What’s New in Google G Suite [January 2019]

Catch up on every new feature added to Google G Suite for Education in January 2019.

Material Design for Docs, Sheets, Slides and Sites

This is purely a visual design change, there is no change in how you use the product but you may have already noticed it. This style change is part of a new design approach from Google to keep each app consistent. The changes are as below:

• Improved interface typography
• Consistent controls
• Legible and crisp icons

You’ll see below in the example from Google Slides that the options toolbar is cleaner and more modern. The Share button in the top right corner now matches the colour of the app you are in rather than being blue across all apps.

Embed Google Drawings in to Google Docs

Drawings isn’t something widely used here at Barton, we only have around 4 drawings made each week compared to around 10,000 new Docs. But now, you can embed your Google Drawings straight in to your Google Docs!

Plus, when you update your drawing you can just go in to your Doc and hit the update button which will appear on your drawing and it will be up to date.

Improved Jamboard functionality in Chrome

Jamboard is still main intended as an interactive whiteboard that you buy from Google but the apps work perfectly on our touchscreen Chromebook devices. You can access it from Google Chrome but you do have limited functionality.

There have been some improvements this month for Chrome this month meaning it’s possible for more people in college to use it, the improvements are below:

• Support for familiar keyboard shortcuts – Such as Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V for paste and Ctrl+D to duplicate objects.
• Create, delete and duplicate frames – Easily manage frames (pages) on the web.
• Switch between create modes – Quickly switch between drawing and select mode. Hold down Ctrl to switch to the select a mode.
• Better image management – Add images to jams by drag and drop, copy and paste or a simple image upload.

Updated roadmap for classic Google Sites

There is an update to the lifespan of the classic Google Sites, at the end of 2021 the ancient, classic Google Sites will be completely retired. If, for any reason, you still have a site on the classic Sites that you haven’t moved over to the new Sites yet, it would be better to do it sooner rather than later.

New features announced for new Google Sites

This is just some examples of what new features will be coming to Google Sites this year:

Create richer, more customized sites:

• New site themes so your sites can match your company look, feel, and brand.
• Improved text controls to provide you with a greater choice of fonts, colors, styles, and more.
• Standard templates from Google to help you quickly create common types of sites (such as team sites, project sites, and events sites).
• Custom templates to provide simple access to starter websites specific to your domain.
• Better integration with other G Suite products so you can easily embed content in Sites.
• New API capabilities, including Apps Script support, so you can automate and manage sites.
• New page elements, like tables of contents and image carousels.

Create and manage larger sites:

• Additional functionality and controls to help you create and manage larger sites.
• Increased size limits so you can build larger sites.
• Ability to see what’s changed between the previous published version and current draft of a site, so you can make more informed publishing decisions.
• Version history so you can see and restore previous versions.
• Richer and more comprehensive search from within a site.
• Google Vault support for content from new Sites.