The biggest news out of Google Cloud Next 2024 for small to medium-sized businesses was the score of new features coming to Google Workspace. Gemini for Workspace rolled out earlier in the year, and the new launches build on the strength of AI to power your business.
Many of the launches and features depend on having Gemini for Workspace, so contact us to get it now if you don’t have it yet. For those of you who don’t want to commit to Gemini just yet, there are powerful add-ons available for specific functions such as meetings and security.
Marketing and sales departments rejoice: Google Vids is coming
Let’s be honest. We’ve all played around with the AI video tools in Canva, and they aren’t so much AI-driven as all that. They’re prompts that treat you as the AI and walk you through creating a video. And HeyGen? We haven’t seen that level of uncanny valley since the Polar Express movie with those avatars.
Google has solved all of these problems with Google Vids, a solution native to Google Workspace that you can call on in an instant from Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides to professionalize your presentations. Instead of just walking you through the process of building a video, it suggests assets for your video based on your content.
Google Vids is currently in closed beta and will be released towards the end of Q2.
AI Meetings and Messaging Add-On
Those of you who have played around with Otter and Fireflies will recognize most of the features rolling out in this new add-on, which will be available at $10.00 per user. They include taking notes for you, summarizing meetings, and offering on-demand conversation summaries in Google Chat.
The real engine under the hood of this add-on is translation. In June, you will be able to translate captions in Meet in 69 languages. Later this year, you’ll get on-demand translation of messages in Google Chat. The business world is global, and now you’ll be able to understand your colleagues, wherever they are.
AI Security Add-On
This add-on is also $10.00 per user per month, and it allows IT teams to “classify and protect sensitive files company-wide on Google Drive.” It uses AI that is native to only your organization to proactively protect company files that it deems as sensitive from being accessed by the wrong people. It’s available now.
More features that will enhance productivity and security
You can answer your emails on long commutes with “Help me write”, which will produce a polished email from your voice notes. You’ll get new templates in Google Sheets, which Google is calling “building blocks”, which means you won’t have to build from a blank spreadsheet again.
One of the most useful tweaks for people who write every day is the ability to add tabs to a Google Doc so you can keep all of your source material organized in one place, rather than listing a pile of sources at the end of the doc. This “Sheets-lite” approach will make organizing your resources - probably garnered from Gemini AI - so much simpler to refer to and show to your stakeholders.
We know that’s a lot to take in. We’re here for you as your Google Partner to recommend the Google stack that works best for your business so you can harness the power of AI and propel your business forward with the right technology. Contact us today to find out how.
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