Google is finally updating some of their branding to better represent their product offerings.  Most of us use Google Apps for Work but never call it that as we refer to it simply as Google Apps, which could be, misinterpreted to several different Google products and services.  They are now slowly improving their naming capabilities as seen with a more hip name of ‘G Suite.’  Otherwise known as 50 Cent’s Las Vegas hotel room.

Google says the name now better reflects its mission to “help people everywhere work and innovate together, so businesses can move faster and go bigger.”  Ryan Tabone, Google’s Director of Product Management for the G Suite also stated “the company wanted to make it clear to potential enterprise users that this is a unified collection of tools and not simply a set of individual things.”

We always recommend G Suite to our clients, formerly known as Google Apps because of the consistent reliability of everyday tools such as email, documents, spreadsheets and more.  They offer the sharing and collaboration capabilities that others simply can’t match.  Email is such a vital tool for so many SMB’s, and with Google’s minimalist design, user-friendly interface, mass storage and reliability it’s a no-brainer must have service.

New Features Include:

A new feature within Google Drive called Quick Access can eliminate 50% off the average time it takes to find the right file within your Drive by eliminating the need to search for it.  Instead, Google says machine learning will predict the file you need before you even type anything in and display its recommendations at the top.

An exciting new feature for iOS users is the upcoming release of Google Calendar’s Smart Scheduling feature.  It’s been live on Android for a while now but is expected to release on Apple products by the end of this year.  This feature is also powered by their machine intelligence and helps users suggest meeting times and available locations based on the users’ preferences and other insights.

Other improvements in this update again benefit from machine learning include an Explore feature within Google Sheets, which now lets users enter a question in natural language.  The software then uses Natural Language Processing to translate that question into a formula and gives you an instant answer.  Using natural language queries will now allow novice users to bypass formulas and still get more value out of Sheets.

Google also announced rolling out a team-friendly version of Drive built for teams rather than individual users.  Hooray!  Team Drive will setup a cloud space where all your business documents are live and everybody on the team can access based on different permission levels set by the admin.  Team Drive will be available in beta through Google’s Early Adopter Program and a broader availability in early 2017.

This not only is a wise rebrand by Google but it also comes with amazing new upgrades collaborating teams like our own.  We’ll continue to see more machine learning in our ever day software’s as well but these new features clearly put G Suite ahead of the competition, for now. Head to Google's Workspace page for more ingormation regarding the latest Google Workspace Updates.