Collaboration Services News and Updates

Google Updates Recap for June 6 to July 22, 2022

In this feature update, we’re excited to announce some enhancements that have been added by popular request, including rich text formatting in Google Forms and anonymous Q/A and polling in Google Meet. Other new features include increased member limits in Google Chat Spaces, improved email notifications for calendar invitations, and a new “Also Invited” list in Google Meet to easily reach out to invitees not yet in the meeting.

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Google Calendar

Improved email notifications for Google Calendar invites

Email notifications created by Google Calendar now have an improved layout. This includes making key meeting information more accessible and more clearly displaying updates to a Calendar event, such as changed dates/times and other information.

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users.

Prevent spam by adding invitations from known senders only to your calendar

You can now protect your Google Calendar by only allowing calendar event invitations from senders that you know.

A sender is considered “known” if they meet at least one of the following criteria:

• They are a person in the same domain as you (e.g. @vcu.edu),
• They are in your contacts list, OR
• You have interacted with them before.

Unknown senders can still send invitations to you, but they will not appear on your calendar unless you accept the invitation from the email.

You can select this setting or one of the previously existing settings from the Google Calendar settings under “Add invitations to my calendar”.

For more information about managing your incoming invitations, visit: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37135?p=manage_invitations#manage_invitations&zippy&zippy=,manage-your-incoming-invitations-and-notifications

Feature Availability: This feature is rolling out to all users and is anticipated to be available by August 4, 2022.

Google Chat

Building larger spaces in Google Chat

Spaces in Google Chat now support up to 8,000 members at once, up from 400. This limit is anticipated to be raised to 25,000 by the end of the year.

Note: This will only apply to all new Spaces created after the feature launch on July 18, 2022. 

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users.

Delete Chat Spaces and their content

Managers of a Space in Google Chat can now delete a space which completely removes all of the owned content of the Space, including Space Tasks and files and attachments not saved elsewhere. Once the Space has been deleted, members will no longer be able to access its content.

To delete a Space, Space managers can click the dropdown menu for that Space and select the “Delete space” option.

Feature Availability: This feature is currently rolling out to all users and is anticipated to be available by August 3, 2022.

Easily access your most used emojis in Google Chat

When using the emoji picker in Google Chat, you will now see emojis that you’ve most commonly used in a new “Frequently Used” section, making it easier to pick your favorite emojis when sending a chat message or setting a custom status.

Feature Availability: This feature is now available to all web and Android users of Google Chat, and will be available for iOS in the weeks to come.

Google Contacts

Easily share profile links via Contacts

You can now easily link to a Google Contact through a direct link to their Contact page. This can be done by either:

• Clicking the triple-dot menu on the “Detailed view” or full contact page for a contact, then clicking “Copy profile link,” OR
• Using one of the following URL schemes to form the link yourself to share:
  • jane.smith@domain.com (eID@vcu.edu),
  • jane.smith@domain (eID@vcu), and 
  • jane.smith (eID). 
  • Note: The above examples also work with email addresses in your own Contacts and do not have to be in the VCU Contacts Directory, but work best with VCU Contacts

Feature Availability: This feature is currently rolling out to all users. Users can already use the URL schemes to share contact links, with the option to Copy profile link anticipated to complete rollout by Jul 18, 2022.

Google Drive

Now Available: Cut, copy and paste files using keyboard shortcuts in Google Drive Web

The ability to use the common cut, copy, and paste keyboard shortcuts in Google Drive mentioned in our previous blog post is now available to all users. We anticipate frequent users of these shortcuts will enjoy the convenience of this feature and will enhance the workflows of heavy users of Google Drive on the web.

If you’d like to learn how to use these keyboard shortcuts, visit: Keyboard shortcuts for Google Drive on the web.

Offline syncing available for opened Microsoft Office documents

Microsoft Office documents on your Desktop (stored in Google Drive) can now be edited in Offline Mode. This allows you to open and make edits to Office documents without an Internet connection in Google Docs/Sheets/Slides locally. Once an Internet connection has been re-established, any changes made will be synced to Google Drive. Note: The file must have been opened at least once before in Office editing mode to be able to open it in offline mode.

To get started, first ensure that offline editing mode has been enabled. For information about enabling offline mode, visit: Work on Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides offline. For more information about Office editing mode, visit: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/9276408.

Feature Availability: This feature is now available for all users where offline editing mode is available. 

Google Forms

Rich text formatting in Google Forms titles and descriptions

Titles, question titles, and descriptions in Google Forms can now have rich text formatting applied to them – a highly requested feature. This allows you to add common formatting to these text fields including:

• Bolding, 
• Underlining, 
• Italicizing, 
• Hyperlinks, and 
• Lists

An option will also be available to clear formatting on any of these text fields.

To get started, simply click into any of the mentioned text fields and the formatting options will appear below the field.

For more information about rich text formatting in Google Forms, visit: Format text in your form – Google Docs Editors Help.

Feature Availability: This feature is currently rolling out to all users and anticipated to be available soon.

Google Meet

De-reverberation available for Google Meet

In addition to filtering out distracting noises such as typing on a keyboard or a constant background noise, Google Meet will now provide de-reverberation for microphone audio sources. De-reverberation will automatically filter out echoing created by spaces with hard surfaces, such as in a kitchen or basement to ensure optimal audio quality.

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users.

When removing individuals from a Google Meet, there are now more granular controls for hosts and co-hosts when taking this action. This update allows hosts and co-hosts to remove individuals from a Google Meet with or without blocking the individual from re-joining. When removing someone, you will be given the additional options to block the individual from re-joining as well as reporting them for abusive behavior.

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users, as well as on iOS and Android versions of Google Meet.

Start meetings more efficiently with the Calendar guest list in Google Meet

In the People list in Google Meet, a list of individuals who have been invited to the associated calendar meeting but have not yet joined will be shown in a new “Also Invited” list directly below the “In Call” list. Details such as “optional” attendees and RSVP notes will also be shown.

To the right of the individuals in this list will be a “Chat” option to allow you to easily reach out to those individuals to confirm if they will be joining directly from the Meet.

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users.

Allow Google Meet participants to ask questions or respond to polls anonymously

Participants of a Google Meet can now submit questions anonymously to an opened Q&A in Google Meet and respond to polls anonymously. By default, participants of a Google Meet are allowed to submit questions. Inversely, polls by default are created non-anonymously. However both of these can be switched to disallow anonymous questions and to create anonymous polls by default respectively. 

The option to anonymize polls appears when creating the poll, and the option to allow anonymous questions appears in the host controls.

Note: These settings do not carry over from meeting to meeting. 

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users.

Google Tasks

Mark your important tasks with a star in Google Tasks

Stars can now be used to mark your important Tasks in Google Tasks. By marking a Task with a star, you can also view it in a “Starred” list that shows only starred Tasks. 

Feature Availability: This feature is available to all users, including on mobile versions of Google Tasks.

Categories Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Contacts, Google Drive, Google Feature Updates and Changes, Google Forms, Google Meet, Google Tasks and Google Keep, Google Workspace News