The new improvement announced in the past few hours by Google in favor of documents created with the online suite, web based Google Documents, involves the use of emojis as Reactions: this is how everything will work, with relative release dates.
It hasn’t been long since Google updated its cloud-based Office suite, GDocuments, with suggestions for writing better and faster, which it has received as a dowry a further novelty that, in some way, aligns it with the interaction platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and (recently) WhatsApp.
The novelty in question, reported on the official Workspace blog, concerns the possibility of replying to a document or a passage of the same no longer only with a comment or a request for revision, but in a more informal way, providing feedback to the relative author through the use of Reactions. In the specific case, it is, with attached neutral emojis, the possibility of using as an answer all the emojis contained in the Emoji package 14.0 whose approval by the Unicode Consortium arrived in September 2021 (compared to the initial plans set for March last).
To take advantage of the new feature, which among other things also provides for the synchronization of your favorite emojis with Google Chat, it will be sufficient to highlight a word or phrase to see a traffic light of options appear on the right where, between the comments button and the request for review, in the middle and in the center, you will find the Reactions via emoji button. Touching it will open a large area on the right in which, at the top, a search form will stand out and, just below, the most frequently used emojis.
There will be no shortage of categories, to find the right emoji by peering into a more limited range, but the function in question will not have administrative controls nor can it be disabled. Once you have given an answer via Reaction with emoji, it will appear to the right of the document, essentially in line with the word or passage to which it is linked / intended.
Finally, moving on to the issue of implementation, the latter, gradual, will not be provided for the basic levels of the G Suite Basic and Business or for those who adhere to the Enterprise Essentials platform: users of “Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter , Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus “. according to two start phases. In particular, from April 5th we started with the quick release domains, while from April 20th we will start with the scheduled release ones.