Easily convert data to people chips and update chip format in Google Sheets

What’s changing

Similar to the functionality in Google Sheets that helps you easily convert data to dropdown chips, you can now use bulk chip conversion for people chips. If you have a column of data that includes a variety of emails, Sheets will show a “Convert to people chips” suggestion when you click into your data range. By hovering over that indicator, you can preview the suggestion and then convert your data to people chips in one click. 
Convert to people chips” suggestion

In addition to the default format of display name, within the Format menu, you will now be able to update the format of your people chips to one of the following: 
  • Last name, First name 
  • Email address 
update the format of your people chips

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • To insert people chips on your own, type “@” followed by a name or email address. To change the format of the people chips, select a cell or cells with people chips, go to Format > Smart chips > select the desired format. 
    • To turn off this feature, go to Tools > Suggestion controls > (deselect) Enable dropdown chip suggestions. 
    •  Visit the Help Center to learn more about inserting smart chips in your Google Sheets. 

Rollout pace 

People Chip Formats: 
People Chip Suggestions: 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources 

Now generally available: improved syncing experience between Google Calendar and third-party calendars

What’s changing

In June of 2024, we introduced an improved email notification experience between Google Calendar and third-party calendar services, like Outlook, via beta. Beginning today, this update is now generally available. 
Specifically, this update addresses feedback we’ve heard from our customers regarding the syncing experience from Google Calendar to third-party calendars. The syncing experience is now more reliable and gives recipients an effective way to filter out Calendar emails that may have cluttered their inbox.  
  • Google Calendar will send additional emails to improve event sync accuracy when users make updates to recurring events. 
  • Email notifications purely intended to sync information will display a banner in the email body with instructions on how to create inbox filters to hide similar emails, which can help to minimize clutter in recipients’ inbox.
  • At scale, Outlook system administrators can use Microsoft’s Powershell to implement an email filter rule for these messages for all users.

Additional details

With this release, we have also updated a user invisible email header, Envelope-Sender address (also called Return-Path or bounce) to improve reliability of DMARC alignment when delivering to third-party recipients.

Getting started

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 3, 2024
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 12, 2025

Availability

  • Available for all Google Workspace customers

Resources

Now generally available: Easily migrate files from Microsoft OneDrive to Google Drive

What’s changing

In October 2024, we expanded our data migration services to include the ability for Admins to transfer OneDrive data to Google Drive. This functionality is now generally available. You can migrate the files of up to 100 users at a time, including the files corresponding access permissions with shared members. 
With the general availability release, we’ve also added additional settings which admins can use to: 
  • Specify files to migrate within a certain date range.
  • Exclude specific file formats and large files. 
  • Skip uploading an identity map and allow Google to automatically map source and target users instead. 
Now that the tool is generally available, with more customization settings, you can quickly and easily migrate your data to Workspace at scale while minimizing disruption for end users. For more information, please refer to our original beta announcement.
Example of a completed migration.

Getting started

  • Admins: This migration can only be performed by super admins. Visit the Help Center to learn more about migrating files from a OneDrive account.
  • End users: There is no end user action required.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to Google Workspace 
  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus, and the Teaching and Learning add-on
  • Essentials Starter and Essentials,
  • Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Nonprofits

Resources

Know who an event is shared with when using shared Google Calendars

What’s changing 

Users can have one of the following access permissions for shared Google Calendars
  • “See only free/busy (hide details)” 
  • “See all event details” 
  • “Make changes to events” 
  • “Make changes and manage sharing” 

The “Make changes to events” permission enables users to create events on shared calendars, but when those events are created, the user does not know which other users the event is shared with. 

To improve upon experience and ensure users are aware of who they are sharing content with, users with the ability to “Make changes to events” can now see the members of the shared calendar, i.e. who their events are shared with. 
users with the ability to “Make changes to events” can now see the members of the shared calendar, i.e. who their events are shared with.

