What you need to know
- Google is rolling out support for attendance reports to more Google Workspace customers.
- It was previously exclusive to Education customers.
- At the same time, Google has announced several new improvements coming to Meet, including more control over attendance report generation.
As we've all switched to home working apps and services, keeping track of productivity and attendance has become more fragmented than it would normally be. Knowing who attends remote meetings and who perhaps needs an extra hand with keeping is something that has become more important, especially in schools and colleges. Google brought attendance tracking in Meet to Workspace for Education accounts this summer, now it's rolling it out to more Google Workspace tiers.
Specifically, it's coming to the following tiers of Workspace customers - Google Workspace Essentials, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus Customers. You will not be able to use this if you're using Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, or Google's Nonprofits plans. It should go without saying that free accounts aren't included.
With that said, Google is also rolling out a few extra updates to the attendance reports feature. Currently, meeting hosts can see which attendees logged into an eligible meeting, for how long, and whether they took a break or not.
Now, Google is adding new controls for admins to pick which units can create attendance reports or not. Users who can generate these reports will also be able to choose whether an attendance report is generated prior to the meeting (as long as they aren't in an education domain).
For live streams of meetings, Google will now show viewership data on that in addition to the regular meeting attendance report. Hosts and meeting attendees will also be able to see how many people are live streaming when logged in on the desktop through a new in-call viewer count button.
These features are going to be made available immediately, and as long as you're in one of the eligible groups, you should see this within the next two days.
