(Cross-posted from The Keyword) 

Posted by Elissa Murphy, Vice President of Engineering, G Suite

G Suite is designed to help you do your best work, whether that’s through real-time collaboration that brings your teams together or machine intelligence that speeds up everyday tasks. But we understand your company has unique needs and workflows that G Suite alone wasn’t built to address. We also know your teams rely on many third-party apps for things like CRM, support, and project management to get their job done. So today, we’re announcing two new ways to customize and extend your experience on the G Suite platform: App Maker, a new low-code developer tool for building custom enterprise applications, and the addition of seven new partners to our “Recommended for G Suite” third-party partner program.

Introducing App Maker, a new way to build powerful apps for your business. 
App Maker is a low-code, application development tool that lets you quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months.

• Go from idea to app, fast: App Maker makes it easy for IT or even citizen developers (including analysts and system administrators) to quickly iterate from a prototype all the way to deployed app. It offers a powerful cloud-based IDE that features built-in templates, a drag-and-drop UI, and point-and-click data modeling to accelerate your app development efforts. App Maker also embraces open, and popular standards like HTML, CSS, Javascript and Google’s material design visual framework, so developers can build apps quickly, in a development environment that leverages their existing skills and knowledge. 

• Build integrated, tailor-made solutions for every need: App Maker lets you build a range of applications customized to meet the needs of your organization and connects to a wide range of data sources and APIs. This unique flexibility starts with built-in support for G Suite products as well as popular services such as Maps, Contacts, Groups and more. You can also leverage other Google Cloud services such as the Directory API and Prediction API, or third-party APIs, to create richer, more intelligent application experiences.
• Focus on delivery, not infrastructure: App Maker is built on the same secure and trusted infrastructure as G Suite apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs. Developers can safely deploy custom apps in the cloud without worrying about servers, capacity planning, infrastructure security and monitoring that would otherwise require internal support from IT. 

Over the past few months, we’ve previewed App Maker with a handful of large G Suite customers and many have already built and deployed applications to their organizations. We’re also working with the following consulting partners to help deliver solutions to our joint customers: Appsbroker, gPartner, G-Workplace, Ignite Synergy, Maven Wave, PwC, SADA Systems, and Tempus Nova.

Here are a few ways that enterprise customers and partners have used App Maker to make everyday business processes simpler and more efficient--whether it’s to track suspicious login activities, take analog claims processes and make them digital, or track office inventory orders.


If you’re interested in trying out App Maker, it’s available today through our Early Adopter Program for G Suite Business customers. Apply for the EAP here.

Announcing new apps for the ‘Recommended for G Suite’ program
While G Suite helps your teams communicate and collaborate more easily, we get that you also rely on third-party apps to manage other aspects of your business including sales, marketing, and operations. We want to make it easy for you to integrate these solutions with G Suite, and that’s why we introduced the Recommended for G Suite program last year. The program selects market leading applications, built by independent software vendors (ISVs), in a range of categories like project management, customer support, finance and accounting.

Today, we’re adding seven new apps to the program that can help you be more productive. These apps solve critical business problems and offer deep integration and direct support with G Suite. Each app also goes through rigorous security testing and quality measures to qualify for the Recommended for G Suite program.

Our new recommended partners include:

• Asana for project & process management 
• DocuSign for eSignature 
• Freshdesk for customer support 
• LumApps for corporate & social portal
• Virtru for encryption 
• Xero and Zoho Invoice for finance & accounting 

Since we launched this program with our first eight apps last year, we’ve seen many examples of how our customers have incorporated them with G Suite to drive more value for their business. We’ve created a webinar series to show first-hand examples of this, and you can sign up here if you’re interested in attending. In addition, if you’re an ISV that’s interested in becoming a Recommended for G Suite partner, please submit your application here.

Try these new solutions today
We’re committed to helping you get the most out of your G Suite experience by fostering the best ecosystem of cloud applications and partners. App Maker enables you to build powerful apps tailored to your organizational needs, while the Recommended for G Suite program helps your teams select leading apps to grow your business. Both solutions are available today, and we encourage you to try them out.


