Posted by By Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps

We know many of you consider your mobile device as your primary tool to consume business information, but what if you could use it to get more work done, from anywhere?

We’re excited to introduce Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets, a new way for you to do just that—whether it’s readying a contract you have for e-signature from your phone, or pulling in CRM data on your tablet for some quick analysis while waiting for your morning coffee, Android add-ons can help you accomplish more.

Get more done with your favorite third-party apps, no matter where you are We’ve worked with eight integration partners who have created seamless integrations for Docs and Sheets. Here’s a preview of just a few of them:

• DocuSign - Trigger or complete a signing process from Docs or Sheets, and save the executed document to Drive. Read more here.

DocuSign lets you easily create signature envelopes right from Google Docs

• ProsperWorks - Import your CRM data to create and update advanced dashboards, reports and graphs on Sheets, right from your device. Read more here.
• AppSheet - Create powerful mobile apps directly from your data in Sheets instantly — no coding required. Read more here.
• Scanbot - Scan your business documents using built-in OCR, and insert their contents into Docs as editable text. Read more here.

You can find these add-ons and many more, including PandaDoc, ZohoCRM, Teacher Aide, EasyBib and Classroom in our Google Play collection as well as directly from the add-on menus in Docs or Sheets.

Try them out today, and see how much more you can do.

Posted by Andrew Toy, Product Management Director, Android for Work

Whether it’s ubiquitous access to information or advanced new sensors that can model 3D space, one of the most exciting aspects of mobile devices is their potential to change the way we do business. Often that transformation can be dramatic, bringing new questions and challenges for IT decision makers tasked with building new infrastructure, managing device configurations and working with new partners.

Today we’re publishing the first in a series of best practice advisories that share recommendations for deploying and using Android for Work. This advisory focuses on five best practices for securely deploying and maintaining your Android devices:

• Distribute public and internal applications via the Play Store to take advantage of the security benefits and convenience of Play’s updates. Android recommends disallowing installation from “unknown sources,” as apps installed from outside the Play Store have a higher incidence rate of malware.
• Research OEM and carrier partner commitments to Android’s monthly security updates when deciding which devices to purchase and support. Consider restricting access to sensitive company information on devices that don’t receive regular updates.
• Store company data separately from personal data when using a personal device for work (BYOD). Separate storage ensures personal apps can’t access corporate information, and also ensures that the employee’s personal photos, music and apps remain private.
• Use policies to require encryption to protect stored corporate data on devices with access to company information. For additional security, customers should consider using full disk encryption and requiring a PIN or password to start the device.
• When managing a range of devices, ensure that your Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution takes a best-available approach to management that uses the latest APIs supported on a given device. This enables newer management capabilities to be used even if there are older, less-capable devices across your fleet.

We recommend using these guidelines and those in future advisories as a reference when configuring your mobility environment to make the most of Android for Work’s extensive security and productivity benefits.

Posted by Adrian Ludwig, Director, Android Security

Editor's note: Highlights and a few remaining questions from a previous security discussion. Find the recording of the "Android Security to the N-th Degree" discussion, which incorporated questions and comments from this post, here.


In April we shared our Android Security 2015 Year in Review report and took a deeper dive into Android security with a live Hangout on Air to discuss the trends and hard data; you can still view the recorded session.

Some interesting highlights from the report include data showing that Android runs more than 400 million automatic security scans per day on devices and this helped limit the number of potentially harmful apps (PHAs) installed to less than 0.15% of devices that only get apps from Google Play. Note that devices that install apps from outside of Google Play are around 10 times more likely to have a PHA. As a follow up, we’re taking some time today to answer a few of the remaining questions from our live Hangout in April.

Will you have a plan to release a security patch via an app, such as WebView, in Play Store instead of a security patch by the manufacturer?

We do think it's possible for more of the framework to be updated by Google directly — there’s some architectural work that we're doing to make this possible in a future release.

Are all Android versions encrypted?

Android has provided full disk encryption since Android 3.0. Users can enable it by going into settings and turning it on. For newer devices, encryption may be turned on by default. And starting with Android M, all new devices that meet a performance requirement (being capable of encrypting over 50MB/S using AES, or the Advanced Encryption Standard) must be encrypted by default. These requirements are described in more detail in the Android Compatibility Definition Documentation (CDD).

Android N is introducing a new feature "Direct Boot" and a file based encryption mechanism that improves usability while maintaining encryption of user data.

