Google LLC today updated its Google Workspace productivity suite with new features that will enable users to create more sophisticated documents and navigate large volumes of text faster. 

Most of the enhancements are rolling out to Google Docs, the document editor included in Google Workspace. One of the main highlights is a new artificial intelligence capability that can automatically generate text summaries.

The AI-produced summary for a document is accessible in a sidebar on the left side of the Docs interface. Users have the option to edit the automatically generated text if needed.

“For documents, it’s difficult to know which ones are worth a deeper read or how to quickly grasp the highlights without fully reading through,” Vishnu Sivaji, group product manager for Google Workspace – Collaboration, wrote in a blog post today. “That’s why we’re introducing automatically generated summaries in Docs that provide a brief overview of the main points in a document, so you can quickly parse the information that matters and prioritize where to focus.”

The AI summaries are rolling out less than a year after another major Docs update that introduced a feature called smart chips. Smart chips are interactive elements such as files and spreadsheet tables that can be embedded next to the text in a Docs file. As part of the update that it announced today, Google is enhancing the feature with a Google Maps integration.

Users can now add a Maps smart chip to a document that provides information about a specific location. The smart chip appears in a document as a miniature version of the Maps logo. Hovering over the logo brings up a few key details about the selected location, while clicking on it launches a Maps preview window with more information. The preview window appears as a sidebar in the Docs interface.

Maps is one of several services that Google is integrating more closely with Docs as part of today’s update. The company has added a meeting notes document template to Docs that can automatically import information from a Google Calendar meeting invite. Another newly added template enables users to write an email in Docs, then automatically sync it to a Gmail draft by clicking a button.

While at it, Google is adding a new “paperless” interface mode. The mode “lets you remove the boundaries of a page to create a surface that expands to the device or screen you’re using,” Sivaji wrote in the blog post announcing the new features.

Most of the Google Workspace capabilities that debuted today are rolling out to Docs, with one major exception. The Google Sheets spreadsheet editor is receiving a new feature dubbed formula corrections aimed at helping users more easily extract insights from their data.

Sheets enables users to create formulas, simple algorithms that perform tasks such as calculating the average of three numbers. The algorithms use data in spreadsheet cells as input. The newly added formula corrections feature can point out if a formula contains errors and provide troubleshooting suggestions.

“As businesses look to move faster, it’s increasingly important that all employees — not just data analysts — can quickly and easily make data-backed decisions,” Sivaji wrote. “However, it’s not always easy to know what to analyze or quickly produce error-free results. That’s why we continue to infuse Sheets with intelligence, making it easier and faster for everyone to get insights from data.”

Google rival Microsoft Corp. also regularly updates Microsoft 365, the product bundle that includes the Office productivity suite. The new formula correction feature in Sheets is rolling out a few months after Microsoft announced a major update for its competing Excel spreadsheet editor.

Excel historically supported two main types of data: text and numbers. In November, Microsoft introduced an application programming interface that enables developers to extend the spreadsheet editor beyond text and numbers by creating custom data types, as well as custom functions to carry out computations on the data. Microsoft hopes that the API will allow Excel to address a broader range of use cases than before. 

Images: Google