🚀 AI-Powered Collaboration: Gemini and Smart Canvas

The newest and most impactful features rely on AI (Gemini) and the Smart Canvas system to integrate information directly into your documents.

By Papdi Chat Sat, 22 Nov 2025

Use the "@" mention feature in Docs and Sheets to insert interactive elements that connect to other Workspace data:

People Chips: Tag a colleague (@name). Hovering over the chip shows their job title, contact info, and availability, and allows you to instantly start a chat or email.
File Chips: Tag a related document, Sheet, or Slide (@file name). This creates a clickable link with a preview, ensuring you aren't sending obsolete email attachments.
Calendar Event Draft: Type @Meeting notes to pull meeting details, attendees, and action items directly from a Google Calendar event into your Doc, providing instant context for note-takers.
Dropdown Chips: Create custom dropdown menus (@Dropdown) to track project status (e.g., In Progress, Needs Review, Completed) without relying on complex data validation rules.

For Workspace users with Gemini access, AI integration drastically speeds up content creation and analysis:

Drafting and Summarizing: Use Gemini in Docs to draft entire sections based on a prompt or summarize a long document into key bullet points.
Data Analysis in Sheets: Ask questions about your data in plain language (e.g., "Summarize Q3 revenue by region") to generate formulas and charts quickly without manual effort.
Email Management in Gmail: Use "Help me write" in Gmail to refine your professional tone or reply to complex threads with auto-generated summaries and suggested action items.

Professional, hybrid, and remote teams rely on high-quality video calls. Leverage these features for better virtual meetings:

Noise Cancellation: This is enabled by default in many corporate plans. It uses AI to filter out non-speech sounds like typing, dogs barking, paper shuffling, and sirens, allowing only your voice to be heard. Tip: Disable it only if you need participants to hear music or other non-speech audio.
Studio Sound/Look: These advanced features (available in higher-tier plans) use AI to enhance audio quality and improve video quality by simulating better lighting and webcam quality, ensuring you look and sound professional regardless of your physical setup.

These tools are essential for engagement, training, and making decisions in large meetings:

Breakout Rooms: Divide participants into smaller groups for focused discussion. The host can move between rooms, and the main group remains intact until the host ends the sessions.
Polls & Q&A: Use the Activities tab to create quick polls for instant audience feedback or to manage incoming questions without interrupting the presentation flow.

Advanced features streamline administrative tasks and secure your corporate information.

Advanced Appointment Scheduling: Instead of sending back-and-forth emails, use Google Calendar to create a public or internal booking page (like Calendly). This automatically checks your multiple calendars for conflicts and allows external parties to book time based on your set availability.
Focus Time: Use the Focus Time event type in Calendar to block out periods for deep work. This automatically declines meeting invitations during that time and signals to colleagues that you are unavailable.

Mail Merge: Corporate plans allow you to use Google Sheets as a database to personalize bulk emails in Gmail. Instead of sending a Bcc, you can send personalized communications to a large list, including customer names and unique details, making your outreach more impactful.

Google Vault: For enterprise users, Vault is crucial for compliance. It provides the ability to retain, hold, search, and export all corporate data (Gmail, Drive files, Chat messages) for e-discovery and regulatory purposes, providing a secure audit trail for all company data.