Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category

 Check out our Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category to learn more about Google Workspace.

Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category

 Check out our Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category to learn more about Google Workspace.

Allow dropdown chips to have multiple selections in Google Sheets

 Previously, dropdowns could only have one value selected in Google Sheets. Starting this week, we’re introducing the ability to allow for multiple selections within a dropdown. This functionality is useful in scenarios when multiple project milestones, statuses, or teams are applicable for one item. | Rolling out to Rapid Release domains now; launch to Scheduled Release domains planned for August 12, 2024. | Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. | Learn more about inserting dropdown chips in Google Sheets. 

Taken from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/07/release-notes-07-26-2024.html

The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules in July 2024 The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules in July 2024

  The below was taken from this Google Blog Post.

What’s changing

Currently, we offer two tools with similar functionality for users in Google Calendar: appointment slots and appointment schedules. In the last several years, appointment schedules have become the more advanced tool, offering a smoother booking experience and more powerful features. 

To create a cohesive user experience in Calendar, as of July 18, 2024, the appointment slots feature will be replaced by appointment schedules. 

Between now and July 18, 2024, we encourage users to explore and familiarize themselves with appointment schedules. All existing appointment slots will remain active until July 18, 2024, however we recommend creating new appointments using appointment schedules moving forward. Starting on July 18, 2024, the appointment slots booking pages will no longer be available, and all new appointments will need to be booked through appointment schedules. Visit this comprehensive Help Center resource for detailed information about appointment schedules. 

Why it matters​​

The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules, a feature-rich appointment booking system that offers a smoother booking experience and more powerful features. 

Visit the Help Center to learn more about features and how to set up appointment schedules. 

Getting started 

• Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating an appointment schedule and customizing your appointment availability. Users that are organizers or editors of appointment slots will soon see in-product banners guiding them to transition to use appointment schedules. 

Rollout pace 

• Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) beginning July 18, 2024 

Resources 

• Google Help: Learn about appointment schedules in Google Calendar 
• Google Help: Use Google Calendar appointment slots 
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Improving the Google Calendar appointment scheduling experience with new features 
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Paid appointment bookings now available in Google Calendar

Google Workspace Storage Limits

In 2021 Google announced a storage policy change that eliminated the unlimited Google Workspace storage option.

There are now reports that Google is alerting users with a high storage usage that our organization's storage is approaching 100%. If you have any data that is of a personal nature (i.e., not educational, research, Manhattan College work related), please find a permanent storage solution without involving the college's pooled storage.

This summer a detailed timeline for this project will be announced.

Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category

 Check out our Google Workspace Knowledge Base Category to learn more about Google Workspace.

The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules in July 2024 The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules in July 2024

 The below was taken from this Google Blog Post.

What’s changing

Currently, we offer two tools with similar functionality for users in Google Calendar: appointment slots and appointment schedules. In the last several years, appointment schedules have become the more advanced tool, offering a smoother booking experience and more powerful features. 

To create a cohesive user experience in Calendar, as of July 18, 2024, the appointment slots feature will be replaced by appointment schedules. 

Between now and July 18, 2024, we encourage users to explore and familiarize themselves with appointment schedules. All existing appointment slots will remain active until July 18, 2024, however we recommend creating new appointments using appointment schedules moving forward. Starting on July 18, 2024, the appointment slots booking pages will no longer be available, and all new appointments will need to be booked through appointment schedules. Visit this comprehensive Help Center resource for detailed information about appointment schedules. 

Why it matters​​

The current appointment slots feature in Google Calendar will be replaced by appointment schedules, a feature-rich appointment booking system that offers a smoother booking experience and more powerful features. 

Visit the Help Center to learn more about features and how to set up appointment schedules. 

Getting started 

• Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating an appointment schedule and customizing your appointment availability. Users that are organizers or editors of appointment slots will soon see in-product banners guiding them to transition to use appointment schedules. 

