Updated: June 22, 2026 | For Google Workspace admins, IT staff, and everyday users

Summary If you’ve been following Google Workspace updates lately, June was an especially busy month. From automatic call notes in Google Voice, to Gemini in Sheets, to changes in how Drive handles document approvals — some of these features look small on the surface, but they’re already starting to change how a lot of companies work day to day. This roundup covers the 7 most worth-knowing updates from June, and who each one actually affects.

Table of Contents

  1. June’s New Features at a Glance
  2. Google Voice Automatic Call Notes
  3. Gemini in Sheets Gets a Major Upgrade
  4. Google Vids AI Avatars Refreshed
  5. Lightweight Document Approvals in Google Drive
  6. Discoverable Spaces in Google Chat
  7. Gemini Now Supports 28 Languages
  8. Ask Gemini in Drive Now Includes Gmail
  9. What Does This Batch of Updates Add Up To?
  10. FAQ
  11. References

June’s New Features at a Glance

FeatureRecommendationBest For
Google Voice call summaries★★★★★Customer service, sales
Gemini in Sheets★★★★★Everyone
Lightweight Drive approvals★★★★☆Admin, HR, legal
Multilingual Gemini★★★★☆Regional and multinational teams
Ask Gemini in Drive + Gmail★★★★☆Managers, sales
Discoverable Chat spaces★★★☆☆Cross-department teams
Google Vids AI avatars★★★☆☆Marketing, training

Google updates Workspace every month, and most announcements get a quick glance before being closed. This June, though, a few features have matured to the point where they can genuinely replace an existing workflow, not just patch around the edges.

These features look scattered on the surface, but they’re really pointing at the same thing: Google is gradually handing off administrative work that used to require a person to Gemini. Gemini used to feel more like a chat tool, but starting this year, Google has been clearly pushing it further into actual workflows. From call summaries to document approvals, a lot of these features no longer require you to actively open Gemini — it’s simply part of the process now.

As a Google Premier Partner, we regularly help businesses evaluate which new Google Workspace features are actually worth adopting. Here are the 7 below that genuinely deserve 10 minutes of your time.

1. Google Voice Automatic Call Notes: The Summary Lands in Your Gmail as Soon as You Hang Up

Rollout: began June 16

Officially called “Take notes for me,” this feature has been added to Google Voice phone calls. Once enabled, every call is recorded, transcribed, and automatically summarized by Gemini into key points and action items, which get emailed straight to your Gmail and saved in the Voice app.

It sounds similar to Google Meet’s meeting notes, but the difference is: this is a phone call. Customer inquiries, vendor quotes, sales follow-ups — conversations that used to rely on someone’s memory or manual notes now have something backing them up automatically.

📌 For admins

This feature is disabled by default for existing Voice customers and needs to be manually enabled by an admin (settable at the domain, OU, or group level). New customers get it enabled by default. End users also need to turn on Workspace Smart Feature Consent in their account settings to use it.

Supported plans: Google Voice Standard, the Voice Premier add-on, and the standalone Voice Standard plan. If your company has Google Voice but never got much use out of it, this might be the reason to actually turn it on.

2. Gemini in Sheets Gets a Major Upgrade: Build Tables by Talking, Free High Usage Until July 15

Rollout: available now / Note: usage limits kick in after July 15

Gemini in Sheets can now build an entire spreadsheet from natural language, handle complex optimization problems, build interactive dashboards, and even pull in data directly from HubSpot or Salesforce.

In plain terms: you can tell Gemini “build me a table tracking June’s sales visits, with columns for customer name, visit date, follow-up status, and next contact date,” and it builds the table for you — you just start filling in data. The 20 minutes you used to spend setting up formatting and formulas is now gone.

The new Sheets Canvas feature goes further: you can overlay interactive visual elements directly on top of a spreadsheet — heatmaps, kanban boards, custom dashboards — and they’re genuinely interactive, not screenshots pasted in.

