Google has gone ahead and announced new Workspace updates that aim to help hybrid work a lot easier. Google Spaces or Spaces is a rebranding of Google's Slack competitor "Rooms" and is now live for all the Workspace users.

Spaces make it possible for the teams to "share ideas, collaborate on documents, and manage tasks from a single place." They offer deeper integration with Workspace tools such as Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Tasks. Google has said that Spaces will become even more useful in the coming months and will have a better, more flexible UI, discoverable spaces, better search options, in-line topic threading, and new content moderation tools.

Google Spaces Could Make Collaboration and Work from Home a Lot More Efficient and Productive

Google is also rolling out the ability to "ring" members of your team from one-to-one chat within the Gmail app.

Users will no longer have to generate a meeting URL before starting a one-to-one call. When you ring someone, a call chip will be sent to your chat on their computer, and it will make it easy for them to answer the call from any device. Just like how phone calls in general work, a very convenient feature.

Google is also looking to bring collaboration tools in hybrid meetings with a new Companion mode in Google Meet. It will allow users to host or join a meeting from within a conference room using a laptop while continuing to benefit the in-room audio and video "without any awkward audio feedback." The feature is going to start rolling out to all Workspace customers in November.

Last but not least, Google has rolled out two new additions to its Series One range of meeting hardware. The Series One Desk 27 is a brand new all-in-one 27-inch device, while the Series One Board 65 is an all-in-one 65-inch 4K device that has the potential to turn "any room or space into a video collaboration hub." Both devices run Chrome OS and come with the Jamboard app.

You can read all about Spaces and other introductions that Google made here.