SaaS Updates Summary: May 24- May 28

Google dropped a few things that I think folks will use immediately because they’ve been a long time coming. For starters, Cloud Search finally supports OCR! Plus you can now position an image in a Google Doc in front or behind text. Neat, right? Read up about these updates and several others in the links.

Updated Rollout Information for the New Google Meet User Experience, New Option To Revert to the Legacy Experience
Google Workspace Updates | YIn April 2021, Google announced a new and improved Google Meet experience to help make meetings more immersive, inclusive, and productive. It has since revised the rollout for the new Google Meet experience.

View More Insights on Keep Activity With a New API and Audit Logs
Google Workspace Updates | In April 2021, Google announced a new and improved Google Meet experience to help make meetings more immersive, inclusive, and productive. It has since revised the rollout for the new Google Meet experience.

Save Photos From Gmail Messages Directly to Google Photos With a New “Save to Photos” Button
Google Workspace Updates | Now when you get a photo attachment in a Gmail message, you can save it directly to Google Photos with a new “Save to Photos” button. You’ll see it next to the existing “Add to Drive” button on the attachment and while previewing the image attachment.

“Master” View in Google Slides Renamed to “Theme Builder”
Google Workspace Updates | Google is renaming the “Master” view in Google Slides to “Theme Builder”. This change better communicates the benefits: to help users quickly customize the font, color, and layout customization for their current theme, ensuring a consistent experience throughout the presentation.

More Options To Control Which Holidays Show on Your Calendar
Google Workspace Updates | To provide more control over your calendar, Google is adding a new option to choose which holidays to display. Previously, we showed all holidays for regions you select, including official public holidays (such as thanksgiving in the US, or the summer bank holiday in the UK), as well as unofficial other holidays.

Create and Import Documents That Contain Images Above or Behind Text in Google Docs
Google Workspace Updates | You can now position an image in front of or behind text in Google Docs. Additionally, this formatting will be preserved when importing or exporting documents from Microsoft Word.

Gmail Exports in Vault Now Include a New CSV Metadata File
Google Workspace Updates | Now when you create Gmail exports in Google Vault, you will get a new CSV-formatted file of the export metadata in addition to the XML file you currently receive. This can make export processing and review easier and may save legal costs.

Enhance Cloud Search Results for PDFs Containing Images With Optical Character Recognition Support
Google Workspace Updates | Cloud Search now supports Optical Character Recognition (OCR) based text extraction for PDFs that contain images, such as: Physical contract documents, engineering documents that contain annotations or labels, physical customer invoices, and more.

For last week’s SaaS updates (and beyond), click here for our archive.