Rollout pace 

• Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) beginning July 18, 2024 

Resources 

• Google Help: Learn about appointment schedules in Google Calendar 
• Google Help: Use Google Calendar appointment slots 
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Improving the Google Calendar appointment scheduling experience with new features 
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Paid appointment bookings now available in Google Calendar

ITS Blog Subscription Email Outage

Update: 4/16/24 11:03AM the blog subscription service if back up and running. 

It has come to our attention that the email subscription to the blog stopped working in December. We are investigating.

Tech Tip: Pin Messages in Google Meet so that Participants Joining After the Message Was Sent Can See It

 Below is copied from the Google Workspace Blog.

 

 

Updates

This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.

Pin chat messages in Google Meet

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

What’s changing 

You can now pin messages to the top of the meeting chat. Pinned messages will appear for all users, even if they join the meeting after the message was initially sent. This makes it easy to ensure that important messages - like links to presentations - are displayed prominently and easily accessible by meeting participants.

 

 

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: 
  • Meeting participants can pin and unpin their own messages. Meeting hosts can unpin anyone’s message.
  • You can pin a message by hovering over it in the chat window and selecting the pin icon. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sending chat messages.

 

Use the pin icon to pin or or unpin a message.

Resources

• Google Help: Send chat messages to video meeting participants

Sort, filter and manage comments faster in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

 

What’s changing

We’re introducing an improved comments experience in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to help you find and take action on comments easier than ever before. While you will continue to see and interact with the comments experience you’re familiar with, you’ll also notice updates to our comment cards, icons, and more. 

You can explore new and familiar ways to interact with comments by going to View > Comments and selecting: 

• Show all comments: opens up a full-length view to deep dive into multiple comments more easily in Docs, Sheets or Slides. Now you can use updated search and filter functionality to focus on the most relevant comments. You will also notice a curated ‘For you’ list, which surfaces all the comments you need to take action on. 
• Expand comments (in Google Docs and Slides): shows comments next to the document or presentation content so you can review comments and content together. 
• Minimize comments (in Google Docs and Sheets): reduces comments to icons so you can have a more focused view of your work in Docs and Sheets. This setting provides a quick preview with high level information about who is commenting when you hover over the minimized icons. 
• Hide comments: hides comments from view when you want to focus solely on the content in Docs, Sheets or Slides. 

Why you’d use it 

With this update, you can now find and organize comments more easily, enabling seamless collaboration with others on Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. 

Rollout pace 

• Rapid Release domains: Available now
• Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on March 1, 2024 

Availability 

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

Resources 

• Google Help: Use comments, action items, & emoji reactions

Copied from Google's Blog post: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/02/manage-comments-faster-google-docs-sheets-slides.html

Creating more immersive presentations in Google Slides

 

What’s changing

Starting today, speaker spotlight in Slides, an experience that lets presenters insert their video feed directly into their Slides content, is generally available for select Google Workspace editions. 

With speaker spotlight, you can deliver your message with greater impact by embedding your camera feed directly into your Slides presentations. This feature helps keep your audience focused on you and can help make your content more compelling. 

Users can insert a variety of speaker spotlight shapes directly into their slides and then format them to their liking. Once in slideshow mode, your camera feed will appear in that shape so you can deliver a captivating presentation. Speaker spotlight also integrates seamlessly with Meet and Slides Recordings for more engaging virtual or recorded presentations. 

Who’s impacted 

End users 

Why it’s important 

Speaker spotlight helps you better connect with audiences using video during live presentations, which is especially useful when working in a hybrid environment. 

Rollout pace 

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 15, 2024 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 6, 2024 

Availability 

• Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus 

Resources 

• Google Help: Use speaker spotlight

Copied from Google Blog post: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/02/create-immersive-presentations-in-google-slides.html

Google Meet hosts can pin multiple tiles for all meeting participants

 

What’s changing 

If you’re a meeting host or co-host, you can now pin up to three specific tiles for all meeting participants. By doing so, you can help ensure the meeting is focused on key presentations and speakers. This is especially helpful for large meeting scenarios like webinars where hosts need to focus everyone on particular content. Note that meeting participants can unpin these tiles on their screen if they wish.

