SaaS Updates Summary: July 5–8

Last week, Google announced updates to the Admin console and also released an updated version of Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS). Microsoft introduced free Skype Meetings, as well as faster OLAP pivot tables in Excel 2016 and new functionalities for Skype for Business Mac Preview.

Introducing Free Skype Meetings – The Skype for Business team is pleased to introduce free Skype Meetings—a new online meetings tool that provides small businesses with real-time audio and HD video conferencing. Skype Meetings includes collaboration features like the ability to share screens and content during meetings.

Updated Version (v1.6) of Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS) – Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS) version 1.6 is now available for download.

Skype for Business Mac Preview Adds Contacts, Presence and IM – The Skype for Business team is pleased to announce the next phase of the Skype for Business Mac Preview, which—on top of the meetings functionality released in April—brings a new set of functionalities to the app.

Check the Real-Time Status of a User’s Enrollment in Two-Step Verification – In order to deploy two-step verification (2SV) to your organizations, you need to have insight into which end users have and have not enrolled for the feature. Starting today, you can view the real-time status of an individual user’s enrollment in 2SV directly from the user list in the Admin console. To get started, you’ll need to add the 2-step verification enrollment column to the Users page.

Faster OLAP PivotTables in Excel 2016 – If you work with connections to OLAP servers, your PivotTables are now faster. The June 2016 update contains query and cache improvements to this powerful feature. You could benefit from these improvements, whether you use PivotTables to answer one-off questions or build complicated workbooks with dozens of PivotTables.