U-M Google Updates

U-M Google March & April Monthly Summary

5/8/2023

The monthly U-M Google summaries inform the university community of new Google releases and previously communicated updates.

Updates:

Google will migrate Reminders from Google Calendar to Google Tasks to create a single experience for managing to-dos across Google. You can create tasks from Calendar, similar to how you previously created Reminders. Additionally, unlike Reminders, you can create tasks from other Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, and Chat, or directly from the Tasks app.

Starting on May 22, 2023, Calendar Reminders will begin to automatically migrate to Tasks for users that have not already migrated. To help ensure a smooth transition, we recommend the following steps:

  • You should notice a prompt in Calendar Reminders to move reminders to Tasks beginning on April 12, 2023.
  • If you want a copy of your Reminders data, export your Reminders data before June 22, 2023.

Reminders created in Keep will not be migrated to Tasks - they will still be available in Keep, but they will no longer be displayed in Google Calendar once the migration is complete.

Learn about the switch from Google Calendar Reminders to Google Tasks.

A reminder event is open in Google Calendar, there is a large blue box notifying you of the upcoming transition from Reminders to Tasks, and an option to click "Turn my reminders into tasks now"

Google has released additional smart chips for Google Docs and Sheets. They are as follows:

  • Place chips (in Sheets): When a Google Maps place chip is added to your Sheet (using @ with a location name), you can open the location directly in Google Maps, and view a preview of the location or find directions.
  • Expanded date chips (in Sheets): Include dates in your Sheet more easily using @ with shortcuts like @today, @yesterday, @tomorrow, and @date. Clicking on the date will display a date picker that allows you to update dates as needed.
  • Finance chips (in Sheets): Add Google Finance entities, such as stocks, mutual funds, and currencies into a Sheet by using @ with a financial entity's name. Hover over the chip to preview information depending on entity type. Clicking the chip will take you to the entity’s dedicated Finance page. 
  • Stopwatch chips (in Docs): When a stopwatch chip is inserted in a Doc using @stopwatch, you can start, stop, and reset the timer as needed. Note that this feature is not yet available in U-M Google but is coming soon.

Learn more about using smart chips in Google Docs and Sheets.

Google has added an update to Calendar that provides you with suggested working locations based on your recent locations. Suggested working locations will appear when setting a custom working location. Learn more about setting your working location in Calendar. 

  • Improving Filters in Google Sheets

Google has introduced two new features to filters and filter views in Sheets.

  • Summary of the rows remaining after a filter is applied: You will now see the number of rows that are displayed in the bottom right margin.
  • New option to directly apply filters from the right-click menu: Right-click and apply filters directly to your data, remove them, or filter by the current cell value from the same menu.

Learn more about filtering data in Sheets.

Google Chat Space Managers now have additional capabilities to ensure effective conversations take place in spaces: 

  • Space configuration: Choose if members can change space details, such as name, icon, description, and guidelines, or turn Chat history on/off for the space. 
  • Member management: Decide if members can add or remove members to a space.
  • Conversation moderation: Determine whether members can use @all in a space.

Click the Chat space name to open the drop-down menu and select Space settings to configure space settings and modify permissions as needed. Learn more about managing your Chat space settings.

Users will see a label in the top-left corner of their meeting screen indicating that participants who are external to the meeting host’s domain have joined the meeting. In the people panel, external participants will be denoted with the same icon.

Google Meet video call with red boxes around the new external participant icon in the top left corner and around the two participants under the People tab who have the icon next to their profile picture because they are external

Google has rolled out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. You now have the options to: 

  • Toggle between three default styles (plain text, dotted, or links)
  • Toggle page numbers
  • Toggle tab leader styling (i.e., adds lines between a heading and the page number)
  • Include and indent headings based on levels

Learn more about adding a title, heading, or table of contents in a Google Doc.

Google is also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier to find and utilize table formatting options. Upon adding or editing a table, you will notice a new “Table” section with alignment preferences and a new “Cell” section with cell-specific formatting options within the table properties sidebar.

