The company has unveiled a grand redesign of Gmail for G Suite business users ahead of next week’s Google Cloud conference. The app isn’t so much “Gmail” anymore as it is a unified app for all of Google’s communication platforms: Gmail, Chat, Rooms, and Meet.

It will be available as an “early access preview” to G Suite customers this week and roll out to all G Suite customers later this year. As for the consumer version of Gmail, it seems as though little will change in the short term. Google says that it is “actively thinking through how and when to bring this experience to the consumers who might want it.”

Right now, however, the main change is simply putting these tools into the same app (on your phone) or window (on your desktop). It should be less bouncing around between browser tabs and apps. In one example, users on the desktop will be able to get a view with a chat in one column, a doc in another, and a Google Meet video chat hovering over both.

Putting all these different communication vectors into a single app has an additional benefit: setting a Do Not Disturb status across all of them as well as muting their notifications in a single place. You will also be able to search chats as easily as you can search Gmail. Google says that these integrations enable users to “quickly join a video call from a chat, forward a chat message to your inbox, [or] create a task from a chat message.”

Google is also trying to make certain collaboration tasks a little easier. The distinction between Chat and Rooms, for example, is a little fuzzy until you realize Rooms are meant to be more persistent spaces to discuss projects. Google is adding lightweight versions of other G Suite products to Rooms: each will have its own areas for assigned tasks and files.

Source- The Verge