Google Docs gets new features like Voice typing or voice dictation, templates, smart sheets and more on Wednesday. According to Google these new features are aimed at students but can be used by anybody as it is available to anyone. Rather than education these features can also be used by company while creating a document.
The Voice dictation feature of Google Docs can be used in Chrome, iOS and Android platforms. By enabling this feature, one can dictate documents with the help of phone’s voice commands in android and iOS or by using microphone icon from Docs on Chrome. Now you can type entire document without touching your keyboard.
It supports 40 Languages. During a demo of the feature at Google’s San Francisco office Wednesday, Ryan Tabone, director of product management for Google Docs said that “We’re not sure it can handle the Boston accent yet”. The voice typing is also able to distinguish between text and punctuation commands including “new paragraph”.
Google added new tool, called Research which allows to perform Google searches directly from documents. This tool is limited to Android app for now. It makes search easy and quick and also helps in copying images, text and link into documents without leaving the Docs app.
“A large pain point of this small device is getting information out of one app like Google Search and bringing it to another app like Google Docs is very difficult,” Ranjan said during a press event in San Francisco Wednesday, noting that a task like copying an image from a search and adding it to a document currently requires 14 steps. “It’s really focused on how to make Android a great and powerful platform for creating content.”
Now by clicking “See new changes” Google tells about newly added and deleted parts in Docs and also tells about who made the changes in Docs.
New templates are included in Docs, Sheets and slides which helps in recognise the format of docs, sheets and slides and create specific doc in specific format like science projects, reports, books, portfolios, resume etc. Now it is easier to make formatted docs.
Google Sheets also get a new feature named “Explore Sheets” which automatically analyses the spreadsheet’s data and make it easier to understand the user of web and androids.
With all these features, Google also added a new chrome extension “Share to classroom chrome extension” for teachers which work with the previous feature “Classroom”. This extension helps teachers in managing the assignments, school works etc. via Google Apps for education.
Source: Google Blog
