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Use Google Drive and the Files app to organize content on your iOS 11 device

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With Google Drive, you can access and edit your files across the many devices and platforms you work on. The new Files app for iOS 11 brings together files and documents stored on your iOS device and in the cloud across various apps and services. Today, we’re announcing full integration of the Drive application with the Files app on devices running iOS 11.

 

DriveFiles11

With the latest version of the Drive app installed, you can easily access and manage documents and photos stored in Drive just by opening up the Files app on your iOS device. If you have Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides apps installed as well, tapping on any Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation in the Files app will open the app of the associated Google editor. You can also take advantage of new iOS 11 features like dragging and dropping files between apps and folders in the Files App.

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:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

 

Reference by Google.com

Drive File Stream launching to all G Suite customers

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Launched to early adopters in March, Drive File Stream is a new desktop application that allows you to quickly access all of your Google Drive files on demand, directly from your computer, meaning you use almost none of your hard drive space and spend less time waiting for files to sync.

Starting today, you’ll see settings in the Admin console for Drive File Stream (located at Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Data Access). Note—these settings won’t go into effect for your users until Tuesday, September 26th, when Drive File Stream becomes generally available.

 

Drive File Stream

As of today, Drive File Stream will be turned ON for all customers, but we’ll only show download links in the Drive interface if you currently show them for Backup and Sync / Google Drive for Mac/PC. For more information on how to turn Drive File Stream on or off in your domain, check out the Help Center.

With this launch, Google Drive for Mac/PC is officially deprecated. It will no longer be supported starting on December 11th, 2017, and it will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. We encourage you to use Drive File Stream. As an alternative to or in addition to installing Drive File Stream, you can upgrade to the new version of Drive for Mac/PC, called Backup and Sync.

A few important things to note:

  • In October, Drive for Mac/PC users may start seeing messages in the product notifying them that Drive for Mac/PC is going away.
  • If a user is running both Drive File Stream and Backup and Sync on the same machine, they’ll be prompted to stop syncing My Drive with Backup and Sync in order to save disk space.
  • Team Drive editors won’t be able to edit their Team Drive files when they’re opened in Drive File Stream; they’ll only be able to view them. To edit these files, they’ll need to open them in Drive on the web.

Check out the Help Center for more information on Drive File Stream, including:

  • A side-by-side feature comparison with Backup and Sync.
  • Instructions for turning on Drive File Stream and deploying it to your organization.
  • Sample emails you can send to your users with more information.
  • FAQs.

Say goodbye to time-consuming file syncing and any concerns about disk space. With Drive File Stream, all your files are always ready for you and your colleagues.

Launch Details
Release track:

  • Drive File Stream Admin console settings launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on September 6th, 2017; Drive File Stream launching to end users on both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on September 26th, 2017
  • Support for Google Drive for Mac/PC ending on December 11th, 2017; Google Drive for Mac/PC to stop working on March 12, 2018


Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:

  • Admin console settings
    • Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)
  • Availability for end users
    • Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

 

Reference by Google.com

Send and receive chat messages in Hangouts Meet

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Sharing written communication is a critical part of successful meetings. Meeting participants may want to share links, chime in when they can’t speak, or hold side conversations without interrupting. This chat functionality has been a top feature request in Meet since we launched earlier this year and that’s why, today, we’re bringing it to all G Suite users.

 

Going forward, meeting attendees will be able to send text and links, all in real time. The chat history will be available for the duration of the meeting.

This feature is available across Meet platforms: chat messages can be sent and received on web and mobile (versions 4.5 and above), and received on Chromebox for Meetings. All users can send and receive messages while in Meet, including those not signed in with Google accounts.

Google_Meet_Mobile_Blog

Google_Meet_TV_Blog copy

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

 

Reference by Google.com

Enterprise Identity made easy in G Suite

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As an IT administrator, you want to be confident that your users are secure when accessing online services. Millions of G Suite customers already rely on Google Cloud’s identity services to secure their online identities with tools like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and mobile device management. However, many G Suite organisations have users who do not require G Suite but still need a secure, online identity.

Introducing Cloud Identity support in G Suite
Today we are happy to announce the availability of a new free Cloud Identity license for G Suite customers, which enables your non-G Suite users to get access to Google Cloud’s identity services. Using Cloud Identity, you can easily create a unified sign-on for all your users across all enterprise cloud apps, set basic mobile device policies, and enforce multi-factor authentication with security keys.

Once you enable Cloud Identity in your Google Admin console, you will be able to create Cloud Identity users in all the ways you create G Suite users; the only difference is that you will not assign these users a G Suite license.

Cloud Identity header

Try it today 
To start using Cloud Identity, head to the Billing page in the Google Admin console. Here you will see a new Cloud Identity card under the “Enable Products” section. Once you enable the Cloud Identity subscription, you will be able to start creating free users without G Suite. For more information, check out our Getting Started Guide for G Suite admins.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
Note: If your domain has been provisioned or you have a billing relationship with a GSuite reseller, an onboarding flow is planned so that your reseller can add Cloud Identity subscriptions to your G Suite domain. This feature will launch in the coming weeks.

Editions:
Available to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise edition domains

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 7 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

 

Reference by Google.com

New built-in Gmail protection to combat malware in attachments

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Today we announced new security features for Gmail customers, including early phishing detection using machine learning, click-time warnings for malicious links, and unintended external reply warnings. In addition, we have also updated our defences against malicious attachments.

