Google Apps News This Week (July 4th)

This week Google introduced 7 new features:

- Improvements on Google Calendar and Gmail Interface
- Google Apps Directory Sync update
- New Security Features For Gmail
- Deprecating Support for Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.17
- AIM functionality temporarily removed from Google Chat
- New Version Of Google App Sync For MS Outlook
- Scheduled Release Tracks Updates (July 6th)

Improvements on Google Calendar and Gmail Interface

Via an Opt-In setting, Google Calendar and Gmail now have improved interfaces. Full settings will be released later this year.

Google Apps Directory Sync update

An updated version of Google Apps Directory Sync is now available for download. Features included in the new version includes:

- Improvements in performance: sync is now 14X faster
- User Profiles now include “Suppressed Domains”
- LDAP attributes support for ‘givenName’ and ‘familyName’ attributes
- Throttling of requests for ‘serverbusy’ errors in Profile and Contact sync
- UserSync limit provision suspension
- Option to flush out cache from config-manager UI

New Security Features For Gmail

Gmail has just added 2 new security features.

- Sender’s email address will now be visible if said sender is not in your contact list
- Gmail now scans and alerts recipient of any incoming malicious emails.

New Version Of Google App Sync For MS Outlook

Performance improvements have been made to Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

AIM functionality temporarily removed from Google Chat

For the time being, Aim functionality for Google Chat is removed while AIM updates its system. During this timeframe the following features are not available:

- The ability to invite AIM contacts to join a chat list
- You will not be able to chat with your AIM contacts on your chat list

Deprecating Support for Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.17

Last July 2nd, RIM deprecated support for BES 4.1.6 and 4.1.7. Because of this, Google Apps stopped supporting said BES versions on the same date.

Google Apps Connector for BES 3.x will still be supported for BES 5.x. Google recommends to its users to upgrade to BES version 5.x and version 3.x of Google Apps Connector.

You can download the latest Google Apps Connector version at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/appsconnector

Scheduled Release Tracks Updates (July 6th)

The following features will be released on the 6th of July

- Spreadsheets limit warning. Users will be warned when they are about to reach their spreadsheet limit
- Ability to embed Google Docs videos on Google Sites