⏰ Timing note

A promotional period runs until July 15, giving all Workspace users a higher free usage allowance. After July 15, each user gets a usage cap, with Google saying it will publish the details in its Help Center ahead of time. If you’re evaluating whether this feature is worth rolling out to your whole team, now is the cheapest time to trial it.

3. Google Vids AI Avatars Refreshed: 53 Options, and They Can Now “Move” on Command

Rollout: began late June

Google Vids’ AI avatar feature has expanded from 23 default options to 53, spanning realistic human likenesses, 3D cartoon, and comic styles. The most notable part of this update isn’t the number increase — it’s two other things:

First, avatars can now genuinely “take action” — you can tell it in your prompt to stand up, point in a direction, or walk forward, and it moves accordingly in the video. Second, multiple videos can now be generated simultaneously, instead of waiting for one to finish before starting the next.

Under the hood, it’s running on Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS plus Veo 3.1, with more natural voice and lip-sync than before. Practically, this means internal training videos, product walkthroughs, and FAQ explainer videos can be produced quickly without a camera or a recording studio, and revisions no longer require a reshoot — just edit the text.

4. Lightweight Document Approvals in Google Drive: Edit and Approve in Parallel, Without Blocking Each Other

Rollout: June 8

This feature, called Alignment Approvals, solves a genuinely common problem: you send a document out for review, there are several approvers, one has already approved it, another is still reviewing — then you spot a small error and want to fix it, and fixing it resets the entire approval status, forcing the first approver to sign off all over again.

The new lightweight approval mechanism separates these: a document can stay partially approved while others continue editing it, without wiping out the approval decisions already recorded. There’s a new checkbox to enable this in Drive’s standard sharing dialog — no extra setup required. For legal, marketing, and HR teams with more complex review processes, this update cuts out a lot of back-and-forth.

5. Discoverable Spaces in Google Chat: A Third Option Between Public and Private

Rollout: announced in the June 19 weekly recap

Google Chat spaces used to have only two states: private (invite-only) or public (anyone in the organization can join). There’s now a third: Discoverable Spaces.

The logic here: people in your organization can see that the space exists while browsing, and know what topic it covers, but the conversation history and message content stay private — joining requires a request, reviewed by the space’s owner or manager. Say you have a cross-department product discussion group and want interested people to be able to find and request to join it, without opening it up to the entire company. Previously it was all-or-nothing; now there’s a middle option.

6. Gemini Now Supports 28 Languages

Rollout: announced in the June 19 weekly recap

Gemini in Workspace’s multilingual collaboration support has expanded to 28 languages in one go, with the list including Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Indonesian, and more.

Google’s official announcement lists Simplified Chinese specifically, alongside a broad set of regional languages. For businesses across Southeast Asia working across multiple languages day to day, this batch is worth checking against your own team’s needs — coverage varies by language, so confirm against Google’s official list before assuming a specific language is included.

For Malaysian businesses collaborating with partners across the region — Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and beyond — this starts to have real practical value: previously, getting the smoothest experience out of Gemini often meant defaulting to English; now, more teams can work with it in their own language.

7. Ask Gemini in Drive Now Includes Gmail: Ask Questions About Your Emails Right From Drive

Rollout: GA on June 5

This update is more useful than it sounds. Previously, Ask Gemini in Drive could only treat files and folders in Drive as its data source. Now it can pull in Gmail messages directly — when you ask a question in Drive, Gemini searches both your files and your emails at once, giving you a combined answer drawn from both sources.

A concrete example: ask in Drive “what was the quote we discussed with a client last month, and was it ever finalized?” and Gemini will search both your email thread with that client and the quote document in Drive, and pull the answer together for you, instead of you digging through both separately.

For salespeople and managers, what this means is: you no longer need to remember where something is stored — you just need to know what you’re asking. Documents, emails, presentations — Gemini searches across apps for you. It’s available on all Google Workspace and Google AI plans.

What Does This Batch of Updates Add Up To?

June’s Workspace updates don’t have one single headline feature, but there’s a clear thread running through all of them: Google is trying to take repetitive, process-heavy work off people’s plates.