Let’s take a deeper look at the new defences against malicious attachments. We now correlate spam signals with attachment and sender heuristics, to predict messages containing new and unseen malware variants. These protections enable Gmail to better protect our users from zero-day threats, ransomware and polymorphic malware.

In addition, we block the use of file types that carry a high potential for security risks including executable and javascript files.

Machine learning has helped Gmail achieve more than 99% accuracy in spam detection, and with these new protections, we’re able to reduce your exposure to threats by confidently rejecting hundreds of millions of additional messages every day.

Constantly improving our automatic protections

These new changes are just the latest in our ongoing work to improve our protections as we work to keep ahead of evolving threats. For many years, scammers have tried to use dodgy email attachments to sneak past our spam filters, and we’ve long blocked this potential abuse in a variety of ways, including:

  • Rejecting the message and notifying the sender if we detect a virus in an email.
  • Preventing you from sending a message with an infected attachment.
  • Preventing you from downloading attachments if we detect a virus.

While the bad guys never rest, neither do we.

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:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

 

Reference by Google.com

 

Move Google Drive files and folders into Team Drives

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Following the launch of Team Drives in March, it’s likely you and your users have existing content that needs to be moved from traditional Google Drive locations (e.g. My Drive) into these new shared spaces. As a G Suite admin, there are three ways you can do this:

1. Allow users to migrate files 
If you enable this setting in the Admin console (Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Migration settings > User options > Allow users to migrate files to Team Drives), users in your domain will be able to move individual files into Team Drives, as long as they have Edit access to those files and the current file owners are members of the destination Team Drive.

Migration Settings

2. Migrate folders as a super admin
If you’re a super admin and have view access or higher to an existing My Drive folder, you can move that folder to a Team Drive yourself. Check out the Help Center for detailed instructions.

3. Delegate admin migration rights to individual users
If you’re a super admin, you can delegate the admin rights described in option 2 to any user in your domain. He or she will then be able to move My Drive folders into Team Drives. For a step-by-step guide to granting these admin migration rights, see the Help Center.

Migration Privilege

No matter which option you choose, there are a few important things to remember when moving files and folders into Team Drives:

  • Any file moved to a Team Drive will then be owned by the Team Drive—not an individual.
  • Moved files will remain in the user’s Shared with me and Recent locations, but they’ll be removed from all other Drive locations (e.g. My Drive).
  • A file’s permissions and sharing link will not change when it’s moved into a Team Drive. People who aren’t Team Drive members will still be able to access that file with their previously granted permissions.

For additional details and key considerations, please visit the Help Center.

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

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

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

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

 

 Reference by Google.com

 

Creating files from templates now easier in Google Drive

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Since 2015, we’ve been making it easier to focus on your content—not your formatting—with templates in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. We’ve introduced templates for invoices, pitch decks, and cases studies, as well as templates designed by experts and developed specifically for your organization.
Today, we’re making it easier for users to create files from templates by granting access to templates directly from Google Drive. Instead of navigating to the Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms home pages, you can simply go to Drive > New > Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Forms > From a template. From there, you’ll be directed to the applicable template gallery, where you can select the template of your choice.

Google Drive Templates Submenu

For more details on templates, visit the Help Center.
Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in three weeks
Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions
Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)
Impact:
All end users
Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

Reference by Google.com

Streamlining group chat creation in Google Hangouts on the web

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Last year, we launched the ability to create and share short links to Hangouts group chats. This allows your team to opt-in to a chat, rather than having to invite people one by one. Today, we’re streamlining how you create group chats to make it easier to create group chats for projects or teams. In the improved flow, you can now name your group chats more easily when you are creating a group chat. Once the group chat has a name, this allows you to create “placeholder” group chats which you can then share with a link.

Streamlined group chat creating in Hangouts with people 2

These improvements will be in available all three Hangouts user interfaces on the web. In Hangouts in Gmail, a “+” button will be available next to your contacts list in Hangouts. In hangouts.google.com and in the Chrome extension, you’ll see a “New conversation” option. By clicking “New group” or “New conversation” you can name the group, start adding members, or both.

 

Google Hangouts New Conversation button 3

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:
All end users

 

Reference by Google.com

Google Drive sharing notification improvements to support Gmail smart hosting

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Some small but important changes are coming to the way that Google Drive sends notification emails. Your users will not see any visible changes, but if you use Gmail’s advanced smart hosting features, then you may notice a difference in the way new emails are archived or filtered by your mail solutions.

What’s changing:

  • Google Drive will no longer store a ‘courtesy copy’ in the mailbox of the sender. Gmail’s comprehensive mail storage feature will now place a copy of Drive sharing notification emails in the sender’s Sent folder.
  • If you use smart hosting (through an outbound mail server), you can now capture and deliver these emails through your preferred mail gateway.
  • If you previously relied on outbound gateway settings to route Drive notifications, you can now use content compliance rulesor sending routing rules to route these messages, making it consistent with other mail routing features.

What’s not changing:

  • The “from” field is not changing. It will continue to be the sender when the recipient is a group, or drive-shares-noreply@google.comin all other cases, as it is today.
  • The message header fields are not changing. The envelope sender will still be [string]@doclist.bounces.google.com, not the actual account of the sender.
  • Request access notifications will not behave differently.

These changes will roll out to G Suite customers over a few days, starting on November 28, 2016.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Reference by Google.com