GCP News - 2026-08-06

Cloud Key Management Service

Feature

Preview: Cloud KMS supports quantum-safe key import. You can use the following quantum-safe import methods:

• HPKE_KEM_XWING_HKDF_SHA256_AES_256_GCM
• HPKE_KEM_ML_KEM_768_HKDF_SHA256_AES_256_GCM
• HPKE_KEM_ML_KEM_1024_HKDF_SHA256_AES_256_GCM

For more information about quantum-safe key import, see Quantum-safe key import.

Cluster Toolkit

Feature

Cluster Toolkit v1.99.0 is available. This release adds built-in Prometheus OpenMetrics telemetry for Slurm version 25.11 and later, promotes toolkit telemetry to production, and enhances Slurm resilience to capacity constraints and quota errors. This version also enables Multi-Tier Checkpointing (MTC) at the job submission stage and adds GKE TPU v4 and v5p examples. For details, see the release announcement on GitHub.

Gemini Enterprise

Change

Gemini Enterprise: Description field removed from Custom MCP server data store

Gemini Enterprise automatically calls your server's tools/list endpoint to discover and understand tools, parameter schemas, and capabilities directly. Because Gemini Enterprise routes requests using explicit tool definitions and parameter schemas, you don't need to write descriptions. This change simplifies data store setup and improves routing accuracy. Existing custom MCP data stores do not require any updates.

For more information, see Set up a custom MCP server.

Announcement

Gemini Enterprise: Postponed removal of Gemini 3.5 Flash in the Global region

We have postponed the removal of Gemini 3.5 Flash from the global region in the Gemini Enterprise app. A revised removal schedule will be provided when available.

Google Cloud Contact Center as a Service

Announcement

Advanced reporting dashboards 5.1

We've released version 5.1 of the advanced reporting dashboards.

Feature

Sub teams are included when top-level teams are selected in the Team filter

When you select a team in a Team filter on a dashboard, the data for that team's sub-teams is now included.

Feature

The Agent Metrics (Historical) Explore contains the Avg Chat Concurrency metric

The Agent Metrics (Historical) Explore now contains the Ave Chat Concurrency metric to capture concurrency trends for agents, teams, and queues.

Feature

Metrics for warm transfers and agent consultations

The Transfers - Calls and Transfers - Chats dashboards now have the following metrics in the Call Transfers and Chat Transfers tables:

• Agent Connection Time (H:M:S). Reports the time spent consulting with another agent and then warm transferring to that agent.

• Agent Consult Time (H:M:S). Reports the time spent consulting with another agent before returning to the call.

Fixed

This release addresses the following issues:

• Fixed an issue where the This Week and This Month per-hour figures on the Performance Overview and Agent Performance dashboards were inaccurate.

• Fixed an issue where the Queue Abandons and Abandon % fields on the Queue Group Performance - All and Queue Group Performance - Chats dashboards always displayed 0 for chats.

• Fixed an issue where the virtual agent call metrics on the Virtual Agent - Calls, All Interactions - Calls, and Performance Overview dashboards were incorrect.

• Fixed an issue where agents appeared under Assigned Agent for calls that they weren't connected to.

• Fixed an issue where exporting data from dashboards using date ranges greater than seven days failed.

• Fixed an issue in the Real-time Queue Monitoring and Queued Calls dashboards where transferred calls were incorrectly displayed as Queued when they were active with an agent.

• Fixed an issue where queue groups that were turned off remained visible in advanced reporting dashboards.

• Fixed an issue where the Queue Time filter on the All Interactions dashboard wasn't displaying data.

• Fixed an issue where the SLA Target field in the Queue Group Performance - All dashboard was empty.

• Fixed an issue where the No checkbox of the Child Queues filter disappeared when cleared. No child queues is the default for this filter, so we removed the No checkbox, leaving only the Yes checkbox.

• Fixed an issue where the Available Agents field overstated real capacity.

• Fixed an issue on the Queue Groups - Calls and Queue Groups - Chats dashboards where the Ave Current Queue Time metric displayed incorrect data.

• For time-related exports, there's now a column that displays time in HH:MM:SS format (in addition to seconds). You can't apply conditional formatting to this format in an Explore.

• Fixed an issue where Max Queue Wait Time, Max Speed To Answer, and Max Queue Abandon Time displayed incorrect data in Explores.

• Fixed an issue where changes to an agent's availability preferences in the agent adapter weren't reflected in the Agent Activity dashboard.

• Updated the labels in the Agent Metrics (Historical) Explore to be channel-agnostic for metrics that include both calls and chats.

