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. 

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 

• 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. 

People Chip Formats: 

• Rapid Release domains: Available now. 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 18, 2025 

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 6, 2025 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 3, 2025 

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

Resources 

• Google Help: Insert smart chips in your Google Sheets 
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Easily convert data to dropdown chips in Google Sheets

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.

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.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

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. 

• 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. 

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 4, 2025 

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

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Set Calendar sharing options 
• Google Help: Share your calendar with someone

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”. 

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

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

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. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources 

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 

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. 

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

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now. 

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

• Google Help: Google Sheets training and help 
• Workspace Blog: Doubling calculation speed and other new innovations in Google Sheets 
• Case Study: Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from JavaScript to WasmGC

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. 

Admins and end users (18+) 

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. 

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. 

• Admins: 
• No action is required from you. However, we recommend that you review NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus coming to Google Workspace for more details about qualifying Google Workspace editions, default service settings for NotebookLM, and how to turn this service on or off. 
• Learn more about the available admin controls and our commitment to you in the Privacy Hub. 
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus.

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 5, 2025 

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* 

• Keyword Blog: 5 ways to use NotebookLM Plus for your business 
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Turn Google NotebookLM on or off for users 
• Google Workspace Admin Help: NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus coming to Google Workspace as core services 
• Google Help: Get started with NotebookLM and NotebookLM Plus

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.

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.