Given that Android is making advancements towards the phones being used in enterprise [Android for Work], what are the security improvements that have been made specifically to make the phones more secure for enterprise? What are the security improvements that the team is working on that we will likely see in the near future?

Most of the security improvements that we make in Android have the dual purpose of protecting both enterprise and consumers, but there are some features that are more specific to enterprises. "Profiles," for example, were introduced to make it easy to separate work data from personal data. We've also added APIs so that application developers (including Mobile Device Management vendors or MDMs) can remotely query the state of the device — some more recent examples include the security patch level and adding an API in Google Play Services called SafetyNet.attest that allows an enterprise to confirm that a device is a compatible device.

Verify Apps. As far as I recall it was provided 4 years ago and improved in 2013 with background scanning. What's new now?

We're constantly making improvements to how we identify and protect users from potentially harmful apps. The 2015 year in review describes a number of changes, including the introduction of a technology we call the Anomaly Correlation Engine, advancements in Machine Learning, improvements to our System Integrity Checker, more effective user interface on security warnings and much more.

During next month’s Hangout on Air, we’ll answer your Android security questions and share information on what’s new for work in Android N.

To help kickstart some question ideas, here are just a few of the many new and improved work Android N security features that we’ll discuss:

• Always on VPN for secure data transmission
• Passcode enforcement options on individual work apps
• More granular policies and app permission management
• QR code provisioning to save time and money on device deployments

So, if like many, you’re wondering if Android could be the right mobile solution for your business, register for our Android N Hangout on Air taking place on August 16 at 9:30am PT.

Editor's note: Today Google Sheets unveiled an original artwork in NYC , designed entirely in Sheets by two artists working together from different continents. To turn their artwork into reality, we worked with Colossal Media, a Brooklyn-based company and Google Apps customer that hand-paints murals all over the world. At Google, we’re always inspired by innovative uses of our collaboration tools, so we spoke with Colossal co-founder Adrian Moeller to learn what inspires him.

Can you tell us about Colossal Media and what drove you and your co-founder to start the company?
Colossal was founded in 2004 to bring hand-painted advertising back. It was tough to get clients at the beginning because nobody wanted to hand-paint anything, it was a completely dead industry. So we built a sustainable business out of a startup, guerrilla-style beginning.

Why hand-painted advertising?
Hand-paint is in your face. It’s exciting. Being high up on buildings and painting on rigs, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Now we’re working on 400 of these projects a year.

When did you start using Google Apps?
Colossal has been using Gmail as our corporate email platform for about 10 years and in around 2008, we began to use Google Apps.

What made you choose Google Apps?
From a logistical standpoint, it made the most sense. We’re physically all over the place. We all work from different locations (offices in New York, co-workers in California, painters working out in the field across the globe) and needed a solid solution for communication and information exchange. Apps makes it easy to share concepts and ideas.

Which apps do you use most and why?
Google Drive is super helpful for Colossal. It helps keep all projects organized and managed. It’s also nice having a sharing tool to use that can be kept private.

We also use Sheets, Forms, Hangouts and Docs. From the shop perspective, Sheets is a great web-based solution that helps us create database systems for organizing, compiling and calculating job information during pre-production. Sheets also helps us deliver accurate, up-to-date information to our crew and clients who are in several locations around the city on any given day. Forms let us collect feedback from the field and gather Peer Evaluations and End-of-Job details.

How has Google Apps changed the way you work?
As Colossal has grown as a company, communication has become harder because it’s not always face to face. Google Apps has made communicating from anywhere more streamlined and efficient. The flexibility to have instant, easy access to everything we need to get the job done — whether we’re on site for a paint job or in the office across the country — from colleagues we’re collaborating with has helped us scale. When you work outdoors and wrestle with the elements, anything can happen when you least expect it. Google Apps brings all of our information to us wherever we are, whenever we need it. It’s also great that we’re able to go back and find things from eight years ago and look at it. It’s like a treasure trove of memories that travels with you.

Posted by French Williams, IT Director, Royal Technologies


Editor's note: Today we hear from French Williams, IT director of the Michigan-based Royal Technologies, a 25-year-old engineering and manufacturing company specializing in plastic solutions for the automotive, furniture and consumer product industries. Read how Royal Technologies replaced its digital signage system with an affordable, easy-to-manage Chrome for Work solution with help from their partner Promevo, a premier Google Apps and Chromebook reseller.


When you think of advanced engineering and manufacturing, you probably don’t think of signage. But at Royal Technologies, digital signs powered by Chrome allowed us to communicate with our team of 1,200 employees in new ways, improved uptime by five to 10 percent on our factory floors and saved us $20,000 in the first year alone.

