet as a mail merge tag.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it’s important
With mail merge you can send more personalized and engaging emails to large audiences from web Gmail.
Additional details
With this update, mail merge will fully replace multi-send. We’re also moving the icon for mail merge from the main compose toolbar at the bottom of your email draft to the top-right corner of your compose window. You can still use mail merge without linking a Sheet, using the built-in merge tags: @firstname, @lastname, @fullname, and @email.
Like multi-send, mail merge emails contain a unique unsubscribe link for each recipient by default. Recipients who unsubscribe from your emails are automatically excluded from future mail merge emails you send.
For Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus customers, mail merge is restricted to internal recipients by default.
For Google Workspace Business Standard and Business Plus customers, mail merge is available for external recipients by default.
For all Google Workspace editions, you can turn mail merge ON for external recipients at the OU or Group level.
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 27, 2023
Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 19, 2023
Availability
Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus customers and Nonprofits
For admins, this optimization will help cut down on the demand put on your VDIs, such as CPU, GPU, and memory usage while helping to improve meeting quality and performance. For this reason, you may consider removing GPU resources from your VDIs for cost savings.
You can also turn off the video feed from other participants using the quick action on their video. This can be helpful in situations where you want to focus your meeting view to just the presenter or hide participants with distracting video feeds.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility) starting on June 26, 2023
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 5, 2023
Availability
The new quick action menu is available to all Google Workspace customers
Note: The reframing feature is only available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning upgrade, and Workspace Individual customers. Also available to Google One Subscribers with 2TB or more storage space
Adding flexibility to email collection in Google Forms
Previously, when creating or modifying a Google Form and editing the “Responses” section, form creators only had the option to toggle the "Collect email addresses" option on or off. If enabled, this meant when users filled out the form, their email was automatically collected with their form submission. To add flexibility, we’ve introduced the ability to choose between the following email collection options:
Verified email collection (previously known as automatic email collection)
Responder input (previously known as manual email collection)
Do not collect
The verified collection option will now require a user to click a checkbox to confirm which email address is being collected upon submission. | Learn more about viewing & managing form responses.
Gain consensus from collaborators quickly with voting chips in Google Docs
You can now add smart chips that contain emojis to use as voting indicators in Google Docs. This feature helps teams express themselves while they’re collaborating in Docs by allowing you to rank or compare ideas. | Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus customers and Nonprofits only. | Learn more about inserting smart chips & building blocks in your Google Doc.
Previous announcements
The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
Launching in beta: programmatically write working locations with the Calendar API
Available now in beta through our Developer Preview Program, you can write a user’s working location using the Calendar API. | Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade and Nonprofits customers only. | Learn more about writing working locations with the Calendar API.
Enhancing Google Vault file retention capabilities using Google Drive Labels
Google Vault now supports custom retention rules based on Drive labels. | Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus customers only. | Learn more about Vault file retention using Google Drive Labels.
Respond to access requests for Google Workspace files more efficiently
Users can now review and respond to requests from within the file. Approvers will see a notification dot on the “Share” button if they have a pending access request and a new banner at the top of the sharing dialog. | Learn more about responding to access requests.
Monitor additional Google Meet hardware issues in the Admin console
You can now use the Admin console to detect and monitor additional Meet hardware issues, such as: missing display, missing controller, missing default camera, missing default microphone, missing default speaker, and missing default whiteboard camera. | Learn more about monitoring Google Meet hardware issues.
Use companion mode to check-in to a Google Meet conference room, so everyone can know you by name
If you’re joining a meeting from a conference room, you can use companion mode on your personal device to check in to that specific room. Room check-in allows everyone on the call to easily identify who is in the conference room, rather than simply seeing the conference room name. | Learn more about companion mode check-in with Google Meet.
You’ll be prompted to check into a room after joining companion mode on your personal device.
Checked-in participants will appear under the conference room
Checked-in participants will be grouped under the conference room in the people panel
Room check-in will be available by default, but admins can turn this feature off for specific Meet hardware devices or specific users. For more information, see the “Additional details” section.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why you’d use it
Rather than being represented in a meeting just by the conference room you’re in, room check-in helps ensure everyone in the meeting can see your name and be aware of your presence.
If you turn on your personal video tile in companion mode, it along with the conference room name, will be shown while you’re presenting.
You’ll notice the same experience when using hand raise as well.
If your personal video tile is turned off, we’ll display the hand raise icon next to your name in the conference room view.
The conference room name is visible when using your personal tile & the hand raise feature.
Combined, this helps boost individual representation, making meetings more equitable, inclusive, and collaborative.
Additional details
Admin controls for room check-in
Admins can turn off room check-in for specific Meet hardware devices within an organizational unit in the Admin console under Admin Console > Devices > Google Meet hardware > [Organizational Unit] > Device Settings > Room Check-In > Uncheck “Users can check in to this device’s meeting room.” This can be particularly useful in instances where the check-in feature should not be used on dedicated executive devices or in large meeting rooms.
Admins can also turn this feature off for specific users within an organizational unit. Admins can use this option to slowly rollout room check-in department by department, for example. To turn room check-in off for specific users, navigate to Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > [Organizational Unit] > Meet Video Settings > Room Check-In > Uncheck “All users can check in to eligible rooms” in the admin console.
Device Support
This feature is only available for Google Meet hardware devices; interop devices are not supported at this time.
Getting Started
Admins:
This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled at organizational unit level for specific hardware devices or users. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Meet settings.
End users:
If enabled by your admin, room check-in will be available for all users joining companion mode from meet.google.com, or by using g.co/companion. Check-in by selecting the Google Meet hardware device on the call. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Companion mode for hybrid learning & collaboration, as well as this video guide.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 22, 2023
In the Google Cloud Community, connect with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like yourself. Participate in product discussions, check out the Community Articles, and learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what's happening with Google Workspace.
On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.