Google has introduced 11 additional functions in Google Sheets that will provide you with more efficient functions and help with more advanced analysis: TOROW, TOCOL, WRAPROWS, WRAPCOLS, CHOOSEROWS, CHOOSECOLS, VSTACK, HSTACK, EPOCHTODATE, MARGINOFERROR, and LET.

  • Expanding language support for grammar suggestions

Grammar suggestions in Google Docs and Gmail are now available in more languages:

  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Norwegian
  • Swedish

Language will be detected automatically.

Google has released enhancements that improve upon collaboration within Sites and give you even more control over the layout of your Site’s content.

Similar to Google Docs, collaborators’ cursors will now appear when Site editors are typing within a text tile. This will help you and others know who is working on what while in edit mode of a Site.

Editor is seen typing and highlighting text in a text box in Google Sites, illustrating the new real-time collaboration features in Sites

Next, display your content with more flexibility by adding page frames and adjusting your Site width for desktop viewing within custom themes. Page frame colors are customizable and width options include normal (default), full, and wide. Learn more about creating custom themes in Sites.

Lastly, they’ve added alignment options to buttons, allowing you to align buttons left, center, or right within a group. Aligned buttons shrink to fit their text, allowing a button to be narrower than the group containing it.

Following last year’s updates to the Gmail interface, and the recently refreshed interfaces for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Google is also updating the look and feel of Google Chat.

This update is based on Google’s Material Design 3 and includes updated font, colors, layouts, panel sizing, and more. Specifically, you’ll notice changes to the top app bar, left navigation, main message view, compose setup, new topic button, and the thread panel within direct messages and spaces.

You can now turn off the video feed from other participants during a Google Meet call. This will only impact your experience - other participants will not be notified nor will their experience change. This feature is available for Meet on the web and mobile devices. From the people panel or an individual meeting tile, select the three-dot icon and then select Don’t watch. Learn more about turning off video feeds from other participants in Meet. 

Previously Communicated:

MARCH

APRIL

Google Currents will retire on July 5, 2023

5/1/2023

Google has announced they will be retiring Google Currents on July 5, 2023. In an effort to consolidate the services they offer for collaboration, Google intends for individuals to transition from using Currents to Google Chat spaces. Similar to Currents, spaces provide a central place for teams to engage in topic-based discussions, share information, and build communities. Learn more about using spaces in Chat. Alternatively, you can also investigate other services which offer similar experiences, such as U-M Slack.

If you would like to keep an archive of your Currents data, you should export it using Google Takeout as soon as possible. Refer to Export your data from Google Currents for more information on what data will export and Download your Currents data for instructions on how to export it. After July 5, all data from Google Currents will be purged from Google’s systems, and the service will be shut down.

Coming soon: Move folders from My Drive to shared drives

4/7/2023

According to Google, the ability to move folders from My Drive to shared drives in U-M Google will begin rolling out on April 11, 2023. This new feature could take several days or longer to become fully available. Previously, you could only move files to a shared drive from your My Drive.

Google Drive displays a dialog box after attempting to move a folder titled Project Sky and is asking for confirmation before moving

To move a My Drive folder to a shared drive, you must be an Editor on the folder and a Manager of the shared drive. Refer to the Google Drive Help Center for more information on moving folders to shared drives, including the limitations and errors you may encounter.

Please use caution when moving complex folder structures, as you will likely run into errors and unmovable files. This is most commonly associated with access and ownership issues. It’s also important to note that you cannot undo the move and revert back to the original folder structure after you’ve completed the move. For this reason, you should read the Google Drive Help Center article linked above before attempting to move complex folders to understand these potential pitfalls.

U-M Google February Monthly Summary

3/13/2023

The monthly U-M Google summaries inform the university community of new Google releases and previously communicated updates.

Note: There is an upcoming change to the look and feel of Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides starting on March 22, 2023.

Updates:

Google has introduced the ability to check and view a visual preview of multiple calendars when setting up your appointment schedules to help prevent scheduling conflicts. Your booking page will show you as unavailable when you’re busy based on the calendars you select. You can select any calendars you own, calendars you have edit and manage rights to, and subscribed calendars. Learn how to set up an appointment schedule and customize your appointment availability.

