Google showcases Springboard to ease data searching in Apps for Work

Google is working on a machine intelligence-powered tool for its enterprise apps

Google has revealed Springboard, a machine learning-powered tool that helps enterprise users search through information in the company's Apps for Work suite.

Springboard can use its machine intelligence capabilities to search across apps such as Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Drive, and present actionable information and recommendations in a more proactive way, the firm said.

Google has kept quiet about how the machine intelligence and learning technology works in Springboard, but it is expected to function in a similar way to Google Now in Android smartphones and tablets.

It is likely that Springboard will use a form of Google's Knowledge Graph framework designed to serve smarter and more tailored search results.

Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of engineering at Google Apps, explained that Springboard was developed to address the growth of digital information in the enterprise world.

"Today the average knowledge worker spends the equivalent of one full day a week searching for and gathering information. Google Springboard helps you find the right information that you need at the moment that you need it," he wrote on the Google blog.

Google has previewed Springboard to a small set of Google Apps customers, and will add more to the roster by offering limited access through the firm's early adopter programme.

The company has not yet named a date for a full rollout of Springboard, so it is probably still improving the performance and effectiveness of the tool.

Google also revealed an overhauled version of the Sites tool used to create websites and pages for a company's intranet or internal knowledge site.

Sites offers a more intuitive drag-and-drop interface to streamline the creation of web pages, and provides support for multiple editors and the ability to pull information from Google Apps for Work, such as Drive and Docs.

Themes and layouts for pages allow customers to create websites that can be comfortably viewed on smartphones and desktop monitors.

Sites is also available as a preview version through Google's early adopter programme, but again there is no fixed date for a full rollout.

Google's efforts to bolster the functionality of Apps for Work appears to be paying dividends as the firm has seen new customers move from rival enterprise apps to its own offerings.

Peterborough Council recently ditched Microsoft for Google Apps to move deeper into the cloud, as did Warwickshire County Council as a way to maintain productivity in the face of budget cuts.