Google to offer integrated experience of productivity tools with 'Workspace'
Google on Tuesday said its various productivity solutions for messaging, meetings and documents will be available under a new brand identity - Google Workspace - that will offer a deep integrated product experience to customers. More than 2.6 billion consumers, enterprise and education users now actively choose to use Google's productivity and collaboration apps every month, Google said in a statement.
Google Workspace thoughtfully brings together messaging, meetings, docs, and tasks-all built with trusted Google security and powered by the cleanest cloud in the industry, it added.
In the coming weeks, users will see new four-colour icons for Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and collaborative content creation tools like docs, sheets, slides, it said.
"...teams need to thrive without meeting in person, protect their time to focus on the most impactful work, and build human connection in new ways. Google Workspace gives people a familiar, fully integrated user experience that helps everyone succeed in this new reality - whether you're in an office, working from home, on the frontlines, or engaging with customers," Google Workspace Vice President and General Manager Javier Soltero said.
In July, Google had announced a better home for work, the first step in its vision for a single unified experience that provides the best way to create, communicate, and collaborate.
"Today, this new home for work is generally available to all Google Workspace business customers and, in the coming months, will also roll out to consumers," the statement said.
The Google Workspace user experience will bring together core tools for communication and collaboration like chat, e-mail, voice and video calling, and content management into a single, unified experience. A new feature added is linked previews in docs, sheets, and slides that allow users to preview the content of a link without leaving the original document, saving time switching between apps and tabs.
Also, when users now mention someone in a document using @, a popup will display details providing context and even suggest actions like sharing the document.
"By connecting users to relevant content and people right in Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Workspace helps users get more done from where they already are...(Also) in the coming weeks, Google Workspace will enable users to dynamically create and collaborate on a document (Docs, Sheets, Slides) within a room in Chat," it said.
Google said it is also bringing Google Workspace to education and non-profit customers in the coming months.
Education customers can continue to access tools via G Suite for Education, which includes Classroom, Assignments, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet, it added. G Suite for nonprofits will continue to be available to eligible organisations through the Google for nonprofits programme, it noted.