This feature will be available for Google Meet on the web and mobile devices.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin impact or action required.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about pinning content in Google Meet.

Rollout pace

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 5, 2024

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

• Google Help: Pin or mute Google Meet participants

Copied from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/02/pin-multiple-tiles-for-meeting-participants-google-meet.html

Create shareable video presentations in Google Slides

 

What’s changing

We’re introducing slides recordings, a new Google Slides feature that lets you easily record yourself presenting, and then share the presentation with others to view when it works for them. From webinars, to employee trainings, to lessons for your classroom, slides recordings help you effortlessly record visual and engaging presentations without ever leaving Slides. 

Why it’s important 

This feature helps you share more engaging video presentations with others for easy, flexible viewing. Whether sharing video content inside of your company or externally, with slides recordings you don’t need to use a separate video recording tool. 

Additional details 

You can use your computer's built-in or external camera and microphone hardware to add your voice and webcam feed to your recording. 

Getting started 

• Visit the Help Center to learn more about recording a slideshow, finding your recording, sharing your recording, removing a recording and more. Please note that recording-creation is only accessible using Google Chrome on your Desktop. Recordings cannot be created on mobile devices and are not accessible from the Slides mobile app. However, you can find and view your recording using the Drive mobile app. 

Rollout pace 

• Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 28, 2023 

Resources 

• Google Help: Use slides recording in Google Slides

Reposted from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/11/create-shareable-video-presentations-in-google-slides.html

Updates to the Google Drive scanner on Android & iOS devices

 

What’s changing

For years, users have had the ability to scan physical documents, such as a receipt or passport, using the Google Drive app on Android devices. And earlier this year, we added additional functionality to recommend relevant title suggestions for scanned documents by leveraging machine learning. 

Today, we’re introducing additional enhancements to the Drive scanner on Android devices, which now powers the Google Pixel camera and includes improvements to the scanner experience when capturing content. Specifically, you’ll notice: 

• Automatic capture to help you get the best scan quickly 
• Camera viewfinder that helps you position your document for the highest quality scan 
• The option to import from your camera roll 
• A faster way to initialize a scan with a new scanner button 

We’re also expanding the Google Drive scanner and title suggestion feature to iOS devices. Now, when using your iOS phone or tablet, you can easily scan and digitally organize physical documents, crop them if needed, and receive relevant title suggestions based on machine learning. 

Getting started

• Open the Drive app on your Android device > scan a document via the camera icon or scan a document via the Scan button under the “+” icon > assess/adjust the automatic cropping > scan multiple pages in a session (if needed) > apply filters > save to Drive. 
• Open the Drive app on your iOS device > scan a document via the camera icon or scan a document via the Scan button under the “+” icon > > scan multiple pages in a session (if needed) > click on scan to apply filters or crop as needed > save to Drive. 
• Note: Title suggestions are only available in the US. 
• Visit the Help Center to learn more about scanning documents with Google Drive. 

Rollout pace

iOS: 

• Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on November 28, 2023 

Android: 

•  This feature is now available 

Availability 

• Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

• Google Help: Scan documents with Google Drive

Reposted from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/11/updates-to-google-drive-scanner-on-android-and-ios.html

Introducing a new homepage view in Google Drive

 

What’s changing

Over the years, we’ve added features to Google Drive that help you more efficiently find files and folders. In October, we launched a new view in Google Drive that shows all pending access requests, recent comments, and approvals for files to help you quickly see recent activity and take action, all in one place. 

Today, we’re excited to introduce the latest series of changes that accelerate user productivity across new views in Drive. A new streamlined homepage for Drive called Home makes it easier and faster for you to find files that matter most. Specifically, you’ll notice: 

• Personalized file and folder suggestions with machine learning algorithms that can help you get started quickly. These suggestions utilize a variety of signals, such as what files or folders you’ve recently opened, shared or edited, or what documents are attached to upcoming Calendar events. 
• Filter chips to narrow down your search and find relevant files faster across Drive, making it easy to find suggested files by type, people, modified date or the location. 
• A more modern design inline with Google Material Design 3 guidelines that helps you navigate across Drive much more efficiently.

Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 28, 2023 

Reposted from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/11/introducing-new-homepage-view-in-google-drive.html

Raise your hand with gesture detection in Google Meet Coming Soon

 

What’s changing 

Until now, raising your hand to ask a question in Google Meet is done by clicking the hand-raise icon. Starting today, you can also raise your physical hand and Meet will recognize it with gesture detection. To ensure the gesture is detected, make sure your camera is enabled and your hand is visible to the camera, away from your face and body. As an active speaker, the gesture detection will not be triggered; when you’re no longer the active speaker, gesture detection will resume.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: This feature will be OFF by default and can be turned on by selecting More options > Reactions > Hand Raise Gesture. Visit the Help Center to learn more about raising your hand in Google Meet.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on November 21, 2023
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 28, 2023

Availability

• Available for Google Workspace Business Plus, Business Standard, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Starter, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers, and Google Workspace Individual subscribers

Resources

• Google Help: Raise your hand in Google Meet

Reposted from: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/11/google-meet-hand-raise-gesture-detection.html

Google Workspace License Transition

Update 6:56PM: The license issue is resolved and all features are restored.

 We are working with Google to transition to their new license model. There may be disruption to Google Workspace services during this transition such as loss of recording/live-streaming capability. We are working to get this worked out as quickly as possible. All services should be restored once the transition is complete. We do not have an estimated timeline at this point.

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides Partial Outage

Update: As of 12:20PM, Google's Workspace Status Dashboard indicates issues are all resolved.

 Google is aware of an issue affecting some people utilizing Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.  This issues is being worked on by Google.  You can check the Google Workspace Status Dashboard for updates on this outage.

Major Google Outage

Final Update from MC ITS January 26, 2021 4:15PM:

The outage was caused by a Fiber line being cut in Brooklyn, it affected multiple services including Google.  All is now resolved.

Latest update from Google:

At 2021-01-26 2:44PM:

We understand that you're affected by the issue: [Communication Update] Access Issues with Google services. This issue was recently resolved by our Product Engineering Team. Please read below for updates on the status of your issue:

Status:
Fully Resolved

Description:
[Communication Update] Access Issues with Google services

Latest update:
At 2021-01-26 11:44 US/Pacific:
The issue with access to Google services is believed to be resolved for the majority of users.

If you have questions or are continuing to see impact, please open a case with the Support Team and we will work with you until this issue is resolved.

We thank you for your patience while this issue was resolved.

At 2021-01-26 1:36PM:
We now have confirmation that the service access degradation in the NA-EAST is due to an ISP outage.

We are seeing access improvement and are continuing to monitor service health.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2021-01-26 11:30 US/Pacific with current details.

At 2021-01-26 12:54PM:
We are experiencing intermittent issues with service access across multiple products.

We are currently working to confirm the source of the service degradation. It's suspected the issue is due to an ISP fiber cut in Brooklyn, NY.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2021-01-26 10:30 US/Pacific with current details.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Initial Message from MC ITS 12:37PM January 26, 2021:

 ITS became aware of issues with Google Chat messages being delayed and Google Meet sessions being garbled and delayed.  The issue was reported to Google Support at approximately 12:30PM, soon after initially noticed.  Google informed us that this is a Major Outage that they are working to resolve ASAP.  There is currently no information on the Google Workplace Status Dashboard, but we expect it will be updated as more information becomes available.

Chrome Actions: A New Way To Utilize Chrome!

Google Chrome now has the ability for users to complete command actions using the URL bar.

This means that you can type the command you are trying to complete into the URL bar instead of going into your Chrome Settings and navigating through different menus.

Example of some of the commands you can type are: 

• Clear cache/browsing data 

• Manage passwords

• Open Incognito Window

• Update Chrome

• Translate page

For directions on how to use Chrome Actions please check out these instructions.

While this can be a quicker way to access your settings, it is not mandatory and you can still complete these actions by going through your browsers settings.