Google is updating a few of their apps in G Suite today and is adding a new feature. With Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, G Suite users will now have the ability to create custom templates in each app. G Suite is aimed at the business side of things, so this will likely be immensely useful for those who use G Suite to collaborate with team members for work. Custom Templates can be submitted by any team member who has access to the account, and those can then be shared with other team members so they can be utilized anytime a template is needed to create a new file in any one of the four apps mentioned above.
Custom templates that have been created and submitted can be changed as needed by the team member who is accessing the file, like when creating a new weekly report, and when submitted these will be located in a shared template gallery that resides on the home screen for Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. While teams can still create new files from these apps, the ability to set up templates and use these instead can save time, which should allow for overall improved efficiency, and that’s the goal behind the custom templates feature – to save people time.
Google mentions that the new custom templates gallery will only be visible to teams who already have access to submit files to the old templates gallery that exists within Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms. It is possible to disable the submission option for the old templates gallery in the admin console, but just as easy as it is to disable submissions, they can also be re-enabled from the same location, so any admin would only need to exercise a quick few clicks and the new custom template submissions would be available. Google notes that enabling the submissions can be done from the templates menu, which is located in the Drive and Docs menu that sits under the G Suite section of Apps, and admins will also have the ability to control what shows up in shared templates galleries by requiring an approval for each template submission.
While approval of templates allows a little bit of control for administrators on what becomes available to the whole team, the admin can also simply remove the ability for anyone else to submit new templates once the ones that are needed are in place for all to use. These new custom templates will no doubt be useful, but the moderation settings will need to be configured by the admin who has control of the G Suite account if they want some level of control to be in place. The new custom templates feature is launching to the rapid release track for both administrators and end users as of today. Administrators will also have access to the feature through the scheduled release today, while end users as part of the scheduled release track will have to wait till December 7th to see the changes. Naturally, with these new custom templates galleries coming into play, there will be no need to have both this and the old templates gallery, so Google will be shutting down the old gallery in early 2017.
