U-M Google Updates

Google has added right-to-left language support in new Google Sites for the following languages:

• Arabic
• Farsi
• Hebrew
• Urdu

When you have your language set to one of the above, the site editing experience will adjust to place the editing sidebars and menus on the left-hand side of the screen instead of the right. Similarly, once a site is published, site viewers who have their default language set to one of the above will see navigation elements like menus reversed to match the right-to-left language.

According to Google, this feature should have begun to show up in U-M Google on November 12 and could take three days or longer to become fully visible.

By default, certain emails (sent via Google Calendar, Drive, or other G Suite products) do not appear in the sender’s Sent Gmail folder. Google recently announced the option to enable comprehensive mail storage to include these emails in your Sent folder. This new feature allows UMICH users to more easily track, organize, and archive all their work-related communications across core G Suite services.

The Collaboration Services team enabled the comprehensive mail storage option in the UMICH domain on November 4. You will now begin to see the emails sent from Calendar, Drive, and other G Suite products in your Sent Gmail folder. Previously sent emails, however, are not included.

The monthly U-M Google Summaries inform the university community of Google releases for Core Apps as well as the Non-Core Apps (those that are not part of the G Suite for Education agreement). We communicate important information on Core Apps throughout the month. Core and Non-Core Apps are listed on the G Suite website.

Core Apps:

• A new look for the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps
  Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides now have a new look on Android devices. While there are no functionality changes, users will notice visual improvements, including a restyled document list, highly-legible typefaces, consistent controls, and updated iconography. These changes are a continued part of Google’s larger Material redesign of their services.
• Customize text size and position for captions in Google Slides
  You can now personalize caption text size and position while presenting in Google Slides. These features can help make captions easier to read or you could make your text smaller to maximize the number of words on the screen at once.
• Directly click on chart elements to move and delete them in Google Sheets
  Google has added new features that give you more options to easily customize your charts in Google Sheets. Now you can click directly on data labels, chart titles, or legends and drag to reposition them. You can also easily delete these elements using the delete or backspace keys.

• Set profile picture for Gmail and all Google apps
  When you go to change your profile picture in Gmail you’ll be redirected to the About me section of your Google profile settings to set it. Currently, profile pictures set in Gmail are only displayed in Gmail. This means your profile picture in Gmail may be different than your Google account profile photo, which can make it difficult to know which picture will be displayed where. This change simplifies things by allowing you to set a single profile picture in one place and then displaying that single photo across all Google apps. If your Gmail and profile photos are currently different, you’ll see a pop-up when you visit your About me settings which will prompt you to select one of the images or choose an entirely new photo.

• Material Design for Hangouts Meet on the web
  Hangouts Meet will be getting a new look on the web interface. While there are no functionality changes, users will notice visual improvements, including updated fonts and highly-legible typefaces, consistent controls, and updated iconography and colors. These changes are a continued part of Google’s larger Material redesign of their services.
• Instantly create new docs, events, spreadsheets and more from your browser
  You can now quickly create new files directly from your browser with “.new” domains for several Google services. For example, you can type “Cal.new” into your browser to create a new Google Calendar event. The .new domains are Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Cal, and Keep. 
• Gmail “Canned Responses” are now called “Templates”
  Google has recently renamed the “Canned Responses” feature in Gmail to “Templates” to more accurately describe the functionality of what this feature does. Now when you go to use a previously created Canned Response, you will notice the name changed to Templates. For more information on Gmail’s Templates, visit Google’s help center.

Back in May 2018, Google introduced a more secure sign-in flow on Chrome. Google updated this flow on October 18 so that the “Verify it’s you” prompt appears more frequently. Although it is an extra step to access your U-M Google account, Google made this change to increase the security of your account. This was done for all G Suite domains, not just ours. In response, we developed documentation on Logging into Google at U-M and put a link to it on the Getting Started page of the U-M Google website. Here is a screenshot of the verification prompt:

If your uniqname@umich.edu email address is listed, then it is safe to click Continue. If another email address is listed, do not click Continue and contact the ITS Service Center.

When was the last time you checked your spam label in Gmail? Once in a while, a legitimate email can be marked as spam instead of appearing in the Inbox. We recommend you check your spam label periodically for legitimate emails that may appear there by mistake. If you do find a message that has been accidentally marked as spam, you can select it and click Not Spam in the top toolbar to help ensure that future messages from this sender are not flagged as spam. Additionally, adding colleagues to your Google Contacts can help with mail delivery.