While the vaccination drives are currently underway around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is not behind us just yet. That means office workers will continue to work from home for months to come. While Google has already rolled out a plethora of new updates to its collaboration tools, it has announced several new features at Google I/O 2021 today.
Google Workspaces Makes Work from Home Easier & Efficient
Google Workspaces and Meet video calling will receive awesome updates in the coming weeks. The new features that will make work from home easier includes are:
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Smart Canvas
The biggest addition comes in the form of Smart Canvas, which takes collaboration up a notch by making Sheets, Slides, and Meet available within Docs. So, what all is possible with this feature?
You can now not only mention users but also link Google Sheets or Slides docs that you want to share with your team in the Doc itself. “To insert smart chips into your work, simply type “@” to see a list of recommended people, files, and meetings,” says the official blog post.
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Google Meet Integration in Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Moreover, you will now be able to start or join Google Meet calls from within Docs, Sheets, or Slides on the web. It will enable easier collaboration as you no longer need to switch between apps to present your work. Meet will also add a new “Companion Mode” to give users, collaborators working from a common place their own tile in a video call.
Google Meet will also support live translations of captions later this year. You will be able to translate English into Spanish, Portuguese, French, or German. for those wondering, here’s how you can transcribe Google Meet calls in real-time.
Besides these features, you will get access to assisted writing capabilities, emoji reactions, pageless docs view (resize docs window and still see all the text), connected checklists via Google Tasks, and more. So yeah, you will be better prepared to tackle day-to-day tasks from home soon, thanks to this Google Workspace update.