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Check out the following new features in the latest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps:

• Trash view in the Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps - You can now view and restore previously deleted files in the Docs, Sheets, and Slides iOS apps. Just select “Trash” from the menu on the left side of the screen.

• GIF insertion in the Docs Android app - Using the Google Keyboard in the Docs Android app, you can now search for and insert GIFs into documents.

Download the latest versions of the Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps from the Google Play Store and the App Store today.

Launch Details
Release track: 
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Delete a document, spreadsheet, or presentation


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In September, we announced that we would soon launch an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the Team Drives feature in Google Drive. We’re now ready to accept applications for that EAP, which will kick off shortly.


Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can store their files and guarantee that every member has the most up-to-date information, no matter the time or place. Team Drives make onboarding easy, because every person and Google Group added to a Team Drive gets instant access to that team’s documents. Moreover, Team Drives are designed to store the team’s work collectively, so if a document’s creator moves off of the team that document doesn’t go with them. Advanced access controls make Team Drives even more robust, preventing team members from accidentally removing or deleting files that others need.

Before applying for the Team Drives EAP, please note the following restrictions:

• The Team Drives EAP is only open to G Suite Business and Education customers.

• Only G Suite admins can sign up for the Team Drives EAP. If you are not the G Suite admin for your organization, please contact that individual and ask them to sign up.

• Admins will need to enroll their entire primary domain in the EAP. They will be able to restrict Team Drives creation to certain organizational units, but all users in the domain will be able to see and access Team Drives. They will not be able to enroll secondary domains.

• At the moment, Team Drives does not support some features, including adding members from outside of one’s domain, syncing to a desktop computer, and Vault capabilities.

Apply for the Team Drives Early Adopter Program (EAP) today, and help teams of all sizes at your organization work better together.

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Starting on November 28, 2016, some small but important changes are coming to the way that Google Drive sends notification emails. Your users will not see any visible changes, but if you use Gmail's advanced smart hosting features, then you may notice a difference in the way new emails are archived or filtered by your mail solutions.


What's changing:

• Google Drive will no longer store a 'courtesy copy' in the mailbox of the sender. Gmail's comprehensive mail storage feature will now place a copy of Drive sharing notification emails in the sender's Sent folder.
• If you use smart hosting (through an outbound mail server), you can now capture and deliver these emails through your preferred mail gateway.
• If you previously relied on outbound gateway settings to route Drive notifications, you can now use content compliance rulesor sending routing rules to route these messages, making it consistent with other mail routing features.

What's not changing:

• The "from" field is not changing. It will continue to be the sender when the recipient is a group, or drive-shares-noreply@google.comin all other cases, as it is today.
• The message header fields are not changing. The envelope sender will still be [string]@doclist.bounces.google.com, not the actual account of the sender.
• Request access notifications will not behave differently.

These changes will roll out to G Suite customers over a few days, starting on November 28, 2016.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


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Being able to save Google Slides in the OpenDocument Presentation (.odp) file format has been a popular request from the open-source community and organizations that use open-source office suites, such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Starting today, you can download your Google Slides presentations in the ODP file format.

From a Google Slides presentation, click File > Download as > ODP Document (.odp) to download your presentation as an ODP file. The file will be saved to your default download folder.

With this update, you can now import and export all three major OpenDocument file formats: .odt files for documents, .ods for spreadsheets, and .odp for presentations.



Please note that some formatting (e.g. tables and complex shapes) may be lost during file conversion.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center


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We recently launched new tools in G Suite like Explore, Action items, and other features to help your teams save time and focus on what’s important: creating impactful work, quicker. We know time spent re-creating files in the workplace takes away from the time your team can spend collaborating and achieving results.

That’s why, today, we’re introducing custom templates in G Suite for the Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms files your teams use the most.

