U-M Google Updates

Inbox by Gmail (a separate email interface) has been a place where Google experimented with new ideas like snoozing emails and trying their latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications.

Four years after launching Inbox by Gmail in 2014, Google has taken several popular Inbox experiences and added them into their main Gmail interface. Google is now planning to focus solely on Gmail and will discontinue Inbox by Gmail beginning April 2, 2019.

Google introduced the new Gmail interface in April 2018, incorporating many of the same features found in Inbox and newer features like Smart Compose. To learn more about these new features, check out Google’s blog post.

Many on campus fell in love with Inbox by Gmail, so to make this a bit easier, Google created a transition guide to help switch from Inbox by Gmail to the new Gmail. There's also no need to worry about losing your emails - Google already stores them in Gmail.

Google Team Drives are a great place to store files for teams and projects. Previously, you could request a Team Drive be created by ITS. Now, any U-M Google account can create a Team Drive! This new ability is gradually rolling out on the UMICH domain.  

The files and folders in a Team Drive are all owned by U-M and not tied to an individual U-M Google account. That means as individuals come and go, all the files remain available in the Team Drive. They don’t follow the individual or get deleted.
 

Select Team Drives, under My Drive, and click New to get started. We recommend that each Google Team Drive be named with your department's Active Directory prefix or generally recognized prefix. (Example: ITS | Service Center) You can move files from My Drive to a Team Drive, but folders cannot currently be moved.

Watch a recording of the training webinar on Team Drives, review our Team Drives documentation and learn more at the G Suite Learning Center.

As we first communicated on March 4, Google will delete some content in U-M Google+ on April 2, 2019. The ITS Collaboration Services team consulted with Google+ Product Managers to develop a recommended action plan. Please note this information is what we currently understand, according to Google. See the most up to date information directly from Google.

COMMUNITIES

• Communities owned by at least one U-M G Suite account will remain.
• Communities not owned by a U-M G Suite account will be deleted. 
• Community posts made by non-G Suite accounts, even in Communities with a U-M G Suite owner, will be deleted.

Actions Needed:

• Act now to make sure at least one person with a U-M G Suite account is an Owner on your Community.
  • Add a G Suite account as a Moderator to Communities
  • Two weeks later, convert that Moderator to an Owner
    (The account must be a Moderator for two weeks before it can be made an Owner. March 18 is the last day to take action.) 
• Archive your Google+ Community to capture contributions from everyone, before content is deleted.

PAGES 
All Google+ Pages, like the U-M Google page, will be deleted. 
Action Needed: Download and archive your page content with the Google Takeout tool.

Google has announced a new intelligent search now available for all Google Drive accounts.

With this new feature, when you click on the search box at the top of your Google Drive, you’ll see a range of options, including:

• Suggested search queries: Click on a term to search for it.
• Your top collaborators: Click on a person to search for files that you’ve collaborated with them on.
• File types, edit history, priority items, and more: Click to show files that match the highlighted criteria.

These filters will help you find and filter content more quickly and efficiently in Google Drive, saving you time and effort.

Interested in our latest updates about Google G Suite at U-M? Check out the Google Service Updates page.

When was the last time you checked your spam or junk email folder? Once in a while, a legitimate email can be sent to your spam folder instead of your inbox. We recommend that you check your spam folder periodically for legitimate emails that have been sent there by mistake. If you do find a message that has been accidentally marked as spam, you can fix this by taking one of the following actions:

1. Select the message which has been marked as spam and click Not Spam at the top of your inbox.
   
   
2. At the top of the message, there will be a grey text box which explains why this message was flagged as spam. To unmark this as spam, click Report not spam at the bottom of this text box.​​
   
   

After following one of these actions, the message will be moved back into your inbox and out of the spam folder. Monitoring your spam folder will help to ensure that future messages from this sender are not flagged as spam. Additionally, adding colleagues to your Google Contacts can help with proper mail delivery.

Interested in our latest updates about Google G Suite at U-M? Check out the Google Service Updates page.