The G Suite is clearly a project that Google is far from finished with, as they have consistently made improvements to the suite and its included software. Recently, a few were added that could very much benefit a business’ users. Let’s go over a selection of these updates, and the benefits you could see as a result.
Accessible Out of Office Information
One of the most important things for you to know about your coworkers (and vice versa) is whether they are available and in the office at a given time. A new calendar feature from Google will allow you to see that Bill is on vacation when you try and reach out to him with a question. With contextual information presented to you and any of Bill’s contacts, you’ll know that your question will have to wait until Bill returns (the time and date of which is helpfully included).
Improvements to the Admin Console
As an administrator, you likely interact quite frequently with the Admin console. You may have noticed some changes already: not only have there been design changes, the integration of the entire interface has been overhauled and more context given about your many options within it.
Context Aware Access in G Suite
Speaking of context, context has a significant impact on who in your organization should see what. Frankly, some users just don’t need certain access permissions. G Suite’s rules for such considerations have been expanded upon, so permissions can be more granular than they would be when only based on organizational units. Now, with the identity of a user adding more information to each request, Enterprise, Enterprise for Education, Cloud Identity Premium, or Drive Enterprise users can better secure their data with more specific control over who can access it.
Online Autocorrect and Smart Compose
When a user is word processing on the online version of Google Docs, errors may now be corrected automatically to users of certain G Suite subscriptions… something that many users envied Microsoft Office for. Other G Suite subscriptions are also now offering Smart Compose predictions popping up as they type away in their Google Docs, as well.
Gmail Search Chips
Anyone with a G Suite subscription will likely appreciate the improvements to Gmail’s native search capabilities that help to specify what a user is trying to find. All Gmail searches will soon be followed by additional options to help narrow down the results found.
For example, maybe Bill had been sure to give you a resource to help you with your task before he left for vacation. If you were to just search for “Bill,” imagine how many results you would get from your emails, messages, invites, and chat entries. You’d probably find that resource, but it might take some doing.
Gmail’s additional search options, known as “Search Chips,” enable you to sift through your search results based on additional details. So, if you knew that Bill had sent you those resources as an email attachment, you could use the Search Chips to narrow your results to “emails from Bill that included attachments.”
While this nifty feature is currently restricted to G Suite users, all Gmail accounts will have access to this capability before long.
So, tell us, which of these new features do you see yourself using? Are there any we didn’t mention that you’re already looking forward to, or wish would be added? Head over to the comments and let us know what you’re thinking!