Getting started 

  • Admins: As an admin, you can control how much calendar information people in your organization can share with users external to your organization. You can also set the default level of sharing for users within your organization. Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting Calendar sharing options. 
  • End users: On Calendars with “make changes to events” access permission, you will now see the members of calendars. You can control the access permission of other users for your Calendars only on Calendars with “make changes and manage sharing” access permissions. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing your calendar with someone. 
  • Developers: For Calendars where a user has “make changes to events” (aka “writer”) permissions, the Acl.list and Acl.get method will newly return the members of the shared calendar and Acl.watch will notify about changes to members. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources 

Google Meet adds more screen reader options for in-meeting reactions

What’s changing 

To improve access for users with vision disabilities, we are adding several more options for how reactions in Google Meet are experienced through screen readers. You can access and adjust the settings at any time during the meeting by pressing Shift+R or from the Settings menu (Three-dot overflow button > Settings > Reactions > Accessibility). The following settings have been added for in-meeting reactions: 
  • Don’t announce reactions: No announcements or sound when a reaction is received. 
  • Play a sound for all reactions: Play a sound when a reaction is received. 
  • Announce all reactions: Announce only the emoji when a reaction is received, for example “Thumbs up”. 
  • Announce all reactions and senders: Announce the emoji and who sent the received reaction, for example “Elisa Beckett and 2 others reacted with thumbs up”. 
Press Shift+R or go to Settings menu (Three-dot overflow button) > Settings > Reactions > Accessibility to adjust your settings.

We hope that these new settings help you configure the experience to suit your needs.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available for Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

Developers can now add form field validation to Google Workspace add-ons and Google Chat app cards

What’s changing

Starting today, Workspace add-ons and Chat app developers can add client-side input validation to Chat apps and add-ons. 
Specifically, the card UI now supports required form field validation on the date-time picker, the multi select menu, the drop down menu and text input widgets via the Action API for add-ons and Chat apps. Additionally, text inputs now support input type and format validation with input length limits via the Validation API for add-ons and Chat apps
As a result, developers can ensure data accuracy and improve their app’s user experience by catching errors before information is submitted. 
Example of the form validating if the user has populated all the required fields before submitting a form.

Example of the form validating if the user has populated all the required fields before submitting a form.
Example of the form validating the input type for text fields. The supported types are text, integers, decimals, email and emoji.

Example of the form validating the input type for text fields. The supported types are text, integers, decimals, email and emoji.
Example of the form limiting the allowed text input length to a specified length.

Example of the form limiting the allowed text input length to a specified length.

Getting started 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers 

Resources 

Additional improvements to everyday actions in Google Sheets

What’s changing

Last year, we announced that we’ve doubled the calculation speed in Google Sheets, which improves the speed of actions like formulas, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and more, regardless of your file size. 
Today, we’re excited to announce additional improvements available for everyday actions in Sheets:
  • Pasting data is now up to 50% faster when you’re pasting from one spreadsheet to another
  • Filter conditions can now be set up to 50% faster than before 
  • Spreadsheets now load existing data up to 30% faster 

Who’s impacted 

End users 

Why it matters

These changes help various users work faster and more efficiently in a variety of scenarios. For example: 
  • A data analyst can paste small or large quantities of data from an existing spreadsheet to a new one in a quicker manner. 
  • A campaign manager can add filtering conditions to better understand the performance of a campaign at a certain time faster. 
  • A small business owner can quickly see their data load. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about Google Sheets.

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources 

NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus now available as a Google Workspace core service with enterprise-grade data protection

What’s changing

NotebookLM is a powerful AI-powered research assistant that helps users accelerate learning and knowledge sharing. Grounded in data that users in your organization provide, NotebookLM becomes an instant expert in those sources so users can get insights, share knowledge and learn on-to-go with Audio Overviews. 
NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus, previously introduced as additional services, are now included as core services for Workspace Business and Enterprise customers. Covered under your Google Workspace terms of service, these apps offer the same enterprise-grade data protections and level of technical support as other Workspace core services. 
NotebookLM helps users: 
  • Understand a complex topic faster and more in depth. After uploading files, recordings or even research papers, users can ask NotebookLM to explain multifaceted concepts in simple terms, provide real-world examples, and reinforce their understanding. 
  • Create a polished presentation outline, complete with key talking points and supporting evidence. 
  • Identify trends, generate new product ideas, and uncover hidden opportunities. 
  • Get insights and answers from a shared, centralized knowledge hub to maintain consistency and keep teams aligned and informed. 
NotebookLM Plus includes the components mentioned above in addition to enhanced capabilities that enable users to: 
  • Get 5x more Audio Overviews, queries, notebooks, and sources per notebook. 
  • Customize the style and length of their notebooks’s responses.
  • Create shared notebooks for their team and get usage analytics. 
In summary, users have access to a personalized AI research assistant that they can use with confidence knowing their sources, queries and responses stay within their organization. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users (18+) 

Why you’d use it 

Today, businesses of all sizes use it to supercharge their productivity and collaboration. For example, sales teams can add their product roadmap and feature specs, competitor benchmarking analysis, customer audio interviews, and market research to NotebookLM. As a result, NotebookLM can help you prepare for customer meetings by creating an account plan to help your team find information faster and better engage with customers. Marketers can use NotebookLM to help summarize customer trends and purchase behaviors, draft communications, create campaign briefs, and more–all based on market research, customer segmentation analysis, and marketing roadmaps. 