The digital sign in the photograph runs on Chromebit and displays a 1080p video about the different products Royal Technologies makes.

Our partner Promevo recommended the affordable Chromebit signage solution that’s working so well for us today. It’s a small ChromeOS computing stick you can plug into any screen with a HDMI port. We were already using 142 Chromebooks, Chromebox desktops and Chromebox for meetings for everything from IT computing to giving shop-floor operators access to manufacturing job paperwork, documenting work orders for our maintenance department, company meetings and performing transactions in our material requirements planning system. Some employees have even started using Chromebooks as their primary work computers. So we didn’t hesitate to give Chromebit a try.

Since we were already using Chrome, we were able to quickly and easily deploy each Chromebit for digital signage in just 15 minutes. Promevo’s customer support also showed us how to use the Google Admin Console to manage our digital signage. We learned that we could manage our signage and our Chromebooks from the same interface.

In just a few weeks, we updated a variety of digital signs across the company using Chromebits.
Digital signs on the factory floor in five of our six locations now display the latest production data. This data automatically updates every 15 seconds and shows our employees weekly goals for machine uptime. Displaying this goal-driven information has improved uptime from five to 10 percent on our factory floors.

With the $20,000 we saved in one year by switching all the old signage solutions to Chrome, we’re now in a position to expand our use of digital signage throughout the company. We’re now using 11 Chromebits and counting — we bought ten more to use across our locations very soon after trying out the first one. We’re also planning to add Chromebits to the reception areas of our facilities, too.

Chrome device management helps us manage all of our devices more easily, and streamlines software and OS updates. The Chromebit was a better hardware solution for our manufacturing environment because its lack of moving components makes it less susceptible to problems caused by heat and dust on the shop floor.

The combination of Chrome Digital Signage and Promevo's expert guidance and support helps us deliver plastic solutions efficiently without straining our resources.

Editor's note: Today we speak with Melissa Pateritsas of Shaw Industries Group, which uses Google Apps along with Smartsheet. Read on to find out how these integrated solutions foster collaboration and add greater efficiency to the Shaw Industries supply chain. Register here to join our Hangout on Air on July 20 at 10 a.m. PT to learn more about how Smartsheet, a Google recommended app, can improve your business.

Can you tell us about Shaw Industries and why you chose Google Apps and Smartsheet?

Shaw Industries Group is committed to creating an efficient and sustainable supply chain for its flooring enterprise. Being the world’s largest carpet manufacturer and a leading floorcovering provider means sustainability isn’t just a moral or ethical imperative, it’s smart for business. More efficient supply chains produce better, lasting products with fewer costs.

With offices and sales representatives across the United States and world, Shaw’s sales reach nearly $5 billion every year. Our growing business needed an even more efficient (and sustainable) way to bring daily operations into the digital age. So we turned to two powerful collaboration tools: Google Apps and Smartsheet.

In Smartsheet, we could make good use of the collaborative work management (CWM) platform that marries the power of a project and process management solutions suite to the familiar interface of a spreadsheet. And we saw Google Apps as an opportunity to improve efficiency and collaboration across teams. With a strong working history, the two work in tandem very well and together were exactly what we needed to achieve our digital transformation.

You mentioned the importance of supply chains for Shaw Industries. How did considerations around the supply chain impact your decision to switch to Google Apps and Smartsheet?

Part of creating an efficient and sustainable supply chain is lowering overhead costs. The processes used to produce carpet and flooring at our various manufacturing facilities differed slightly from location to location. The many manufacturing divisions had common needs, but also their own unique challenges. Any solution would have to address these differences, while commonalities would cause overlap. It didn’t make sense to have different support teams for each process, especially if half of what the teams did was identical.

Sharing plans and projects was also challenging. The systems we had in place were costly and time-consuming. We needed a way to increase visibility and update project statuses, not only for our team, but also for external parties like clients and vendors.

What results are you seeing now that you’re using Apps and Smartsheet?

Turning to Google Apps’ collaborative tools was a positive first step. Google Drive allowed us to easily share documents and files both internally and externally. Documents could be instantly shared and jointly edited by employees around the world in real time. Plus, going paperless made our operations more ecologically friendly.

Smartsheet’s suite of project and process management solutions, which feature Google Apps integration, further enhanced what Google already had to offer. Smartsheet offers great flexibility. With them, we can easily create templates that we can edit and customize to meet diverse needs.

