Google’s G Suite is getting a few upgrades. The company announced Wednesday that it would allow organizations that pay for G Suite to add customized templates for Google Slides, Google Sheets, and Google Docs.
Templates were added as a feature last year, but G Suite customers can now add templates of their own, which will be shown in a separate category.
The new blog posts will allow users to focus more on creating content rather than tasks like formatting. Some G Suite customers, such as those that subscribe to G Suite for Business and G Suite for Education, will only be able to roll out templates after those templates have been approved. G Suite, for those unaware, is the new name for Google Apps for Work.
The new features are nice, but they really are a matter of catching up to Microsoft Office. Users have been able to create custom templates in Office for a number of years now, and those templates can be an important feature for teams. Google is now making it easier for teams to use templates.
Since Google Apps for Work was rebranded to G Suite, Google has been giving it somewhat of a makeover, complete with a number of promising new features. For example, the apps were recently given features like Explore and Action, which have become useful thanks to artificial intelligence.
These new features allow G Suite to compete even more with the likes of Microsoft Office, but that doesn’t mean that Office is on the way out yet. Microsoft has increasingly been shifting to cloud-based services and subscriptions, and Office is as popular as it ever has been.