Google launches Work Insights for Google Workspace

As described in a blog by Google, Work Insights is the new tool for Google Workspace (G Suite admins that gives a holistic overview of usage stats within organizations. This isn’t exactly a new tool so your bosses can spy on what work you’re doing (or not doing, as it may be) but rather gives a team-level overview of the productivity levels with each tool.

This can be great news for admins that are introducing Google Workspace to an organization because they can see the adoption rate as well as areas where teams might need more training. For example, if the finance team aren’t using Meet so often, you could potentially see if they are turning to shadow apps or are just not sure how to use the tool, and then launch initiatives to help with adoption.

Not only does the new Work Insights tool give you a great view of app usage, but it also shows how well certain teams are collaborating with others. Google says this will help executives identify and combat silos. The dashboard shows the percentage of users in the Marketing team that collaborate with Sales for example, even surfacing graphs to show patterns over time. I have a strong feeling that there will be lots of collaboration with IT support across the board.

Of course the caveat here is that you can only gather insights for teams of more than 10 people, and it is unclear yet as to how these teams are identified. Options could be that it is divided by Google Groups, or (most likely) by the job title and team information that is attached to each user profile. This means you should probably check this info is all accurate before exploring Work Insights.

Google is also launching their investigation tool in the Google Workspace Security Center, while this has been teased before - it’s great to see this come to fruition. In short, the tool allows much more flexibility with identifying issues that might raise heart rates within data security teams. To combat files being shared externally, admins can now use advanced discovery tools and remote permission editing to find and rectify issues. 

While extra tools like this are always a welcome addition, it seems to be only useful to larger organizations right now. Work Insights for Google Workspace is now in beta, so you should see it being pushed to your organization as soon as the bugs have been ironed out. 

While we're talking analytics, you can also combine these cool new tools such as Work Insights from Google with the ability to integrate Google Analytics with Happeo. Giving your team the insights they need about company-wide adoption. Feel free to check out this article about how to use analytics to measure your intranet success here.

In case you have used Google's Work Insights (or something else) to discover some silos, perhaps Happeo could be your solution. Our platform uniquely links your Google Workspace tools into one digital hub for collaboration, communication and productivity. For more information, download our Intranet Comparison Guide, or get in contact and we'll be very happy to tell you how Happeo has been changing the way organizations work together.