Just two weeks back, Google had renamed its productivity suite Google Apps for Work as Google Suite.
Google has rolled out a host of new features to improve the productivity by taking a little help from artificial intelligence to utilize the machine learning technology so that the users can perform their tasks more quickly. This update to the suite brings along with it new features that include an automatic allocation of tasks in the section for Action Item and also offers relevant suggestion options in the Forms section which help the users to perform their routine tasks in lesser time.
Using Artificial Intelligence Technology for Action Items
According to a report based on the Google’s official blog post, after updating the app, when the users type sentences which depict performing actions like “Andrew to schedule a weekly check-in” in the Docs app in its desktop version, Natural Language Processing technology will be used by the app to suggest an action in the Action Item column to the respective person whose name has been chosen in the sentence. This assigning of an Action Item can also be done manually by just mentioning the name of the person and then choosing it from the checkboxes on either the desktop or the mobile app versions of Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The concerned person will be then receiving a notification regarding the Action Item through an e-mail.
The Action Items will be visible on the Google dashboard and a badge will be displayed against the files which have an Action Item assigned to them on both the desktop and mobile versions of the apps. The badge will also show the number of action items that have been assigned to a particular document. There will also be relevant badges for the unresolved suggestions which have been made to a file by others so that it becomes easier for the users to find the files which need immediate attention.
Make Smarter Forms
The Google Suite update has also come up with a few improvements to its popular Google Forms. The tech giant will be using neural networks in an attempt to make the Forms section smarter so that the users can spend a lesser time to build questions. The blog post mentioned that by using the neural networks which are based on natural language processing of the always-on-watch Artificial Intelligence technology, the type of question which the user is asking will be predicted and potential responses will be suggested for the user to choose from. This reduces almost 25 percent of the time which the user had previously spent while creating a Form.
Google has also added another important feature to save the user’s precious time. G Suite will now perform document formatting by offering support to voice commands for changing the text color, for deleting words, for inserting comments and links, and many others ways of customized formatting to the web version of Docs.
Slack Partnership
The company has gone one step further by partnering with Slack, the popular chat service and messaging platform designed for workplaces. The existing files or newly created docs from Google Drive can be brought into a conversation on G Suite directly from the Slack client by just using the ‘+’ button that is present on the app. The users can also create new files of Sheets, Docs, and Slides from within Slack itself. This will help the users to not keep switching in between the apps.
Though it is a small change, it is undoubtedly a welcomed one especially for the users who use Google Docs and Sheets at work to share data.