Collaboration and security in Google Workspace for education

Last month Google announced smart canvas, a new experience that enhances collaboration in the tools that you use every day — like Docs, Sheets and Slides—by making them even more interactive and intelligent.

One new feature of this experience is smart chips, which allows you to pull in helpful information from other Google Workspace products while working in a document. For example, if you’re a student working on a group project, you can quickly embed files from Drive or tag other students in your group right into your document by typing the ‘@’ sign. Once people are tagged, just hover over their name to quickly chat, email or set up a meeting.

Warnings and suggestions will be provided

For Education Plus customers, Google's rolling out the next phase of writing tips in Docs and adding assisted analysis in Sheets later this year. In Docs, this includes warnings about offensive language and stylistic suggestions. Admins can easily turn this off if they prefer. In Sheets, assisted analysis provides formula suggestions that make it easier for everyone to derive insights from data.

Improving security for everyone using Google Workspace for Education

Google is strengthening the security of all Google Workspace for Education customers with Drive security improvements and additional advanced security for Education Plus and Education Standard customers. In the coming weeks, Google is adding enhanced protections to Drive that allow all Google Workspace for Education admins to turn on this kind of protection within their organisations' internal Drive to further defend against insider threats and accidental sharing of malware.

Additionally, new Drive trust rules will give admins more advanced controls around how files can be shared within and outside of their organisation. For example, an admin can allow a subset of faculty to share documents with anyone in their district, but only allow students to share files with people in their specific school.

Drive labels integrate with Google Workspace’s data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities so admins can set rules at the appropriate sensitivity level. Even if teachers or staff forget to classify content on their own, files can be automatically classified based on administrator-defined DLP rules.

This can help admins be more proactive about protecting some of your communities’ most sensitive data, like personally identifiable information or proprietary research. Drive Labels will be planned to also work with Google Vault, allowing admins to set retention policies for a given sensitivity level. Drive labels are now available in beta for Education Standard and Education Plus customers.

Altogether, these improvements are going to change the way you get things done, making it easier and safer to collaborate with anyone, from anywhere.

Want to find out more about the evolution of collaboration and security through Google Workspace? Get in touch with the Sweethaven team below: