In their annual Google I/O event, Google has just announced that we're about to see some awesome improved integration throughout the Google Workspace applications.
Greatly due to the current ongoing pandemic, and millions of employees having to do their work, meet, and present online worldwide, Google has been focusing on perfecting the experience of these interactions by adding a number of welcome new features.
Smart Canvas essentially bring a new and re-vamped Google apps experience, by which Google is greatly enhancing team collaboration on shared work in Google Meet, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides.
Firstly, Smart Canvas adds new Assisted Writing capabilities, which offer writing suggestions going far beyond grammatical correction. These improved language suggestions analyze writing on a deeper semantic level and strive to help avoid politically incorrect phrases and similar faux pas.
Google is also integrating Google Meet directly into its other collaboration-friendly applications, namely Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. From on, we will be seeing the Google Meet symbol in the top right corner of these three application windows, for quick and easy calls overlaid directly on the Doc, Sheet, or Slide, without skipping a beat.
The Google Workspace is also receiving a new interactive voting table feature, pictured below. This will make it easy to create things like polls within a collaborating team, and check which ideas are most popular with the live votes popping on the right in the form of a thumbs-up.
Google Meet in particular is receiving a new feature called Companion Mode, apart from its integration into the other Workspace applications. To facilitate larger all-hands video conference calls, Companion Mode gives each and every participant their own video tile, whether or not they are in the same office space.
Everyone will be able to create their own entries in polls, chat, and Q&A's in real time in the course of the video call on the right of the screen, without ever losing eye contact with the other teammates. Unlike the other features, live now, we can expect to see Companion Mode go live later this year, according to Google.
Furthermore, Google's improving artificial intelligence is bringing noise cancellation to Google Meet, which is sure to make make conference-room group calls much smoother, as office spaces begin to fill back up over time.
Google Meet is also receiving automated lighting and zoom adjustments to faces participating in a group call, to achieve a more universal look and ensure everyone is heard and in focus.
Customized Views is another addition to the Google Meet app, which will enable a presenter to move around and re-arrange people's faces as he speaks, allowing him to maintain eye contact with his viewers and see their reactions—all the while having his presentation on-screen.
Live captions can now be enabled at the bottom of the Google Meet screen as well, transcribing the video call in real time. The text can be translated live using Google Translate, for any viewers speaking a different language.
With Smart Canvas and these powerful enhancements to Google Meet, we're transforming collaboration in Google Workspace to help people succeed at work, at home, and in the classroom.
Google promises the fully integrated Smart Canvas experience of the Google Workspace will be available to the masses in the very near future, so stay tuned!
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