by | Jun 21, 2024 | News
What's changing
For all Google Workspace customers and users with personal accounts, we've expanded support for
closed captioning to include the following languages in beta*, bringing the total language count to 87:
Azerbaijani Czech Greek Icelandic Kazakh Lao Lithuanian Malay Serbian Swahili Ukrainian *Newly supported languages are denoted with a "beta" tag as we continue to optimise performance.
For Gemini for Google Workspace customers, we are adding 52 languages to translated captions with full language support, which means these languages can be translated to and from any other fully supported language. We are also launching full language support for 6 previously launched languages. Translated captions now fully support 69 languages which allows for over 4,600 language pairs:
-Afrikaans
-Albanian
-Amharic
-Arabic
-Armenian
-Azerbaijani
-Basque
-Bengali
-Bulgarian
-Burmese
-Catalan
-Chinese (Simplified)*
–Chinese (Mandarin)*
-Czech
-Dutch**
-English*
-Estonian
-Filipino
-Finnish
-French*
-Galician
-Georgian
-German*
-Greek
-Gujarati
-Hebrew
-Hindi*
-Hungarian
-Icelandic
-Indonesian**
-Italian*
-Japanese**
-Javanese
-Kannada
-Kazakh
-Khmer
-Korean
-Lao
-Latvian
-Lithuanian
-Macedonian
-Malay
-Malayalam
-Marathi
-Mongolian
-Nepali
-Norwegian
-Persian (Farsi)
-Polish
-Portuguese*
-Romanian
-Russian*
-Serbian
-Sinhala
-Slovak
-Slovenian
-Spanish*
-Sundanese
-Swahili
-Swedish**
-Tamil
-Telugu
-Thai*
-Turkish**
-Ukrainian
-Urdu
-Uzbek
-Vietnamese**
- Zulu
* Full language support previously launched
** Previously only English into these languages was supported. For more information, see our previous announcement on the Workspace Updates blog.
Additional details
Update on the availability of translated captions for some Google Workspace customers
As we
previously announcedIn the future, translated captions in Google Meet will be exclusively available to Gemini for Google Workspace customers. This will go into effect starting January 22, 2025, when existing and new customers will no longer have access to translated captions through their Google Workspace subscription. At this time, translated captions will only be available in the following Gemini add-ons: Gemini Enterprise, AI Meetings and Messaging, and Gemini Education premium.
We will continue to invest in and improve translated captions with the additional languages and automatic language detection. In addition to translated captions, the Gemini for Workspace add-ons offer other generative AI features such as enhanced audio and image quality on meetings, take notes for me (in alpha), and more - use this link to
learn more.
Getting started
End users: These features are available by default. Visit the Help Centre to learn more about
captions and
translated captions in Google Meet. Meeting participants: You can use live translated captions if the meeting is organised by a user with an eligible Google Workspace edition. Closed captions are available for all users.
Rollout pace
Live captions language expansion:
This feature is available now. Translated captions expansion:
Captions: Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts Translated Captions: Available for Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Education Premium, and AI Meetings & Messaging add-ons
Resources
by | Jun 20, 2024 | News
What's changing
We're expanding
visitor sharing, a feature that provides secure, pincode-based collaboration over sensitive data with people, to include client-side encrypted files. This allows users to securely collaborate with external partners on sensitive Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides files, while maintaining the confidentiality of the information with the granular control of encryption keys, identity verification and user permissions.
Getting started
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Enterprise Plus
Education Standard and Plus
Resources
by | Jun 20, 2024 | News
What's changing
Last yearIn 2006, we introduced interactive questions for YouTube videos in Google Classroom. Since then, educators have been able to turn a passive watching experience into an engaging one, while improving students' understanding of a subject.
The current process to create interactive questions requires an educator to manually choose a timestamp, come up with questions, and insert correct answers and distractors. To improve upon this experience and save educators time, we're introducing AI-suggested questions that educators can easily attach to the video based on its content.