Call notes mean no more manually writing down key points. Sheets means no more time spent on formatting. Drive approvals mean the review process no longer blocks itself. Ask Gemini in Drive means you don’t need to remember where something is stored — you just ask.

Most of these features will roll out to your account gradually over the coming weeks without needing to be requested. Pay attention to the admin toggles, though — Google Voice call notes in particular default to off, so it’s worth checking the admin console.

🇲🇾 Which Features Should Malaysian Businesses Turn On First?

If your company is already using Google Workspace, here’s a suggested priority order:

  1. Google Voice call summaries (Take notes for me)
  2. Gemini in Sheets natural-language table building
  3. Lightweight Drive approvals (Alignment Approvals)

The reasoning is simple: these three features directly affect the daily workflow of customer service, sales, admin, and management staff, without requiring a new system to be adopted or existing habits to change much.

If your company doesn’t currently use Google Voice, put Gemini in Sheets first — nearly everyone uses spreadsheets daily, making it the feature with the lowest barrier and fastest visible payoff.

Compared to adopting a whole new AI tool, getting more out of the Workspace features you already have usually shows results faster.

✏️ Editorial take

If I had to pick just one out of these seven, I’d pick Google Voice’s call summaries.

Not because it’s the most technically impressive, but because it directly solves a problem sales, customer service, and managers run into every single day: after a call ends, no one quite remembers what was said, who agreed to follow up, or what the next step was.

By comparison, AI avatars or Vids feel more like a nice-to-have you reach for when needed. Call summaries are the kind of feature you turn on once and never go back — because it solves a problem that happens every day, one most people have simply learned to live with.

FAQ

Q: Is Google Voice available in Malaysia?

Google Voice availability and feature support vary by plan, account type, and Google’s current official coverage. Before rolling it out, it’s worth checking Google’s latest official documentation or asking your Google Workspace reseller to confirm current availability and feature coverage for your organization.

Q: Do these features require upgrading to a specific plan?

Not necessarily. Google Voice call notes require Voice Standard or Premier; Gemini in Sheets and Google Vids are available on most Workspace plans, though advanced capabilities may require Gemini Enterprise or AI Expanded Access. Drive approvals and discoverable Chat spaces are available on all Workspace plans. Check the “What’s New” page in your Workspace admin console to confirm coverage for your plan.

Q: Does Google Voice’s call notes feature automatically record calls — do employees and customers know?

Yes, the other party receives a recording notice when the call begins. Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) 2010 has requirements around recording and handling personal data, so it’s worth confirming your company’s privacy policy and how you’ll communicate this to staff before turning the feature on, rather than just switching it on and moving forward.

Q: Once Ask Gemini in Drive includes Gmail, will it read all of my emails?

No, it doesn’t read everything automatically. You need to actively add specific Gmail threads as a source within the conversation before Gemini will reference that content. It can only access data you already have permission to view, and it doesn’t read across other users’ accounts. Admins need to confirm Workspace Smart Features is enabled for the account.

Q: Have all these features fully rolled out to users in Malaysia yet?

Some features have already started rolling out; others are still in Extended Rollout, which can take up to 15 days. Your Workspace admin can check the current release track setting and rollout status for each feature in the admin console.

References

  1. Google Workspace Updates Blog — Weekly Recap, June 19, 2026 https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/06/weekly-recap-06-19-2026.html

  2. Google Workspace Updates Blog — Weekly Recap, June 12, 2026 https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/06/weekly-recap-06-12-2026.html

  3. Google Workspace Updates Blog — Weekly Recap, June 5, 2026 https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/06/weekly-recap-06-05-2026.html

  4. Google Workspace Blog — 10 more announcements for Workspace at Google Cloud Next 2026 https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/10-more-announcements-workspace-at-next-2026

  5. Devoteam — What is new in Google Workspace – June 2026 https://www.devoteam.com/expert-view/what-is-new-in-google-workspace/