Looker

Announcement

Looker 26.14 will roll out to Looker (original) instances on the following schedule:

• Expected deployment start: Monday, August 10, 2026
• Expected final deployment and download available: Sunday, August 23, 2026

Looker 26.14 is expected to include the following changes, features, and fixes.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where dashboard filters of type: string_filter could spin indefinitely if no suggestions were configured. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where clicking edit for a visualization from a dashboard caused the dashboard tile header to render on top of the Explore, preventing editing. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where LookML drill links and Liquid variables inside table cells could fail to render properly on dashboards and embedded visualizations. This feature now performs as expected.

Feature

Now generally available, the Granular Dashboard Sizing feature allows dashboard editors to change the size and layout of dashboard tiles with more granularity. Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026.

Feature

The Axis Order options in the Y tab of the visualization editor now support keyboard inputs.

Feature

Conversational Analytics data agent editors can now specify whether the agent will show its thinking or debugging information when generating a response.

Change

A Conversational Analytics data agent now displays query results in its thinking rather than in its final response.

Change

The timeout length for Conversational Analytics queries has been increased from two to five minutes. Note: This item was updated on August 7, 2026.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where large queries on Snowflake connections could fail with an SSLHandshakeException: No trusted certificate found error. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where the Show Region Field in Tooltip option was hidden for region maps that were configured without LookML map layer metadata. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where the list of Explores in the Conversational Analytics agent's card could be cut off for embed users with longer names. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where users with mixed roles across projects were unable to see and re-authorize OAuth connections for projects where they had viewer-only access. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where a secondary Y-axis could reset its position if a parameter value was updated. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where validating LookML with an empty value_format parameter could result in a 500 internal server error. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where modifying table calculations could cause Looker to run a new query rather than pulling results from cache. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where clicking the Fullscreen button while using the Conversational Analytics dashboard caused the chat view to disappear. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where scheduled jobs that were owned by users who authenticated by using Workforce Identity (BYOID) could fail with IAM login failures. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where the merged results page could return a 403 error after a period of user inactivity while cookieless embedding was being used. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where some characters were incorrectly displayed as HTML entities. For example," would render as ". This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where Looker could generate incorrect SQL when creating a Self-service Explore from a spreadsheet. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where the drill modal incorrectly displayed a pivot option for queries that couldn't be pivoted. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where updating the data for a Self-service Explore could fail with a generic error. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where Timeline visualizations could fail to respect admin color collection overrides. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where visualizations were not respecting internal dashboard theme color collections, which caused custom theme color collections to revert to the defaults.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where timeout settings in the Extension SDK could be reset to their default value of 120 seconds. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where the items in the Axis Order section in the Y panel of the visualization edit panel were inaccessible to screen readers. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where non-admin user OAuth tokens remained valid even after database connection parameters were updated. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue with column numbers has been fixed that could occur when XLSX results for tiles that used pivots were generated. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed in the Conversational Analytics interface where chats that used deleted agents or Explores could neither be deleted nor restored. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where searching by label in the field picker would fail to find fields where the group_label or group_item_label was set to an empty string. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

Looker now displays a more informative error when a Conversational Analytics conversation fails to load as the result of a network failure. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where LookML dashboards could fail to deploy if the project name exceeded 64 characters. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where modifying a self-service model that was created from a blank canvas could return a Resource already exists error. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where Waterfall chart visualization configurations could fail to render if the X-axis label rotation was set to an empty, a null, or another undefined value. This feature now performs as expected.

Fixed

An issue has been fixed where users with Admin via IAM privileges on Looker (Google Cloud core) couldn't enable the Looker Marketplace. This feature now performs as expected.

Feature

Now generally available, the Dashboard Tile Limits feature allows admins to set limits on tiles per dashboard and per tab to optimize performance, which is configured on the Content Guardrails page in the Performance Center section of the Admin panel. Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026.

NetApp Volumes

Feature

The thick clone (thin clone split) feature is generally available (GA) for the Flex Unified Default-mode service level. For more information, see Manage volume clones.

Policy Intelligence

Feature

The Policy Troubleshooter MCP server is generally available. To learn about using the Policy Troubleshooter MCP server to let agents and AI applications troubleshoot IAM issues and errors, see Use the Policy Troubleshooter remote MCP server.

VPC Service Controls

Feature

VPC Service Controls feature: The VPC Service Controls service patterns feature is generally available. You can use service patterns to explicitly configure which Google APIs (both supported and unsupported) can be accessed from VPC networks within a service perimeter when using the private VIP (private.googleapis.com) or a Private Service Connect endpoint with the all-apis bundle.

For more information, see VPC Service Controls service patterns.