We also simplified project roll-ups — which were previously done by hand. Using cell linking, engineering managers could automate the process, saving time and effort, and automatic updates solved the problem of visibility that we struggled with. We could now easily share individual projects with stakeholders, both internal and external, ensuring that everyone was on the same page.

Also, today our separate business units are able to build custom and individualized solutions on a strong foundation that addresses both common and distinct needs. Managers and engineers can automate processes that had previously been done by hand, spending more time and energy on devising ways to make our products better and longer-lasting. These new solutions are built using familiar interfaces and services that employees already know how to use.

Can you tell us about the process of adopting Smartsheet?

Adopting Smartsheet was a simple transition because of its familiar spreadsheet-like GUI. We didn’t need additional software. Everything we needed could be done within the frameworks that Google and Smartsheet already offered.

So where does the company stand now in terms of its digital transformation?

We’re definitely in the midst of transformation. With Smartsheet and Google solutions, and their simplicity and the scalability that a worldwide enterprise like Shaw needs, we’ve reduced overhead and complexity and cut time spent on processes. We now have more time and focus on building for the future. We can also proudly say that we’ve met our goal to create easy-to-adopt digital practices and a more efficient, sustainable supply chain.

Posted by Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh

Editor's note: Today’s post is from Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh, the largest owner-operator hotel company in London with over 5,000 rooms throughout London as well as two locations in Malaysia. Chris was recently named “disruptive player in the crowded hotels market” in the CIO top 100 list. Here, he shares his secrets to success.


In 2013, we launched the world’s fastest hotel wi-fi and put our focus on digital. We had big ideas to transform our business, and we knew we couldn’t do it alone.

We’re always looking for new and innovative technology solutions that can help us deliver the best guest-centred experience in hospitality. Hosted services and real-time responses are becoming more and more of a basic customer expectation in other industries so we thought, why not hotels? We worked with implementation partner Cloudreach to adopt Google Apps as our fully integrated, enterprise-wide cloud collaboration and storage solution.

Let product enthusiasts within your teams help usher a smooth adoption With over 33 hotels, more than 1000 users and nearly 4 million files, how were we going to move everything and everyone onto Google Apps for Work? The answer was obvious – Jedis.

Well, not Jedis exactly, but pretty close. Our nominated Google Guides were a group of 65 champions across all our locations and departments – from night managers to head housekeepers – who helped kick-start our Google Apps for Work adoption. Their support and enthusiasm for the tools meant we could truly bring Google Apps for Work into every part of our business.

Not only did they help us cut down old and unused data as part of the migration process (we have now almost halved our original 3 million files), they encouraged everyone to use the tools for creative solutions. This is a great example of how a user led change approach can lead to high levels of engagement and adoption while minimising the need for a traditional data migration.

Find creative ways to use new tools to improve customer experience At glh, we take guest complaints seriously and try to accommodate each request as much as we can. At our biggest hotel, room moves and changes happen daily. Guests move rooms to be closer to their travelling party, away from their boss (yes, really) or even to avoid odd numbers.

Before Google, this would cause major disruption across a number of teams from Housekeeping to Concierge. Now, all teams can see and edit real-time room changes in Sheets, and housekeepers can even use it on their mobiles. As a result, we’ve significantly minimized delays, confusion and complaints.

From internal invites to office polls, Forms has been a welcome addition to the working lives of all of us at glh. Now we have a form that allows staff to check out a guest from anywhere in the hotel in seconds. No more printed paper that was popped into a box at reception.

Invest big savings from new technology tools into workplace improvements Trans-atlantic Hangout conversations have led to a 42% reduction in conference call charges. Hourly printouts of various logs and reports of over 1,000 pages are now shareable digital Docs that are securely stored on Drive. The logs are updated in real time and available on any device.

It’s just over a year since we introduced Google Apps for Work, and in that time we’ve made so many apps-based ideas a reality – like our Manager of the Month initiative, where everyone votes using a Form.

Our Google Guides, who were so central to our training and awareness a year ago, are still coming up with new suggestions all the time – it’s amazing how creative people can be.

Posted by Andy Rankin, Co-Founder and President, Viget


Editor's note: Today we hear from Andy Rankin, co-founder and president of Washington, D.C.-based tech software design agency Viget. Read about how Viget, an early Google for Work adopter, uses Chromebox for meetings to create a single team across time zones, increase employee retention and save $40,000 a year.

