U-M Google Updates

The monthly U-M Google summaries inform the university community of new Google releases and previously communicated updates.

Updates:

• Start meetings more efficiently with the Calendar guest list in Google Meet

You can now view participants who were invited to the meeting but have yet to join the call from within Google Meet. These participants can be found under the “Also invited” heading in the People section. Additionally, you can also view the RSVP status of everyone on the invite, including optional attendees and RSVP notes. From here, you can reach out to invited participants via Google Chat to confirm whether they will be joining directly from Meet.

• Rich text formatting in Google Forms titles and descriptions

Rich text formatting is now available in Google Forms, which allows you to use bolding, underlining, italicizing, hyperlinks, and lists in titles, question titles, and descriptions. Learn more about formatting text in your form. 

• New options for styling fonts in Google Forms

Google has added additional font styles, sizing options, and the ability to customize header, subheader, and body text separately in Google Forms. This update allows you to use different typefaces and sizes for different parts of your form.

• Adjust spacing between content in Sites using new density theme setting

Site editors in new Google Sites can now adjust the spacing between the content on their site with a custom theme setting that offers Compact, Cozy, or Comfortable spacing options. By default, all newly created sites will start with the Comfortable setting. To edit spacing in a new Site, navigate to Themes > Custom > Edit > Spacing > Density.

• Drag out from Keep

You can now insert images saved in your Keep notes into other apps by dragging them out from the image carousel on Android devices. Learn more about using Keep on Android.

• Building larger spaces in Google Chat

Google has increased the number of members you can add to a space in Google Chat from 400 to 8,000. This change only applies to newly created spaces.

• Space Managers can change access to new and existing spaces in Google Chat

In Google Chat, Space Managers can now change access to new and existing spaces by making them either “Restricted” or “Discoverable.” To change access in a space, click the name of your space, select View Members from the drop-down menu, click the drop-down arrow under the Space Access section, and select either Restricted or University of Michigan (i.e., Discoverable).

• Better sharing options for appointment schedules

Google has added a new Share button to appointment schedules on web and mobile. This update allows appointment hosts to copy a short link to all appointment schedules or a specific booking page, or add HTML to embed a booking page on a website.

• Delete Chat spaces and their content, now generally available

Google Chat Space Managers can now delete a space, which removes all owned content of the space, space tasks, and files/attachments not saved elsewhere. In addition, members will no longer be able to access the space, its files, tasks, or the member list after the space has been deleted. To delete a space, click the name of your space and select Delete space from the drop-down menu. Learn more about deleting a space in Google Chat. 

• Prevent spam by adding invitations from known senders only to your calendar

You can now select an option to display events on your Google Calendar only if they come from a sender you know. If you select this option, you will still receive email event invitations from unknown senders, but they appear on your calendar only after you accept.

Senders you know include:

• People at the University of Michigan (i.e., @umich.edu)
• People in your contacts list
• People you’ve interacted with before

The default option is invitations from everyone, and you can still choose to have all invitations appear on your calendar or only those you’ve accepted.

Learn more about managing your incoming invitations and notifications in Google Calendar.

Previously Communicated:

Coming soon: Visual changes to email compose fields in Gmail

Google has announced several improvements in Gmail to help you compose email more efficiently. When interacting with the “To,” “Cc,” and “Bcc” fields, key changes include: 

• New right-click menu to view a recipient's contact information
• Recipient profile pictures

• Better indicators when emailing an external recipient
  • External recipients you’ve interacted with before will be highlighted in yellow. 
  • External recipients you’ve not interacted with before will be highlighted along with an external icon and warning banner.

• New indicators when adding a duplicate recipient
  • Duplicate recipients will be grayed out with a checkmark to indicate they have already been included in the email.
  • Gmail will automatically remove duplicate entries within the same field when dragging and dropping between the To, Cc, and Bcc fields.

• Improved email formatting validation
  • To prevent errors, Gmail will validate that email addresses are entered in the correct format (e.g., username@domain.com) and will prevent any incorrect formats from becoming a recipient.
  • If you add an incorrectly formatted email address in the address fields, you’ll see an error message prompting you to fix the error before sending.
  • Validation is only performed on email address formatting and does not check the accuracy of the email address itself.

Note: These updates may impact some Chrome extensions using the current Gmail Compose interface.

According to Google, these improvements should begin showing up in U-M Google sometime between July 7 and the end of September 2022 but could take longer to become fully visible to everyone.