Additional details 

NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus are available in 180+ regions where Gemini API is available and currently supports 35+ languages. For Audio Overviews, while you can upload sources from all supported languages, the spoken audio is currently only available in English. 
Your uploads, queries and the model’s responses are not used to train models and are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used for product improvement without permission. Your data remains your data and any files uploaded, queries and responses are not shared outside your organization’s trust boundary. 
Users can only upload sources from Workspace that they have permission to access. Furthermore, they can control who has access to their notebooks and set more granular permissions within each. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace

Availability 

NotebookLM is available as a core service for Google Workspace: 

  • Business Starter 
  • Frontline Starter and Standard 
  • Essentials Starter, Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Nonprofits 

NotebookLM Plus is available as a core service for Google Workspace: 

  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 

Anyone who previously purchased these add-ons will also receive NotebookLM Plus as a core service: 

  • Gemini Business* 
  • Gemini Enterprise* 
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details. 

Resources 

Layout selection now available between Google Meet hardware and Zoom Rooms calls

What’s changing

We’re expanding interoperability support between Google Meet devices and Zoom Rooms to include support for changing the meeting layout. This gives you the flexibility to choose a layout that is best suited to improve focus and engagement during your meetings.

If you’re joining a Google Meet call from Zoom Rooms, you can change your layout by selecting the “View” option. You can select between the tiled view, speaker spotlight view, or sidebar view.

Selecting your meeting layout on a Google Meet call using Zoom Rooms hardware



If you’re joining Zoom Meetings from a Google Meet hardware device, you can change your layout from the device settings by navigating to the “Change layout” option. You can choose between the gallery or speaker view.
Selecting your meeting layout on a Zoom call using a Meet hardware device

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Zoom interop on Google Meet hardware is available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware devices that have not yet reached their auto-update expiration date.
  • Meet interop on Zoom Rooms is available to all Zoom Rooms customers on a supported Zoom Rooms device or appliance. Note that your device may not fully support the feature until its manufacturer has pushed the latest Zoom Rooms software update to its devices.
  • Please refer to the Zoom Support page to see the most up-to-date list on supported devices and platforms.

Resources

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – January 31, 2025

New updates 

There are no new updates to share this week. Please see below for a recap of published announcements.

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.

Generate charts and valuable insights using Gemini in Google Sheets 
We’re making it easier for Sheets users, ranging from small business owners to marketing analysts, to visualize and analyze data using Gemini in Sheets. | Learn more about charts and insights in Sheets. 


Layout selection now available between Google Meet hardware and Zoom Rooms calls 
We’re expanding interoperability support between Google Meet devices and Zoom Rooms to include support for changing the meeting layout. | Learn more about layout selection. 
Curate and customize the Chrome Web Store for your organization 
Admins can now customize the Chrome Web Store experience for their users with several new options. | Learn more about the Chrome Web Store. 
Use Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps to generate images in seven additional languages 
Following the recent announcement of being able to use Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps in seven additional languages, we’re excited to announce that image generation is now supported in the those languages as well. | Learn more about generating images in seven additional languages. 
Better understand app access with the new Access Evaluation log event 
We’re introducing a new log event, Access Evaluation, which will help admins better understand how security policies affect their users’ access to OAuth apps. | Learn more about the new Access Evaluation log event.
Logitech Android devices for Google Meet can now join Webex and Zoom calls
We’re expanding this interoperability to include support for Cisco Webex and Zoom on Logitech Android-based hardware devices for Google Meet. | Learn more about Logitech Android devices.
More options now available to customize digital signage on your Google Meet hardware
In the coming weeks, admins will be able to use their Comeen or StratosMedia digital signage content on their Google Meet hardware devices. | Learn more about digital signage on your Google Meet hardware.