New universal @ menu in Google Docs lets you add people, content, and events inline

Google Workspace has been built out over the past year to become the future of work, and Google itself is putting in overtime to add useful features and tools for increased productivity and collaboration. Now, a new universal @ menu will let you mention and insert people, content, and events anywhere in your document.

Simply by typing the “@” symbol, the new contextual menu will appear in place with suggestions for contacts, files, meetings, and Docs tools like checklists, charts, special characters, lists, and more. The idea is to provide a simple way to tie together many elements of Workspace into one place so that you and your team can be more productive.

Once you click on an element, it will be inserted and you can carry on with your work without having to waste precious time navigating to the top bar for each item with your mouse. This new feature will roll out to all Workspace users as well as those with G Suite Basic and G Suite for Business licenses.

You can expect to see the universal mention menu as early as today, and as late as two weeks from now if you have a Rapid Release domain. Scheduled Release domain owners will have to wait for up to two weeks starting on November 1, 2021, as per Google’s usual staged rollout setup.

Mentioning things is pretty much a universally accepted and implemented feature across all social media and other digital outlets in the 21st century, and the fact that Google Docs hasn’t had it until now is kind of interesting. The company is transforming its services to be more in line with modern standards, and each time it does, I find myself stating the obvious – these features really feel at home and they should have been a part of the experience all along.