Google opens up Workspace with slew of third-party integrations
Google is transferring to make its Workplace collaboration and productiveness software program an open platform, tamping down IT supervisor issues about vendor lock-in.
Magdalena Petrova
As workplace employees proceed to be confronted with a proliferation of SaaS purposes, IT managers are cautious of turning into locked right into a single app or closed surroundings. Tackling the difficulty head-on, Google is on a path to additional shut the hole between workers and their favourite work instruments by means of the enlargement of third-party integrations throughout its Workspace platform.
Ensuring that purposes from varied distributors work nicely collectively is crucial to serving to groups and organizations maximize hybrid work, and new additions to the Workspace platform just lately introduced by Google have been designed with that purpose in thoughts.
The new additions embody the launch of third-party sensible chips in Docs and new integrations and enhanced API capabilities for Meet, Chat and Spaces—all of which are supposed to ship new methods to make use of third-party purposes inside or alongside Google Workspace.
At its Next convention final week, Google stated Meet has added virtually a dozen new capabilities so as to facilitate what Google is asking “immersive connections,” whereas new safety updates see some Enterprise Plus and Education clients obtain client-side encryption (CSE) in Gmail and Google Docs.
Discussing the bulletins within the wake of the convention, Yulie Kwon Kim, a VP of product administration at Google Workspace, stated Google was dedicated to giving clients customizability in how they work with our instruments.
“The openness of our platform brings work together in one place, allowing the people closest to it to really tailor it to how they see fit, and workflows really transcend products,” Kim said. “So, one simple workflow to get your tasks done may span not just multiple workspace apps, but tools from other vendors as well as internal tools.”
Smart chips improve app integration
One of the important thing new additions to the Workspace platform is the enlargement of what Google is asking sensible chips—embedded hyperlinks that customers can add into Google Docs by typing the @ image, part of the sensible canvas idea launched final 12 months.
Smart canvas was designed to streamline how Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides work collectively. It gave Workspace customers the flexibility to convey the folks and data they wanted into Docs by means of easy @-mentions, creating interactive mentions of individuals, recordsdata, conferences, and templates.
Google has now expanded its sensible chips capabilities to its ecosystem companions, permitting customers so as to add much more wealthy information, extra context, and significant data proper into the move of their work. With these new third-party sensible chips, clients will be capable of tag and see necessary data from companion purposes utilizing @-mentions, and insert interactive data and previews from third-party apps immediately right into a Google Doc.
Kim stated that by opening up sensible canvas to third-party purposes and asserting new APIs, or not it’s simpler for builders to construct immediately into Meet, Chat and Spaces.
“Already we’re seeing a lot of momentum around how people are customizing their tools within Workspace. Today, there are over 5,200 public apps in our marketplace, and more than 5 billion apps installed across Google Workspace,” she stated.
A lot of organizations have already confirmed they’re creating third-party sensible chip integrations, together with AO Docs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau, and ZenDesk. These sensible chips for third-party integrations will likely be obtainable to clients in 2023.
Open ecosystem strategy helps deal with SaaS sprawl
Atlassian is among the organizations creating sensible chips for each its Jira and Confluence apps, enabling customers to visualise key challenge plan particulars immediately in a Doc.
Erika Trautman, head of product for work administration at Atlassian, stated that Atlassian is investing in integrating Confluence and JIRA in order that customers can entry Atlassian merchandise immediately inside Google’s merchandise. These integrations will start with facilitating entry to JIRA statuses and Confluence pages inside Google Docs, and are anticipated to be stay early subsequent 12 months.
“We see users applying Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and smart links into Trello at a very high scale so this kind of cross product integration makes a lot of sense for us,” Trautman stated. Trello, a subsidiary of Atlassian, makes a collaborative work administration app of the identical identify.
Trautman added that as a result of proliferation of software program instruments that now exist inside most organizations, it’s the position of expertise corporations to assist their buyer decrease the disruption that emerges from the fixed must context-switch, and make it straightforward for finish customers to entry the instruments they want whereas working.
“We need to meet people with the functionalities that they want, where they are and not insist that they go to different destinations,” Trautman stated. “Find them where they are and provide the tools and the integrations while helping the administrators at these big companies deal with the complexity of the multitude of apps that their employees need, by simplifying administration and ensuring that everything is secure.”
Kim stated that by opening up Google’s improvements to third-party companions, Google Workspace turns into a “connective tissue for all the best tools.”
Delivering over 300 new options
Kim stated that so as to sustain with the tempo of change and meet the shifting wants of its clients, Google has delivered 300 new collaboration-focused updates to clients this 12 months alone.
Other updates introduced by Google final week signifies that there aren’t any plans to sluggish that down.
Google Meet has undergone what the corporate is describing as a re-imagining, increasing the third-party capabilities that customers are ready entry immediately inside Meet, alongside Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Google has additionally introduced two new instruments for builders—the Google Meet API and Google Meet add-on SDK—each of which can allow customers to convey third-party apps along with Google Meet.
Otherwise, Google has added a speaker highlight in Slides; adaptive framing with AI-powered cameras from Huddly and Logitech; assembly room check-in; companion mode cell in Meet; the flexibility to assign convention rooms to breakout rooms in Meet; automated video framing; automated assembly transcriptions; and the flexibility to manage slides immediately inside Meet. Some of those additions can be found within the coming month, whereas the bulk will likely be obtainable to clients from 2023.
Users will even have entry to working location reminders in Google Calendar and customized emojis and inline threaded conversations in Google Chat from this month, and entry to broadcast-only areas in Google Chat from early 2023.
With regards to up to date safety measures, along with CSE, new information loss prevention (DLP) capabilities for Chat permits admins to create customized insurance policies to assist stop delicate data leaks, whereas belief guidelines in Drive will enable for extra granular management of inside and exterior sharing. These capabilities will all be obtainable by the tip of the 12 months.
