Technology innovators, Google, recently announced the arrival of a new collaboration solution for Google Workspace. Smart Canvas is an immersive collaboration experience helping people to stay connected and transform their ideas into actions. The Smart Canvas experience enhances Sheets, Docs, and Slides to make them more intelligent and interactive.
According to GM and VP of Google Workspace, Javier Soltero, the ways people have worked together have been defined for too long by complex legacy tools. Google believes it’s time to pioneer and improve modern collaboration for a new generation. Smart Canvas is a new opportunity in this roadmap towards brighter hybrid futures.
Transforming the Collaboration Experience
New building blocks for interactive connect content, people, and events into a single environment, while more flexible formatting options allow for greater versatility. Some of the new building blocks introduced include:
- Docs smart chips: Allows users to type @ to see a list of recommended people, files, and meetings to include in work. Smart chips are also rolling out to Sheets.
- Checklists: Helps users to quickly capture Docs tasks. This feature will integrate with Google Tasks soon, allowing teams to assign tasks to specific people, and manage better to-do items.
- Table templates: In Docs, table templates will create topic-voting tables where users can gather team feedback and project tracker tables to help capture milestones and status information in real-time. Templates are available for capturing meeting notes within Calendar meeting invites
New formats include:
- New views in sheets: New views in sheets help users to better interact with and manage data. Timeline views make tracking tasks faster and easier, allowing users to organise data by owner, campaign, or category.
- Pageless format: The pageless formatting options in Docs allows users to remove the boundaries of a page to create a surface that expands onto any screen or device they’re using.
Further Updates in Smart Canvas
Smart Canvas in the Google Workspace is also driving tighter integrations between collaboration and communication tools, so users can pull content into conversations. You’ll have the option to present content from Sheets, Docs, and other locations through Meet. Plus, you can Meet directly in Docs, Slides, and Sheets too, making it easier to collaborate.
The recently enhanced Meet experience allows for the pinning of video and content feeds, as well as the option to turn off your own camera feed. There’s also the option for editing and creating Docs and Sheets in Chat rooms, which is already available for web users and will come into Slides in the weeks ahead. Users can even add Emoji reactions to Docs.
Google Workspace is also upgrading grammar suggestions with Quick Access and Drive Priority features. Now, Google Workspace will also be bringing additional assisted writing features to Docs. This will let you know when people are using offensive language and words as well as making stylistic suggestions to improve editing.
Further assisted analysis is also available in Google Sheets now. The solution helps to build and troubleshoot formulas, making it easier for all kinds of professionals to drive insights from data. All of these advanced capabilities aim to improve the experience for all Google Workspace users.