Before assigning the interactive video activity, Educators will be able to edit the suggested questions ahead of attaching the YouTube video to the assignment.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
This update helps educators add interactive questions to YouTube videos more quickly and efficiently.
Additional details
Even when using the suggestions feature, educators can still edit, remove or create their own interactive questions. Note that suggested questions are only available for certain videos in English.
Getting started
This feature is available now.
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | Jun 20, 2024 | News
What's changing
In 2019, we launched Read Along as an Android reading app to help young readers have fun while learning to read. Read Along has an in-app reading buddy who guides readers along as they read aloud, offering assistance when they struggle, and rewarding them with stars when they're successful.
Today, we are excited to introduce Read Along in Google Classroom, a new feature that helps students build their independent reading skills by enabling teachers to assign differentiated reading activities, based on Lexile® measure, grade level, or phonics skills. With this feature, a digital reading buddy, Diya, gives students real-time assistance and pronunciation support, with the help of AI. Read Along offers engaging and inspiring reading assignments, while providing educators with insights on students' reading progress over time, including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension.
Educators can also:
Access 800+ fiction and non-fiction books in the Read Along library within Classroom, including texts from publishers like
Heggerty and
ReadWorks. Each book is categorised by Lexile® level, grade level, or phonics skills and some have comprehension questions. Personalise the experience for each learner by assigning books with the right difficulty level based on a student's reading abilities. Check for understanding by assigning books with comprehension questions. Read Along in Classroom will be available globally, so students around the world can practice their reading skills in English.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
Read Along in Classroom provides fun and engaging reading assignments for students, while also enabling educators to track performance and more easily identify students who need extra support. Some key highlights include the ability to:
Help boost reading skills with activities for each student based on their reading level or phonics skills. Provide instant help for students, with the help of AI-powered reading buddy, Diya to give students in-the-moment assistance on correct pronunciation and more. Get important insights about your students' progress including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension. Support English language learners in building their reading skills, with additional support in Spanish
Additional details
Read Along is now a Workspace Service for Google Workspace for Education customers. Admins will now find this service listed under Workspace Services in Admin Console. Read Along in Classroom will be available to all Google Workspace for Education users with their school issued account and will be governed by the
Workspace for Education Terms of Service, with data collection and use being governed by the
Google Workspace for Education Privacy Notice.
Getting started
This feature is available now.
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | Jun 18, 2024 | News
What's changing
Today, we're excited to introduce a new feature that will enable teachers to visually illustrate concepts being assessed in practice sets. Now, teachers can import images, like graphs, charts or photos, into practice sets using files from Google Drive or directly from their computer.
In addition to image editing capabilities within practice sets, this update will be extended to the Forms conversion workflows so if a teacher imports a Form into a practice set any images you have in the Forms will also import.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
Including visuals in practice sets will provide students with more engaging assignments.
Getting started
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | May 30, 2024 | News
What's changing
Drive log events provide admins with visibility into their organisation's user activity in Drive. Previously, download activity for files triggered by the use of Google Workspace APIs was not visible to admins as a Drive log event.
Getting started
Rollout pace
This feature is now available
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Business Starter, Standard, Plus Enterprise Standard, Plus Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | May 24, 2024 | News
2 New updates
Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are available to all Google Workspace customers, and are fully launched or in the process of rolling out. Rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete if launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time. If not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete.
Expanding row limits in Connected Sheets for BigQuery
Last yearThis week, we're excited to announce that this has been expanded to 100,000 rows for pivot tables and 500,000 rows for extracts (with a cell limit of 5 million). This week, we're excited to announce this has been expanded to 100,000 rows for pivot tables and 500,000 rows for extracts (with a cell limit of 5 million). This will allow you to analyse even more results in Sheets from the petabytes of data in BigQuery. | Rolling out to
Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains now. | Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. | Learn more about
analysing & refreshing BigQuery data in Google Sheets using Connected Sheets,
Google Sheets limitations, and
getting started with BigQuery data in Google Sheets.
Custom text fields are now available for eSignature in Google Docs and Google Drive
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.