My brother Brian and I founded Viget in 1999. The internet was just taking off and we wanted to be a part of it. Since then, our talented designers and software engineers have tackled projects like overhauling a wildlife nonprofit’s online presence and optimizing a news organization’s 2016 Presidential Election media coverage. We’ve grown to more than 60 employees, and Chromebox for meetings allows our remote employees and three offices to work together seamlessly. It’s part of creating a unified company culture that thrives on sharing creative ideas.

We were early adopters of Google technology. When we started migrating to the cloud in 2008, we switched to Gmail. Using Google Apps was a natural next step as we grew the agency, and now we use Apps daily — to write contracts in Google Docs, allocate people’s time using Google Sheets and create client presentations in Google Slides.

We started using Chromebox for meetings the day the product launched in 2014. We built our first videoconferencing tool in-house in 2011, but it was too expensive to maintain. By switching to Chromebox, we save $40,000 each year. We also save time: we spent 300 hours building and maintaining our in-house tool over the course of a few months; now with Chromeboxes, I spend 15 minutes each week. Unlike other solutions, Chromebox turns on in seconds. It syncs with everyone’s Gmail accounts and calendars. There’s no dial-in to look up or minutes wasted logging on. And as both Viget’s president and sole IT person, this ease is incredibly valuable for me. So much so, that today, we have 11 Chromeboxes and plan to buy more as we continue to grow.

Our designers and developers work in tight-knit teams, so getting facetime with one another is important. Chromebox and Google Hangouts allow our teams to meet for scheduled check-ins and impromptu brainstorms. Most teams have a mix of employees from different offices, so they rely on these tools for all their communication. They also help us build relationships with our remote colleagues. Trevor from Charleston joins video Hangouts with his dog Newman. Sometimes, Kansas City-based Kelly’s two-year-old daughter sits on her lap during meetings so we can say hello.

Chromebox has one unexpected but important benefit: employee retention. As any creative agency knows, the competition for talent is fierce, and keeping great people is our top priority. So when a trusted employee tells us she plans to move to a new city or start working from home several days a week, we give her the flexibility to work remotely rather than find a new job.

Teamwork is at the center of our agency’s growth. Chromebox for meetings and Google Apps make it easy to work closely together on creative projects and develop strong relationships from anywhere. Seeing people’s faces every day makes us feel closer as a company, and the ease of communication helps teams to do their best work.

Posted by Melissa Horwitz, Marketing Manager, Google for Education


(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: Teachers are uniquely inspiring people. It takes a teacher to innovate in the classroom and inspire a love for learning. We had a great time celebrating these everyday heroes at ISTE this week, and we wanted to highlight a few of them below. Check out the #GoogleEdu and #ISTE2016 hashtags to get a recap of what went on in Denver this week.


The teachers at Laguna Beach Unified School District in California and Sun Prairie Area School District in Wisconsin wanted to give their traditional classroom a reboot. By upending the typical classroom layout that confines students to desks and teachers to the front of the room, they increased student engagement, introducing technology, hands-on learning and group activities.

Laguna Beach designs learning spaces to enhance engagement through movement 

“The classroom is the most neglected element in education right now,” says Mike Morrison, chief technology officer at Laguna Beach Unified School District. “You’ll find rooms with dark projectors, the lights out and the blinds drawn. How could these dark spaces inspire learning?” At Laguna Beach, Morrison and 15 teachers plunged into research on the impact that environment has on the senses — and tested technologies, furniture and even colored lighting. The core elements, says Morrison, boiled down to flexible furniture, multiple monitors and audio amplification.

To replace bulky desks that were designed decades ago to be placed in rows, Morrison and his team chose desks and chairs with wheels that can revolve in any direction. This frees up teachers and students to quickly group desks together and direct attention at any part of the classroom — or at each other. There are standing desks as well, giving students the option to have their legs engaged — a boon for students dealing with attention-deficit disorders, Morrison says.

More monitors and whiteboards provide more space for students to work as teams, instead of just watching the teacher up front. “The walls can then become anything we want them to be,” says Morrison — a place for a test review, a team project or solving a math problem as a class.

Morrison and his team also changed the audio and lighting to help set the mood for different types of learning and make it easier for teachers to be heard. Teachers wear lanyard microphones connected to each classroom’s speaker system. “A teacher who spends the day shouting to be heard is stressed, and so is the class,” Morrison says. Teachers use lighting to change wall colors depending on the activity — yellow to encourage quiet reading time, blue for creativity and brainstorming.