You can now share access to the content you’re presenting directly in Google Meet with attendees, including everyone on the Calendar guest list. While presenting, you can share the file from the floating action menu or via the suggestion in the Meet chat. Meeting attendees will see a notification when you’ve shared a file, and a link to the file will be automatically shared in the chat.

Google Meet session with white circle around new "Share in Meet chat" button

Additionally, whenever you paste a link into the meeting chat, you’ll now be prompted with the file access dialog. Learn more about presenting during a Meet session.

Google has introduced a new full screen experience for managing members in a Google Chat space that replaces the current "View members" and “Add people and apps” options. Upon clicking the new “Manage members” option, you can view a list of members added and invited to the space, add or remove members, and update settings. This update is currently only available on the web. Learn more about adding or removing people from a Chat space.

Google Chat space open to the new "Manage members" view

  • Expanding color options in Google Docs, Drawings, Sheets, and Slides

In Google Docs, Drawings, Sheets, and Slides, you can now select colors in the color palette tool by using RGBA values. In addition, you can customize colors by using an eyedropper tool and selecting any color on your screen within the color palette. Learn more about changing the colors of text, objects, and backgrounds.

Google Sheets will now automatically use regional-specific decimal separators based on your spreadsheet's locale. For example, in France, it is more common to use commas as decimal separators. Additionally, Google will now auto-detect semicolons (;) as a way to separate text into columns when importing CSV files into Sheets. (Previously, if you used commas (,) as your decimal separators and semicolons (;) as your text separators, you had to choose a custom delimiter and enter ";" for the import to properly split text to columns.) Learn more about changing a spreadsheet’s location & calculation settings, formatting numbers in a spreadsheet, and importing data sets and other spreadsheets in Sheets.

  • Changing the POWER function in Google Sheets

The POWER function in Google Sheets, which returns a number raised to a power, will now return a real-valued root when trying to take the odd root of a negative number. Learn more about the POWER function in Sheets.

User entering "=POWER" in a Google Sheet and showing how the updated function now works

  • New free-hand PDF annotation support in the Google Drive app on Android

You can now use your finger or a stylus to freely write annotations on a file shown in the Drive preview screen on Android devices. These annotations can be saved to the file if it is a PDF, or a PDF copy of the file can be made with the annotations saved to it. Learn more about annotating PDFs on Android devices.

  • Expanding noise cancelation in Google Meet

To limit distractions during meetings, Google Meet offers noise cancelation to filter out background noises. This functionality is now available in U-M Google. Previously, it wasn’t available in our domain.

  • View your peripheral devices directly in the Google Meet “green room”

Before joining a Google Meet session, you can now check which of your peripheral devices (e.g., camera, microphone, etc.) are available and connected. You can still view your peripheral devices via the settings menu, but this update makes it easier to select devices or identify potential issues.

Google has introduced a new feature in the Google Contacts section of the right-hand sidebar that allows you to create and edit contacts. Previously, visiting contacts.google.com was the only way to add or edit a contact.

  • 360-degree video backgrounds available for Google Meet on mobile

Google Meet users on mobile devices (Android and iOS) can now use several new 360-degree video backgrounds. These backgrounds use your device's gyroscope to create a dynamic experience that moves with you.

Previously Communicated:

None for the month of February!

New look and feel for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides

3/9/2023

Google has announced a new look and feel for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides on the web beginning March 22, 2023.

In Drive, you’ll notice the following changes:

  • Key actions (such as share, download, and edit) surfaced in-line when hovering over files.
  • Ability to select multiple items at once and take batch operations for frequent tasks (such as share, download, and delete).
  • New search chips (including file type, owner, and last modified date) to help search for files.

In Google Drive, a user selects the new search chips from their homepage and finds a list of files that fit the criteria

In Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you’ll notice the following changes: 

  • A simplified user interface at the top of your documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows.
  • Additional user experience improvements in commenting, background, rulers, and gridlines.
  • Relocation of some features to reduce clutter within the new interface. Notably, you can find the latest status info for the document, such as last edit and version history, via the clock icon in the top right corner.

View of the new interface in Google Docs

According to Google, the refreshed user interface should begin appearing in U-M Google on March 22, 2023, and could take 3 days or longer to become fully visible.