Your users will be able to use Hangouts and Google Chat without losing their conversations. In addition, they’ll be able to change Chat group message members.
Dear Google Workspace Administrator,
Starting December 3, 2020, we’ll begin rolling out two significant changes to Hangouts and Google Chat in advance of the upgrade from Hangouts to Chat.
- Group conversations in Hangouts will appear in Google Chat. In this new experience, your users can move from Hangouts to Chat without losing their full list of conversations. Conversely, many of their Chat conversations will also appear in Hangouts.
- Currently, when your users move from Hangouts to Google Chat they need to recreate their group conversations. As these changes are gradually implemented, the ability to see both new and existing conversations with history in Hangouts will also appear in Chat. This allows your users’ entire Hangouts message history to be available in Chat. This change will only be available for users who have Hangouts enabled.
- Updates to group messages. Your users will be able to add or remove members from new group messages in Chat. Members of group messages created after December 3 will be able to change group membership. In this new experience, your users and group members can add, remove, or leave these conversations at any time.
What’s changing and what do I need to do?
The following table outlines other features, products, and policies that are impacted by the changes to Hangouts and Chat. We’ve also included recommended actions. Continue to read on if you also use external Chat, Google Vault, Data Export, or data regions.
| What’s changing? | What do I need to do? |
| If you delete a conversation in Chat by canceling your subscription, the conversation may also be deleted in Hangouts for all participants. | No action is required. |
| If you have the External Chat setting enabled, users outside your organization can be added (via Hangouts) to Google Chat’s group conversations created after December 3, 2020. | Review this article to allow or restrict your users from chatting with users outside of your organization. |
| If you use Vault to place Chat data on hold, messages from new group chats will be included in the hold only when the include messages in Chat spaces box is checked. More details. | Review your existing holds on Chat and determine if you’ll need to include messages in Chat spaces. |
If you use Google Vault to search and export, exported message data from Hangouts may be slightly different than exported message data from Chat. More details.
This also applies to Data Export. | We recommend you export both your Hangouts and Chat message data for a complete data set. |
| If you set custom Chat retention rules in Google Vault to retain message data, the scope of coverage will change. Rules set for All Chat spaces (previously known as all rooms) will apply to existing chat rooms, plus new group messages and group messages that synchronize between Chat and Hangouts. More details. | Review your existing retention rules and evaluate if you need to change them to retain only the message data you want. |
| When searching Chat in Vault, new group messages will appear in searches that include Chat spaces. Group messages created prior to December 3, 2020, will continue to be handled as direct messages (DMs) in account-based searches. More details. | If you have saved queries for Gmail and Hangouts or Chat using Vault, evaluate the queries and determine if you need to update them to return the messages you want. |
| If you have a data region policy enabled, the policy isn’t supported by Hangouts. When Chat conversations are mirrored in Hangouts, the copy in Hangouts won’t be geo-located according to the data-region settings. | If you have a configured data region policy and you want your users’ Chat message data to be geographically associated with their location, we recommend you disable Hangouts for your organization. |
If you have additional questions or need assistance, please contact Google Workspace support. When you call or submit your support case, reference issue number 162485397.
Thanks for choosing Google Workspace.
—The Google Workspace Team