Simply submit files to shared template galleries in the Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms home screens for your co-workers to adapt and use as needed. With these customizable templates, your teams can focus less on formatting and more on driving impact and sharing success.


Note that if you disabled template submissions to the old Google Drive templates gallery in the Admin console, users in your organization will not be able to see and use the new galleries when they launch. You can enable the new galleries for your users in the Admin console (Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Templates). You can also configure the categories available for your organization’s templates from that same section in the Admin console.


In addition, G Suite for Business and Education customers can require templates be approved before they appear in the galleries, or prevent end users from submitting new templates altogether. These features are not enabled by default, so you’ll need to update your settings if you want to moderate or restrict template submissions to the galleries.


The old templates gallery will be shut down in early 2017, giving you and your users time to transition to the new galleries. We’ll let you know the exact date with a message in the old gallery, but it will not take place before February 1st, 2017.

An important note regarding this rollout: 
To give you a chance to update your settings and curate your organization’s template galleries, we’re rolling out these features (both in the Admin console and in the home screens) to all admins, regardless of their release track, starting today. We’ll launch to end users on the Rapid release track today as well, with the rollout to end users on the Scheduled release track starting on December 7th. 

Launch Details
Release track:

• G Suite administrators
• Launching to both Rapid and Scheduled release
• G Suite end users
• Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on December 7th

Editions:

• Template galleries
• Available to all G Suite editions
• Moderation and restriction capabilities
• Available to G Suite for Business and Education customers only

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Enable templates for Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms
Help Center: Create a file from a template


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Check out the following new features in the latest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps:

• Notifications in Docs, Sheets, and Slides - Users who currently see notifications in their Google Drive Android app (for instance, when someone mentions them in a comment or shares a document with them) will now see notifications in their Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps as well. These notifications are specific to the app they’re working in and only appear if the user has an updated version of Google Drive installed on their mobile device.

• Resize rows and columns in Sheets - Users will find it easier to resize rows and columns in the Sheets Android app, which now features options to specify the pixel sizes of rows and columns and to fit columns to their data exactly.

• Create and edit data validation in Sheets - Just like they can on the web, users can now create and edit data validation criteria in the Sheets Android app.

• Change the color of sheet tabs in Sheets - Users can now differentiate between sheets in a spreadsheet by changing the color of their tabs in the Sheets Android app.

Visit the Google Play Store to download the latest versions of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Edit rows and columns in a spreadsheet
Help Center: Create an in-cell dropdown list
Help Center: Copy, re-order, and delete sheets


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(Cross posted from The Keyword) 

Posted by Vishnu Sivaji, Product Manager, G Suite

Presentations are a staple in business communication. When done right, they help tell a story that can captivate, persuade, or inspire audiences. But crafting that story can be tedious, especially if you’re constantly flipping between screens to copy and paste charts, images, or figures into your slides.

If only there was an API for that….

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of the Google Slides API which gives developers programmatic access to create and update presentations in Slides from any data source. We previewed the Slides API at I/O earlier this year to change how business presentations are built. Now, your teams can use a number of ready-to-go integrations to turn your business data into presentations, with just a click.

Build beautiful, up-to-date presentations in seconds using Conga, Trello, Lucidchart and Zapier
Whether you’re looking to populate a quarterly business review (QBR) deck, add specs for weekly design review slides, or refresh event registration data for your daily update, the third-party apps below let you quickly and easily build beautiful, data-rich presentations.

• Generate your next QBR deck with Conga: Conga makes document creation and reporting for Salesforce easy. With its Slides API integration you can create a quarterly business review presentation in Slides from your standard Salesforce Account records in seconds. Read more here.

• Create vivid project updates with Trello: Trello helps you organize and prioritize project information in highly visual ways. With its Slide API integration, you can turn any Trello board or set of cards into a Slides presentation with just a click. Read more here.

