The latest talk of the town is the Google Pixel – a new series of phones that has recently been unveiled to replace the popular Nexus lineup. While this has everything to do with the mobile market, the search engine has also been busy with stepping up its game in the business world.
Just a few weeks ago, the company announced that Google Apps for Work will now be known as G Suite. This still doesn’t change the mission of the former with respect to the latter – the G Suite is out to kill Microsoft’s productivity suite, Office 365.
According to Google, the rebranding of Google Apps to G Suite is only meant to give the platform a deserved identity. What this means is that there is nothing much that will be changing, instead, the company will only be looking to make G Suite a much better offering than Apps for Work.
When you look at the official G Suite website, you will notice that just about everything you saw on Apps for Work is also available on the new platform. These include Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Hangouts as well as Google Calendar, among others. While Microsoft’s Office 365 is mainly targeting large businesses with its services, Google is hoping to lure much smaller businesses into using G Suite.
In another post, Google goes ahead to highlight more on the new G Suite and the capabilities it possesses.
New Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts has been replaced by Allo and Duo on the new Pixel phones. However, this is only being done so as to improve its services in the business niche, which is led by G Suite. The latest version comes with a key addition to the meeting experience it already offers. You no longer need to download a plug-in so as to enjoy meetings on Hangouts and the best part is that the service will be available via any device. Businesses will be able to include up to 50 participants in a meeting, which is a huge number of people. The new Hangouts also comes integrated with Google Calendar as well as support for screen sharing.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a very crucial part of the G Suite and the app is borrowing from Office 365’s offering by bundling a Find A Time feature. This feature will help with suggesting meeting times as well as available rooms, but this will be based on your preferences as well as the schedules of other colleagues. The feature has already been added to the Android version of the Suite, but iOS users will have to be patient for a while.
Google Docs has Explore
Google Docs has been updated with a feature known as Explore. With this feature, Docs will be able to recommend topics, pictures and other types of content related to the existing document. The feature will also come in handy when finding other documents that are related to the current on in Google Drive. The same Explore feature has also been added to Google Slides, whose closest rival is PowerPoint.
Quick Access for Drive
As noted earlier, the new G Suite still comes bundled with Google Drive. For those on Android, you can enjoy a Quick Access feature that takes advantage of cloud-based machine learning to know your signals, for instance, how you interact with workmates, activity in Drive or even recurring meetings, and in so doing, it offers you the files that you need most before searching for them. The Quick Access area is found on top of the latest version of the Google Drive app UI.
Updated Google Sheets
In Google Sheets, users have been able to use the Explore feature to summarize data with the help of automated charts as well as insights. However, the latest G Suite version takes this to the next level, adding support for Natural Language Processing when it comes to translating questions into a formula in order to get an instant answer as well.
Keep in mind that not all of these features have already been integrated into the G Suite app for Android and iOS. In fact, some are only available in the beta version, but they should be rolled out with the stable version very soon.