Google is this month rolling out three new features in our Google Apps domain.
Hangouts Chat:
A new a separate application from their previous text based messaging tool.
This new app adds improvements to text based messaging by adding the ability to create “rooms” with groups of users that can chat on a more long term basis. People can update/edit their messages, add documents, calendar invites, video conferencing requests. Google is also adding “bots” and triggers to make it possible to add future and additional functionality to chats. Ie, it would hypotethically be possible to create a bot that could respond to dataqueries. For example, sending a text message “@287bot what is michael stangas email address” and the bot could respond.
So, the workflow is more geared towards collaboration than traditional text messaging.
The app is a standalone component and can be accessed through:
https://chat.google.com
or by downloading the Hangouts Chat app for Android, iOS.
More information here:
https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/move-projects-forward-one-placehangouts-chat-now-available/
Activity Dashboard:
This is a new feature added to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. In which people with edit rights on a document will be able to see who has viewed a document.
Currently, it is possible to see who has modified a document. Moving forward it will be possible to also see who has viewed a document.
This new dashboard will show up under the “tools” menu for individual documents.
More information here: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2018/03/docs-activity-dashboard-launch.html
Google App Maker:
A new tool that allows for easier ability to programatically modify data in Google. Not as complex as creating text based scripts using APIs, but not quite as simple as fully GUI based dragging and dropping. But something in between.
I suspect this tool would be of high interest for developers, technology classes and Google power users.
More information here: https://developers.google.com/appmaker/
Of these three features, currently only Hangouts Chat is available right now, the other two will become available the next week or two.