Filter, sort, and display your Google Meet hardware devices by product service status
You can currently filter, sort, and display your Google Meet hardware devices by whether they are online, offline, or experiencing an application load-failure. This week, we're expanding these parameters to include whether the Calendar and Jamboard services are turned OFF. | Learn more about
filtering, sorting and displaying Meet hardware devices. Introducing adaptive audio in Google Meet: creating ad-hoc meeting spaces with multiple laptops
With "adaptive audio," you and your team can join Google Meet using multiple laptops in close proximity without awkward echos and audio feedback. | Learn more about
adaptive audio in Google Meet. Send emails to spaces in Google Chat
After a space manager generates an email address for a space, members (or anyone in your domain with the email address) can send or forward any email to that space. This provides a great way for teams to easily triage or discuss email content with stakeholders within the space. The email will appear as a clickable card showing a snippet of the email in the designated space. | Learn more about
sending emails to spaces. Manage spaces at scale with new Chat API functionality
We are pleased to announce the launch for additional features of Chat API via the Developer Preview Programme, enabling space management at scale on behalf of admin users. These new features are available to all users currently enrolled in the Developer Preview Programme. | Learn more about
new Chat API functionality.
Introducing Gemini offerings for Google Workspace for Education customers
Expanding voice typing and automatic captions to additional browsers
We're expanding support for voice typing and captions features to additional browsers, such as Edge and Safari. When a user turns on voice typing or captions, the web browser controls the speech-to-text service, determines how speech is processed, and then sends text data to Google Docs and Google Slides. | Learn more about
voice typing features in additional browsers.
For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What's new in Google Workspace (recent releases).
by | May 30, 2024 | News
What's changing
Starting today, we're introducing Gemini for Workspace usage reports in the Admin console. This report gives admins an overarching view of how Gemini is being used in their organisation, specifically:
Assigned Gemini licences, Active Gemini users, And the number of users who are using Gemini over time.
Gemini usage reports in the Admin console
These reports will help admins understand how many users are using Gemini features and make informed decisions about expanding Gemini further within their organisations. We plan to introduce more reporting features over time, such as the ability to filter these reports by Organisational Units and Groups.
Additional details
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons.
We plan to introduce Gemini reports for the Gemini Education and Gemini Premium add-ons in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to the Workspace Updates blog for more information.
by | May 30, 2024 | News
What's changing
Starting May 28, 2024, the organisation name and department will be displayed on personal information cards and in the Contacts sidebar. This information provides helpful context about the people you're interacting with and displaying this additional information will help you learn more about who you're collaborating with, and more.
Getting started
Admins: Admins can populate user data via the Admin console or via the Admin SDK API with the list and update commands. You can also visit the Help Centre to learn more about adding information to a user's Directory profile. Important note: Some customers may have set both organisation name and organisation department for their users, where department includes the organisation name. We have notified impacted customers via email, but we recommend that you check your settings and update your users' organisation department to prevent duplicate organisation names from showing. You can do this via the Admin console or via the Admin SDK API with the list and update commands.
End users: You can view this information within Google Contacts (contacts.google.com), while hovering over a user, or from the Contacts sidebar.
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for all Google Workspace customers
Resources
by | May 30, 2024 | News
What's changing
Last year, we announced in beta the ability to view and edit client-side encrypted Excel files with Google Sheets. Starting today, we're rolling it out in general availability for select customers.
Additional details
With this release:
You can only view and edit .xslx Excel file types - additional Excel and tabular file types are not supported.The maximum supported file size is 100MB.The maximum number of cells that can be opened is 10 million.
As we continue to improve Office editing in encrypted Google Sheets, you may encounter incompatibilities for certain features. Some features are not displayed and/or editable, but will be preserved in the document and viewable in Microsoft Office. Other features may be lost or altered in the latest version of the file when it is edited in Google Sheets. You will see a notification within the document if editing will cause any features to be lost or altered.
Getting started
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Enterprise PlusEducation Standard and Plus
Resources
