Google Updates Recap for March 15 to April 23, 2021
Our team has been hard at work with our Domain Merge project, so here is the summary of Google Updates for March 15 to April 23.
Google Meet
Set up Breakout Rooms before a Meet is scheduled to happen
Faculty and Staff can now set up Breakout Rooms when scheduling a Google Calendar event with a Google Meet attached. This functionality will allow the scheduler of the event to configure the breakout rooms ahead of the Meet, including setting Breakout Room names, which participants will be in which Breakout Room, the number of Breakout Rooms, and the length of time the Breakout Rooms will be open.
Google Drive
Use search operators to search in Drive
Google Drive now offers some new search operators that can be used to more easily find files.
- “from:” will now return files shared with you by the specified email address. Previously, it would have returned files owned by that email address.
- “to:” will now return files that you have shared with the specified email address. Previously, it would have returned all files that the email address had permissions to view, comment, or edit.
- “sharedwith:” is a new search operator which will return files that the specified email address owns or has permission to view, comment or edit.
- “owner:” returns files owned by the specified email address. There is no change to this operator, but you can use it to return the results you would previously have used the “from:” operator for.
Google Docs
Find new comments on Google Docs more easily + new filter options
New comments on a Google Doc now will show a blue badge to indicate that they are new.
You can also now filter comments to show all comments, comments “for you”, open comments, and resolved comments:
Google Slides
New and Improved Presenter Toolbar
The presenter toolbar when presenting a Google Slides presentation has seen several improvements, including appearing and disappearing more intelligently so that is it less distracting while presenting, and is now more compact but with the same tools available by clicking the triple dot menu.
Google Calendar
Repeating Out Of Office entries
In our previous Google Updates post, we announced that you can now create Segmentable Working Hours as the first of two new Calendar features.
Now, you can set a repeating Out of Office entry that occurs on a regular basis. The same repeating schemes that are available for regular events are now available for repeating Out of Office entries.
Snooze Google Calendar desktop notifications
If you have enabled Desktop notifications for Google Calendar events, you can now snooze events that you are notified for.
You can customize the “snooze time” for how long Google Calendar waits before the event to remind you again of the snoozed alert, with a range of 0 to 5 minutes prior to the event starting.
Be notified when someone subscribes to email notifications on your calendar
For increased transparency, Google Calendar will now automatically notify you if somebody else subscribes to email notifications for your calendar. This includes Event notifications, All-day event notifications, and General notifications under the calendar’s Settings.
Google Chat
Automatic 1:1 Chat Suggestions based on calendar entry
Google Chat will now provide suggestions for 1:1 Google Chats based on upcoming meetings (10 minutes prior to and after the meeting) in Google Calendar. Suggested Chats will appear at the top of the Chat section in Gmail in both mobile and web versions of Gmail and Google Chat on mobile.
More options for customizability for notification frequency in Google Chat (Group Chat and Rooms)
In Google Chat Groups (1:Many direct messages) and Rooms, you can now customize the frequency of notifications you receive for a given discussion:
- “Notify always” will notify you for every new message in the conversation
- “Notify less” will notify you only for @mentions (including @all) and threads you’ve chosen to follow
- In Rooms created with threading enabled, you will also have the option to also be notified for the first message of new threads in addition to @mentions, which you can then choose to Follow a thread for notifications for all new messages in that thread.
- “Notifications off” will not notify you, but you’ll see a notification dot if you’re @mentioned.
New and improved UI for Google Chat on the web
Google Chat now has an improved user interface that is more consistent with the Chat experience in Gmail and offers new functionality.
This is still rolling out to all Google accounts so don’t panic if you don’t see it yet!
In addition to the new look, some of the new functionality includes:
- Tabs for accessing files and tasks shared with a Room appears at the top of the Room
- The Quick Access side panel is now available on the right side similarly as it appears in Gmail to access app integrations with apps such as Calendar, Keep, Tasks, and Maps.
- Start new conversations with the + icon in the top left corner
- Use the search bar at the top of the page to look for content across all Chats and Rooms.
- The Chat and Rooms sections on the left can be resized, similarly as they recently allowed in Gmail.
- You can now open Chats and Rooms in a full screen view (happens by default in the new interface) or open them in a pop-up, allowing for multitasking so that you can view and participate in multiple conversations at once.
- Additional integration with Google Meet so that you can join or start a Meet from the Meet section, similarly to the Meet section in Gmail.
- Pinned Chats and Rooms now appear at the top of their sections instead of in a separate section
- The chat.google.com URL now redirects to mail.google.com/chat.
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