About 40 classrooms have been reconfigured to date, with 20 more to come this summer — and the change is palpable, Morrison says. “Teachers are walking around more, and they’re in touch with what students are doing,” Morrison says. “The atmosphere in classrooms is also much calmer.”

Laguna Beach Unified School district put together this fun video — a takeoff on TV’s “The Office” — showing off the classroom improvements.

Classrooms become technology incubators for Sun Prairie Area students 

At Sun Prairie Area School District, teachers are inspiring students to be entrepreneurial and engage with technology. They found that by creating dedicated spaces without any of the usual trappings of a classroom, they could motivate students to break out of their comfort zones and think more outside the box.

One of these learning spaces, “Fab Lab,” was created by Stephanie Breunig, a media specialist for the district’s Cardinal Heights Upper Middle School. Students can use the Fab Lab for school or personal projects. The lab has Legos, digital and GoPro cameras, art supplies, circuit boards and software such as GarageBand, recording software for music and Final Cut Pro, a video editing software. In the Fab Lab, students work with teachers to create their own videos or music mashups and internet memes. They've even started learning 3D printing and robotics.

Student working on a project in the Fab Lab

At Sun Prairie Area, teachers are also evolving learning spaces inside the classroom. With Google Maps, students take virtual tours of the world in their geography lessons, learning details about other cultures that they couldn’t find on a regular map. “Students use Google Maps to explore and take interactive tours of other countries,” says Tim Mortensen, 6th and 7th grade social studies teacher at Patrick Marsh Middle School. “When we learned about the pyramids, they could actually see them on the map and they started asking questions about what they’re made of. Some students even explored the surrounding area, wanting to know more about the hotels and restaurants in Egypt and asking questions like why the McDonalds there has different items on the menu.”

“Literacy no longer means just reading and writing words on a page. Technology has created a new definition of literacy that includes digital,” says Curt Mould, director of innovation, assessment and continuous improvement at Sun Prairie Area School District. To teach with technology, teachers are creating learning spaces defined by interactive learning and experimentation.

Laguna Beach and Sun Prairie Area School Districts have discovered just a few of the ways that disrupting the traditional classroom environment can help engage students. From exploring the world with online activities, to simply taking the classroom outside for a lesson, there are an infinite number of ways that teachers all over are creating new learning spaces to inspire students. Is your school district trying to reinvent the rooms where learning happens? Tell us about your plans to inspire curiosity in the classroom environment.

Posted by Tynia Yang, Software Engineer, Google Forms

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: On Monday, we announced four new ways to help teachers engage their classes using Google tools. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into one of these tools: Quizzes in Google Forms . If you are at ISTE in Denver, visit us at booth #2511 in the expo hall to learn more and demo our new tools.

Educators have told us that collecting feedback earlier in the learning process results in better outcomes for both teachers and students. But they’ve also shared that creating assessments and providing feedback can lead to hours of repetitive grading.

Dr. Ismael Piedra, a professor at the Instituto Technologico de Monterrey, for example, used “exit tickets” after his lectures to check student comprehension. But his attempts at gathering quick feedback would often result in 300 quizzes to grade and hours of work.

After months of pilots with educators like Dr. Piedra, we launched Quizzes in Google Forms on Monday to help teachers quickly create, deliver and grade assignments or assessments. With Quizzes, teachers can select correct answers for multiple choice and checkbox questions to reduce repetitive grading. They can also enter explanations and review materials to help students learn. And to make sure students understand the lesson material, teachers can prevent students from sending themselves a copy of their responses.

Nick Marchese, a music and programming teacher at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, uses Quizzes in Google Forms to adapt his teaching throughout the learning process. “Quizzes help me optimize my teaching,” he explains. “After students take a quiz, I can check the summary of responses to see frequently missed questions and a visual representation of student scores. If I see there’s a question that a lot of students got wrong, then we start the next class by reviewing it.” Nick says that students love the immediate feedback they get while he loves how Quizzes can “automatically check multiple-choice questions and reduce time devoted to grading.”

Effie Kleinberg of Bnei Akiva Schools in Toronto, likes that Quizzes reduce the overhead of giving formative assessments. “Quizzes make it quick and easy to create and grade a student assessment,” he says. Effie posts his Quizzes as assignments in Google Classroom, where he is easily able to keep track of student responses and view results. Students receive quick, actionable feedback though explanations and review materials, without requiring Effie to manually grade each quiz.

We made Quizzes available to all Google Forms users so we can continue improving based on your feedback. Tasks like automating repetitive grading are just the beginning, so we look forward to hearing what you think. Get started by creating your first Quiz today!