News

Gmail will no longer support Chrome Browser version 53 and below, starting on February 8, 2017. Users will see a banner at the top of their Gmail interface encouraging them to upgrade to the latest version of Chrome (currently version 55). Chrome Browser version 55 contains several important security updates. 

• Gmail will continue to function on Chrome Browser v53 and below through the end of the year. Users who remain on Chrome v53 and below could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as Dec 2017.

As of February 1, 2017, Google will discontinue service for Drive for Mac/PC desktop app versions 1.27 and lower. Users who are still on versions 1.22 or lower will no longer sync files between Drive and the local storage using this product. As a reminder, support for the Drive sync client service falls outside the scope of UC Berkeley’s bConnected team’s terms of service.

Google has launched several new and useful features to Android and iOS devices.

On your Android phone or tablet, you can now:

Gmail currently restricts certain file attachments (e.g. .exe, .msc, and .bat) for security reasons, and starting on February 13, 2017, Gmail (bMail) will not allow .js file attachments as well. Similar to other restricted file attachments, you will not be able to attach a .js file and an in-product warning will appear, explaining the reason why. 

Beginning this week, CalMail lists will no longer send or receive mail. If you forgot to migrate your mailing lists to Google Groups, please do so now!

Starting on Thursday, January 19, 2017, name changes made in the CalNet directory and CalCentral (for students) will begin automatically populating in bConnected Google accounts. This change will involve a one-time “catch up” to sync up any mismatches between CalNet/CalCentral and Google. 2700 users will be impacted by this one-time sync, who can expect to see their Google profile name now match their name in LDAP directory.

Starting January 1, 2017, the Google Drive desktop app will no longer support Microsoft® Windows® XP and Vista.

Mailing list owners now have a new default configuration option for migrating and creating lists. This option will allow messages sent from non-members to be held for moderation approval, rather than being rejected. After migrating or creating lists, Group managers will still be able to control who posts to the list through the Google Groups interface. 

A common use case for Google Drive users is to download a file from their Drive to modify it locally, and then to re-upload the new version. In the past, this would result in duplicate files (the original and the new one), and users would have trouble finding the latest version. That’s why Google has introduced a change in Drive to deduplicate files which were uploaded in this way.

To increase account security for Google Apps users, starting on October 5, 2016, OAuth 2.0 tokens issued for access to certain products will be automatically revoked when a user's password is changed. Third-party mail apps like Apple Mail and Thunderbird―as well as other applications that use mail scopes to access a user’s mail―will stop syncing data upon password reset until a new OAuth 2.0 token has been granted.

Information for Google Apps Developers:

Google is launching their new version of Google+ for all users on August 30, 2016. This change does not require any user action. 

A few improvements include:

Starting this week, Google will introduce two new security warnings in Gmail to help you keep your email safer.

Google Forms makes it easy to create, distribute, and analyze surveys. Starting today, you can craft even more effective forms by inserting images into survey questions or adding images as multiple choice or checkbox options in Forms on the web.

For example, a graphic designer might ask a business owner to to pick one of three different logos, pictures of which would be offered as multiple choice answers.

It's easy to migrate your mailing lists from CalMail to bConnected Lists!

Need in-person support? Drop-by an upcoming user support session: