Google Drive’s ML-powered ‘Priority’ page with ‘Workspaces’ exiting beta for G Suite

Abner Li | Mar 18 2019 - 1:36 pm PT

At Cloud Next 2018 in July, Google announced a new “Priority” view that leverages machine learning to surface relevant files, while “Workspaces” group together similar documents. Google is now launching these two smart features to paying G Suite customers.

Historically, the “My Drive” view of user-organized folders and documents has served as the Google Drive homepage. With “Priority,” Google wants its machine learning smarts to take over, so that users can “spend less time searching for content.”

At the top of the Priority page is a carousel of “Suggested” items, with Drive surfacing documents that have new comments, share requests, or resolved tasks. You can “Reply” or “Share” right from the card with each featuring inline action buttons.

The second new aspect is Workspaces, which introduces a new organization type for Drive. ML is again used to intelligently group together relevant content that you might access together for a weekly meeting or while working on a project.

Google will suggest Workspaces, but users can make their own and directly add items. Right-clicking on files, including those in Team Drives, will feature a new “Add to Workspace” option. Google notes that this new organization paradigm does not affect the storage location or permission of files.

You can make Priority the default home page for Drive by heading into settings. Meanwhile, it’s the first tab on the Material Theme revamp of Drive for Android and iOS, while “My Drive” is the last section. The view entered beta testing in September, and will be available to paying G Suite users over the coming weeks.

It’s now rolling out to G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, and G Suite Enterprise. It’s coming soon for G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and G Suite for Nonprofits.

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