SAN FRANCISCO — G Suite is getting upgrades to allow its business users to determine where in the world their data resides and help them improve their communications skills too, Google announced on Tuesday.
A blog post by Prabhakar Raghavan, vice-president of apps at G-suite for Google, explained several new features for G Suite. Some of these features will only be available for Enterprise customers in the Early Adopter Program, while others are more widely accessible.
Security center investigation tool
Adding to the security center for G Suite introduced earlier this year, the investigation tool allows security pros to take action on the threats they are identifying. Administrators will be able to identify at-risk or infected users and take actions such as removing access to Google Drive files or deleting malicious emails. A graphical user interface is meant to relieve time spent analyzing logs for potential threats.
Regions for G Suite
Google is recognizing that some of its enterprise users must follow strict compliance requirements by ensuring their data is stored within the borders of a specific region. Certainly, the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now enforced by the E.U. detail many situations when user data should be kept in a specific geography.
Canadian G Suite users won’t have an option to keep their data north of the 49th parallel just yet. Google is allowing users to choose one of three options: global, U.S., or Europe. Google notes that an enterprise can have organizations with different regions, and that moving a file from one region to another won’t affect collaboration capabilities for any users.
This new feature is available today. While plans for Canada aren’t mentioned, Google says it will “expand it further over time.”
Smart Reply for Hangouts Chat
Used by many in Gmail already, this AI-driven auto-reply feature is being added to Hangouts Chat. “Our technology recognizes which messages most likely need responses, and proposes three different replies that sound like how you typically respond,” Raghave writes. “The proposed responses are casual enough for chat and yet appropriate in a workplace.”
This update is coming in the coming weeks.
Smart Compose in Gmail
Taking Google’s AI-powered writing services to the next level is Smart Compose, which can auto-complete your emails for you with greetings, sign-offs, and common phrases (e.g. “bring me coffee”). It can also insert your address for you where needed. This is also being made available in the coming weeks.
Grammar suggestions for Docs
If you’re tired of those people that just can’t help but point out grammar mistakes in your writing (OK, guilty), then you might appreciate Google’s new capability to suggest proper grammar. When you’re writing in Docs, this feature will use machine learning to recognize errors and suggest corrections.
Errors that it is likely to catch include the wrong article in a sentence (eg. “a” instead of “an”), or even how to use subordinate clauses correctly. (e.g. “Google’s AI corrected the writer when he made an error.”
This feature is only available to customers in the Early Adopter Program.
