Google Workspace. From in-meeting reactions in ‘Meet’ to threads in ‘Spaces’, here’s what’s new with Google Workspace

Google has announced a host of new features for Google Workspace including updates in Meet and Spaces. Google has announced new updates for Meet including in-meeting reactions and picture in picture mode.

Coming next month, in-meeting reactions will let attendees send emoji reactions within meetings. These reactions will appear in a participant’s video tile, or overflow alongside their name if their video tile isn’t visible. It is also bringing Meet directly to Docs, Sheets, and Slides. 

“Users will be able to quickly start a meeting and bring it to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, and they can present this content to all the meeting attendees. This enables everyone in the meeting to collaborate in real-time while having a conversation—all from the same tab,” Google explained in a blog post.

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“Additionally, to help presenters and multitaskers see their audience while navigating different tabs and windows, we’re bringing picture-in-picture to Meet running on Chrome browsers,” it said. 

Starting next month, users will be able to see up to four video tiles of meeting attendees in a floating window on top of other applications when they share content or send a message in Gmail. Clicking on picture-in-picture will take them back to the full Meet session. 

It has started rolling out automatic noise cancellation on all Google Meet hardware, including Logitech, Acer and Asus hardware. In the coming months, people in conference rooms will also be able to add their own personal video tile from Companion mode and their laptop camera, making it easier for other attendees to see their expressions and gestures. 

It is also improving the livestream experience on Meet. Users can host meetings of up to 500 active attendees with the ability to livestream to audiences of up to 1,00,000 across trusted Google Workspace domains on Meet. 

Livestream meetings

Coming later this year, livestream attendees will be able to participate in Q&A and polls. Further, the tech giant will also enable meeting hosts to stream meetings directly to YouTube from the Meet activities tab later this year. 

“Our integration with YouTube means a Google account can be used for authentication, simplifying the livestreaming process,” it said. In terms of security, it is also rolling out optional client-side encryption in Google Meet in May (currently in beta). 

“This feature gives our customers direct control of the encryption keys and identity provider used to access those keys. And later this year, we’ll introduce optional end-to-end encryption for all meetings,” it said.

Spaces update

It has also announced various updates for Spaces, its collaboration platform. 

“We are improving how conversations are displayed in Spaces with inline threading, a top request from enterprise customers. With inline threading, members of a Space will be able to respond to specific comments and create side conversations, while keeping the dialogue organised and contextual,” it said.

It is also improving search within Chat and Spaces to surface the most relevant files and conversations, and bringing filter chips to chat search results later this year. Further, it is increasing team size limits in Spaces to 8,000, and will increase this to 25,000 by the end of this year. It is also adding safety features that improve content moderation, the ability to designate managers and guidelines for specific Spaces, and new admin capabilities to delete Spaces. 

Separately, Client-side encryption is now generally available for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, with support for multiple file types including Office files, PDFs, and more for Workspace Enterprise Plus and Education Plus customers.

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