Posts

Google Drive reporting will show activity-based metrics in the Admin console

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As a G Suite admin, it’s important that you have a clear, reliable understanding of the actions taking place within your domain. Today, we are making changes to reporting in the Admin console to better reflect the Google Drive activity happening in your domain. First, we are shifting the definition of the metrics shown to reflect the change in file activity, such as “Google Documents added,” instead of absolute counts, such as total “Google Documents owned.” This change affects any dashboard or metric in the Admin console that reports on Drive files.

 

Aggregate Reports

We are also adding sharing visibility metrics to Admin console reporting. File sharing reports will now highlight which files have been shared outside of your domain vs. internally.

File Sharing Activity

These metrics were introduced earlier this year, but were only available through the Admin SDK Reports API; they’re now available from within the Admin console. This new presentation of metrics provides the most reliable and recent information available, directly in the Admin console.

Find more information on the changes to individual reports 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:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

 

Reference by Google.com

 

Turning down the in-app passcode feature in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides on iOS

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In the past, we’ve heard feedback that customers want more security for the files on their iOS devices, which led us to enable an in-app passcode feature specifically for the Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps. Over time, however, we’ve come to learn that it’s not just the content within Google Drive that’s valuable to you. Your contacts, calendars, and emails—it’s important that all of this is secure as well.

As a result, we began putting particular emphasis on supporting mobile device management (MDM) on iOS. For example, recent launches give G Suite admins greater visibility and control over enterprise-deployed iOS devices. In fact, with MDM, admins can enforce a passcode on all iOS devices that access corporate data, and they can wipe account data on a device if it’s compromised.

Owing to this increased investment in security on iOS devices, we’re ending support for the in-app passcode feature in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides on iOS devices signed in with G Suite accounts. Support will end on December 4th, 2017, and we’ll remove the feature entirely no earlier than January 8th, 2018.

We highly recommend that administrators use MDM to deploy passcode requirements at the system level on all of their iOS devices by following these instructions. This will provide better security than the in-app passcode feature in two key ways:

  • These passcode policies protect all of the content on your managed devices, including photos, contacts, and other content besides Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides content.
  • These passcode policies give you more control over passcode type, strength, expiration, and failure cases. See this Help Center article for more details.

Beginning on December 4th, 2017, any user signed in with a G Suite account who has this feature will see a message asking them to either acknowledge and turn off the functionality or to ignore the message temporarily. Beginning on January 8th, 2018, all new versions of the Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps will no longer contain in-app passcode functionality.

 

Reference by Google.com

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

Introducing limits on file access requests in Team Drives

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Starting today, in situations where a user is sent a link to a file in a Team Drive that they don’t have access to, we’ll only send the Request Access notification to the creator of the file, or a limited group of individuals who had relevant interaction with the Team Drive. We will no longer always send it to all members of the Team Drive.

This change not only helps to ensure that the members of your Team Drives aren’t receiving unnecessary emails, it also prevents unwanted oversharing of Team Drive content.

Please Note: We are continuing to add signals and improve the quality of our Request Access notifications so the members of your Team Drives can quickly gain access to content.

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

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

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

Google Drive firewall and proxy settings

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In order for users on your network to access Google Drive on the web, the Google Drive sync client, and Google Docs editors, your firewall rules should connect to the following hosts and ports. Otherwise, users may be blocked or denied access these services.

For the following hosts, [N] means any single decimal digit and * means any string not containing a period.

  • www.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • accounts.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • googledrive.com:443/HTTPS
  • drive.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.drive.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • docs.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.docs.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.c.docs.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • sheets.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • slides.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • talk.google.com:5222/XMPP (needed only for the Drive sync client)
  • gg.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • script.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • ssl.google-analytics.com:443/HTTPS
  • video.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • s.ytimg.com:443/HTTPS
  • apis.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.googleapis.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.googleusercontent.com:443/HTTPS
  • *.gstatic.com:443/HTTPS
  • lh[N].google.com:443/HTTPS
  • [N].client-channel.google.com:443/HTTPS
  • clients[N].google.com:443/HTTPS

Important notes

  • The IP addresses that various domain names resolve to don’t necessarily fall within any given address range.
  • Other Google properties may use the IP addresses that Drive uses.Google.com
  • Techniques that Drive uses to connect to Google servers depend on the browser, browser version, network conditions, etc.
  • Even if you don’t currently observe activity at the addresses listed above in a particular Google product there could be future activity.
  • The Drive sync client supports all unauthenticated proxies that are configured by the operating system.
  • The sync client supports the only DNS-based distribution of PAC files. PAC distribution over DHCP is not supported.

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

 

Insert videos from Google Drive in Google Slides

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Starting today, you can insert and play your Google Drive videos in Google Slides, in addition to videos from YouTube.

Insert Drive video in Slides

Once you’ve added a Drive video to your presentation, you can choose when to start and end it, whether it should autoplay when presenting, and whether it should be muted or play with audio. Simply right-click on the video and select Video options.

video option

If a person viewing your presentation doesn’t have permission to view a video embedded within it, they’ll be prompted to request access.

Note that while you can play Drive videos in Slides on the web and mobile, you can only insert them from the web application. For more details, 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

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

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