• Review complex visualizations with Lucidchart: Lucidchart helps you create complex diagrams and visuals easily. With its Slides API integration you can export flowcharts, mockups, and other such visuals, break them into slides to cover specifics in more detail, and rapidly iterate on the content. You can find Lucidchart on the G Suite Marketplace and read more about the integration here.
  
• Create and respond to custom proposals requests with Zapier: Zapier lets you create and automate business workflows. With its Slides API integration you can create, collaborate, and share dynamic presentations using Slides with just a few workflow rules. You can get started with the Slides integration on Zapier or learn more about it here. 

All of these app integrations are available to try today — and this is just the beginning. We’re working with many other software vendors, including ProsperWorks, AODocs and Form Publisher to help you do more in less time in all sorts of ways.

Developers can start using the Slides API today. Documentation and demos are available at developers.google.com/slides and they can read more about it here.


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Earlier this year, we began previewing a completely revamped Google Sites with a select group of early adopters. Starting today, we’re making the new version of Sites generally available to G Suite customers. In addition to the intuitive technology, integration with G Suite apps, and attractive design that our early adopters have come to know and love, the new Sites now includes the ability to track performance with Google Analytics, six new themes, and other helpful features. Read on for more information regarding this launch, and check out the Help Center and Learning Center to learn more about the new Sites.
The classic version of Sites will continue to exist
The previously existing, classic version of Sites will continue to exist in parallel with the new Sites as we add capabilities that are similar to those found in the classic Sites. The classic Sites and the sites created with it will continue to follow the Sites-specific settings in the Google Admin console at Apps > G Suite > Sites.

Please note:

• In 2017, we’ll provide and recommend options to migrate your sites from the classic Sites to the new Sites.
• Beginning in 2018, we’ll send a timeline and instructions regarding the gradual process to shut down the classic Sites. The specific date for the shutdown of the classic Sites has yet to be set, but we’ll inform you at least one year in advance of that shutdown.

Turn the new Sites on or off for your organization
The new Sites is ON by default, but your users will not be able to create or edit sites in the new Sites unless you have both Google Drive and the classic Sites turned on as well.

To turn OFF the new Sites in your organization, you can do any one of the following:

• In the Admin console, go to Apps > G Suite > Sites > New Sites and select Users at [my domain] cannot create and edit sites.
• Turn off Sites entirely.
• Turn off Drive entirely.

The new Sites respects Drive sharing settings
The new Sites respects the Drive sharing settings in the Admin console (located at Apps > G Suite > Drive). It does not abide by the classic Sites sharing settings (located at Apps > G Suite > Sites). If you allow users to publish Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files on the web, they’ll also be able to publish sites created in the new Sites on the web.

Check out the new Sites today, and get started creating useful, beautiful sites that work across screens to deliver your content in the most effective way possible.


Launch Details
Release track:

• Admin console settings
• Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release
• End user features
• Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on November 21st, 2016

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions except G Suite for Government

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI


More Information
Help Center: The new Google Sites
Help Center: Use the new Google Sites
Learning Center: Sites

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(Cross posted from the Gmail blog) 

Posted by Matthew Izatt, Product Manager

Today we're making some changes to the Gmail and Google Calendar apps on iOS.

The new Gmail app for iOS

When you get the next Gmail iOS app update, you'll notice some exciting changes: The biggest overhaul of the app in nearly four years. It's the Gmail you know and love, with a fresh new look, sleeker transitions and some highly-requested features. It's a lot faster, too.

With the new app, getting things done on the go is a lot easier — whether you're trying to find a message your colleague sent you last month, or trying to get through your work inbox on a Monday morning.
Starting today, you'll be able to:

• Undo Send, just like you do on the desktop, to prevent embarrassing email mistakes
• Search faster with instant results and spelling suggestions (like when you type "flighht," but you really meant "flight")
• Swipe to archive or delete, to quickly clear items out of your inbox

Google Calendar: Updated for you

Check out the latest "What's New in G Suite" newsletter [pdf] for a roundup of all G Suite launches from October 2016.

Newsletter Archive & Translated Versions (coming soon for October issue)


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