Google has unwrapped two significant announcements for its enterprise customers, the most notable of which is the rollout of Springboard, a new digital assistant to help enterprise companies that make use of Google’s services for business.
Springboard, which has been in testing with “a small set of customers,” is a little like Google Now for enterprise workers. That’s to say that it offers a single search interface which utilizes artificial intelligence to surface information within a user’s suite of Google products — such as Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs and more. That’s important because, according to Prabhakar Raghavan, VP of Engineering for Google Apps, “the average knowledge worker [currently] spends the equivalent of one full day a week searching for and gathering information.”
Beyond search, Springboard also provides “useful and actionable information and recommendations” to users throughout their work day.
The second side of today’s news is a new design for Google Sites, a product that acts like an information portal for housing internal company information like quarterly reports or newsletters. Now, when designing a Google Site, users have drag-and-drop editing and real-time collaboration, creation features that have become standard in other services like Google Docs and Google Sheets.
Finally, in terms of presentation, Google Sites has been revamped so that the content fits to any kind of screen, be it a smartphone, laptop or 30-inch monitor.
These changes are rolling out to early adopter programs that existing Google Apps for Work customer can join — the Springboard program is here and Google Sites program is here — while the search giant has teased that it has “a lot more in store” for both services.
