Google opens up Workspace with new integrations and APIs

Google Workspace, the company’s set of productivity tools most recently known as G Suite, is getting a major update at the company’s Cloud Next conference this week. This includes quite a few customer-facing features, but maybe even more importantly, Google is using this occasion to open up Workspace with new integrations and developer tools that expand the overall Workspace ecosystem well beyond the walls of Google’s own services.

It’s worth noting that Google already allowed for some integrations before. You’re likely familiar with add-one in Gmail, for example. But now Google argues that it is taking its “biggest steps yet in making Google Workspace the most open and extensible platform for users,” as the company described it in its press materials.

One of the ways it is doing that is by opening up its smart chips — those links to other documents, people and other information (and their respective pop-ups when you hover over those links) you can add by typing “@” in a Google Doc — to third-party vendors. With today’s launch, Google partnered with the likes of AODocs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro and Tableau, all of which are already building integrations.

Image Credits: Google

Also new are a set of APIs for both Chat and Meet that will allow third-party developers to add functions like starting meetings or initiating meetings from their apps. Asana and LumApps are the launch partners here. These new APIs, as well as all of the other ones mentioned below, will become available in early 2023.

Also new is a Meet add-on SDK that will allow developers to integrate their apps right into Meet. Figma, for example, will allow teams to collaborate on designs this way and FigJam is bringing its collaborative whiteboard to Meet through this.

For those who want to build their own integrations, Google is launching a new integration with AppSheet so that anyone can use Google no-code tool to build integrations with Google Chat.