Google’s Gmail has been an invaluable resource for many working from home, and a new update will centralize services like Google Chat, Drive, and Hangouts within the Gmail hub, offering a more unified user experience. The update stands to offer an alternative to similar services that at-home workers have been relying on, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, and draws on the best aspects of G Suite to provide a better workspace for Gmail users.
Earlier this year, Gmail was updated to include a search chips feature, designed to organize your inbox and prevent clutter. Google has been rolling out features that will be included within the Gmail overhaul gradually, such as the combination of Gmail and Google Chat within the same page on the web version of Gmail. The changes are timely, considering that as remote work increases so do the difficulties associated with working from home. Challenges such as the increase in video call intrusions and Zoom’s new security paywall have caused many users and developers to rethink what remote software and collaboration looks like. Services like Microsoft Teams have been increasing their collaborative capabilities, and the new Gmail update is positioned to address some of the challenges remote workers have encountered while using G Suite services.
According to a Google blog post by G Suite VP and GM Javier Soltero, the update will integrate features like Chat and Google Docs into the Gmail hub. Within the browser, Android, and iOS versions of Gmail, services will be divided into the following categories: Mail, Chat, Rooms, and Meet. Rooms is an offshoot of Chat that allows smaller groups to work together, and Meet will incorporate a video chatting and calling service into Gmail itself. The Mail and Chat services look to be similar to their predecessors, with the perk of being confined to the same screen rather than separate apps. The new workspace will allow you to move to third-party services like Salseforce and DocuSign as well. More general updates include the ability to toggle your availability and the ability to update your ‘Out of office’ status such that it translates to all aspects of the Gmail app. Google has yet to release a date for the Gmail update, but plans to unveil even more features after the initial wave.
New Features Include Added Security, Collaborative Channels
The Meet update seems positioned to replace Zoom and Hangouts, as it is currently free for all G Suite users and will incorporate new security features like knocking and safety locks. Other new features include Hand Raising, Polls, Background Blur and Replacement, and several quality assurance tools. Meet will also host Calendar updates and notifications, so that users will be spared from jumping back and forth between windows while they’re on calls. It’s likely that Meet will be able to provide a welcome alternative for educators and other video conferencing users.
The Rooms update is likewise exciting for its organizational capabilities, and seems designed to relocate certain aspects of Google Drive and Chat into one arena, much like Microsoft Teams does with its Posts and Files channels. Rooms will now allow users to keep track of action items (Tasks), and will connect to Google Drive within the app in order to allow users to update documents in Gmail, rather than having to navigate elsewhere. All of the new features seem to be designed to draw all aspects of a collaborative workspace under the same roof, so to speak. Google’s Gmail additions are likely to be welcomed, given that remote working is the wave of the future and the need for organizational and collaborative tools is only set to increase.
