Google has unveiled a whole suite of updates to its G Suite, including productivity boosting features, connected sheet support, Hangouts chat to email and new integrations with Google Assistant.
G Suite Add-ons make it easier for users to switch between different apps in Google's lineup. For example, if you're in email and want to view a document, you can switch to Docs via the side panel. As well as those Add-ons already available, the company has now added integrations with Copper, Workfront and Box.
Connected Sheets brings the power of pivot tables and shared data to Google Sheets. Connected Sheets allows you to connect up to 10 billion rows of BigQuery data without using SQL and then translate the data into tables easy-to-digest information for the rest of the organisation.
You can now also edit Microsoft Office documents, whether spreadsheets in Excel, Word documents or presentations in PowerPoint directly from G Suite, without having to convert to Docs, Sheets or Slides.
If you need to share any of these documents with others not in your organisation, you can do so using the new Visitor Sharing in Drive function, allowing others to collaborate on files without gaining full access, but using a pin code.
For those that use Hangouts for live messaging and video calling, Google has debuted Google Hangouts Chat into Gmail, so teams can view all communications from the Gmail pane. At the bottom left corner, you'll see people, rooms and bots. Open up rooms to see conversation streams and threads. While in Hangout Meet video calls, users can now opt to have on screen captions display, powered by the company's speech recognition tech.
The extension of Google Assistant to enterprise environments makes it much easier to keep your work life organised. Your calendar will sync with Assistant so you can make sure you get to meetings on time, know where you're going and stay ahead of any schedule changes.
