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For companies that use Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite), the leader in cloud-based productivity apps is always making changes to give users the best experience possible.
So what’s new with Workspace?
Assign Tasks From Google Docs
If you use Docs to collaborate, you’re probably already using the commenting feature to @ someone and assign them a task. But this just sends them an email saying they’ve been assigned to something. You hope they open the email instead of deleting it like other ‘New activity in the following document’ emails.
With a new update, you can easily create and assign a checklist item in the Doc to yourself or a colleague, and it shows up right in their Tasks list. (On the topic of your Task list, have you noticed the new feature that lets you ‘star’ important tasks?)
Better Insight Into How You Spend Your Time
Google rolled out their Time Insights in Calendar feature back in 2021 to help you understand how you spend time in meetings (i.e. which colleagues take up the most of your valuable time). The recent update allows you to assign a colored label to any calendar event to track all of your time — not just time spent in certain meetings or with certain people). Common labels might be work, personal, and school. But you can customize the colors and labels to track anything, like your time on specific work projects.
Inline Emojis Now In Google Docs ?
Nothing earth-shattering here but we ARE an emoji culture, so why not? If you’re collaborating with colleagues, now you can express yourself with emojis right in your Google Docs. You can access the emoji panel by clicking Insert, or just type @ and a reaction, like @smile for a quick menu of smiley emojis.
Draft Emails In Google Docs
While we’re talking about new @ features, you can now start an email right in a Google Doc from the @ menu. Just click ’email draft’ under Building Blocks. A draft email box appears right in your Doc, allowing you to stay focused and not have to switch over to your Gmail app. When you’re ready to send, just click the little blue “M” on the left and it will automatically compose a new draft in Gmail.
More Flexibility To Functions In Sheets
If you’re a Sheets wizard, a new update lets you name custom Functions and use them across multiple Sheets. This is especially helpful for long or complex formulas where only the spreadsheet owner really knows what they do. Naming functions makes them more comprehensible and easier for colleagues to reuse in other sheets to save time and automate calculations.
Admin Alerts For Critical Changes To Workspace Configurations
Workspace admins will now get security alerts when a highly sensitive or critical change is made to the configurations. If the admin did not make the change, the alert would allow them to more quickly launch the security investigation tool and mitigate potentially malicious activity.
New App Alert: Google Tables Beta Was A Success!
Last year, Google launched a beta version of Tables, a collaborative database that allows users to track and visualize various types of business data (service tickets, vendors, employees, assets, etc). Google is moving forward with a fully-supported cloud product, which should be completed within the next year. Until that time, you can still try out the beta version.
These are just a few of the recent updates Google has made to make your Workspace experience more productive and enjoyable. To stay on top of updates, check out the Google Workspace release calendar from time to time or subscribe to their newsletter.
Want to get started with Google Workspace?
PixelPeople is a member of the Google Partners Program, and we would love to help you get started. You can learn more about Google Workspace here and even sign up online, knowing that we’re Google Workspace experts and we’ve got your back.
