Google is adding a handful of new features to the Google Workspace today, including new tools to categorize your Google Calendar and Chat focus time, better ways to participate in Google Meet videoconferences with multiple devices, and a version of your office suite for frontline employees. It is also taking the Google Assistant for Workspace out of beta and making it available to the general public.
The company is trying to categorize these resources as part of a new impetus for what it calls “collaborative equity”. For Google, it’s a noble way of explaining the tools you’re trying to create so that people who work from home are not at a disadvantage compared to people who work in an office (that is, when people can go back to offices) .
The idea that comes closest to reaching this brand is Google’s tools to define its status in its set of products. In addition to configuring working hours and out of the office, users can also create a new type of event called Focus Time. When you set up a Focus Time tile, Google says it will limit “notifications during these event windows”. You can also set your location, allowing your co-workers to get a better idea of your availability and time zone.
The important thing is that the various Workspace tools, such as Gmail and Chat, will be aware of your current status and location and will adjust your notifications to suit. It is nowhere near the ideal universal status indicator, but it is a step in the right direction – as long as you live mostly on the Google Workspace and are not mixing other tools like Slack.
The new types of status in the calendar also allow Google to make a kind of “time well spent” graph focused on work, except that it shows how much time you are wasting in meetings each week. Google says that this “Time Insights” analysis will only be available to workers, not their bosses.
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Google is also introducing “second-screen experiences” for Google Meet. Essentially, it allows people to log into a meeting from multiple devices, making it easier to share screens (or do other work) without the meeting taking up your entire laptop. The idea is that home workers can use a Google Nest Hub Max or their phone to log in to the meeting, but still be able to make a presentation on their main computer.
On phones, Google Meet is adopting a mobile tile display for video calls, picture-in-picture and split-screen support. It is not clear whether these tools will work on Android and iOS.
Google is also building its low-cost offering of Google Workspace Essentials with support for Chat, Jamboard and Calendar – all of which are strange omissions at launch.
Finally, Google says it is launching the “Google Workspace Frontline”, which it calls a “customized solution” for frontline workers. It appears to be a simplified way for administrators to configure a Google Workspace configuration for employees in retail or in the field. It will also make it possible to create AppSheet applications (simple forms-based applications) within Google Sheets.
Together, the set of feature updates that Google is announcing today seems designed primarily to make meetings less painful (because you can multitask more easily during them) or easier to avoid (because you can set up Focus Time and also find out how much time you spend in the Time Insights sidebar).