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Google Chat Help Centre

Google Chat is a messaging app for teams to have one-to-one and group conversations. Google Chat allows you and your team to set up virtual spaces for your projects, hold impromptu video meetings in Google Meet, share and collaborate straight from your Google Drive.

  • Spaces with the ability to have threaded conversations
  • Custom notifications for spaces and messaging
  • Integration with Google Drive and Google Meet
  • Enhanced search capabilities

  Learn how to use Google Chat with Google Chat Guide

Popular Questions

The university is implementing a new 30-day retention period for Google Chat messages to reflect both legal practices and business requirements of organizations similar to TMU. This change helps TMU manage cybersecurity and privacy risks by reducing the retention of transitory records in employee Google accounts. 

Google Chat Direct messages are intended to be used for quick, informal messages that are transitory in nature. With that in mind, we ask employees to be mindful by using email for communicating university official business, or University Records, which require retention in accordance with the university’s Records Retention Schedule.

If you’d like to keep Google Chat content, you can use Google Takeout to download your data and view it afterwards using the TMU-built Google Takeout Google Chat Reader. Find out how to export, save and read Google Chat messages.

 

Group messages are private conversations. Once initiated, no new members can be added to the conversation. However, group conversations created after December 3rd, 2020, will allow you to add additional participants. Spaces are great for teams to collaborate, share up-to-date information and meet on the fly. For help in choosing whether you want to start a space or a group message, please visit the TMU Google Chat Guide.

You can access your chat history from classic Hangouts through hangouts.google.com (external link)  or by searching in Gmail by going to the Gmail search box and adding in:chat to your search. In the new Google Chat, your chat history will stay within Google Chat and can be searched (external link) .

While classic Hangouts allowed you to make phone and voice calls to other users directly in Gmail, you can now use Google Meet to make phone calls instead. In terms of voice calls and text messaging (SMS), this feature is now offered via Google Voice (Google Voice is not available at TMU). For faculty and staff, you can make phone calls using the Cisco Jabber client (opens in new window) , this will allow you to make and receive phone calls on your TMU extension using your computer or mobile device.

Chat previews are no longer available in Google Chat in Gmail. If you are using the mobile app you will be able to see direct and group message previews. Previews are still available in classic Hangouts on the web through hangouts.google.com (external link) .

Go to the settings menu by clicking the gear icon. In the settings side panel, go to “See all settings”. On the settings page, go to the “Chat and Meet” tab. In the Chat section, click “Chat off” and “Save Changes”. This will hide Google Chat from Gmail but you will still be able to use Google Chat by going to https://chat.google.com/ (external link) .

You can use Google Groups to invite current members of the group to a space. However, you will not be able to invite people using Google Groups into group chats.

New members of a Google Group will need to be added to the space after the group is initially invited.

 

Only faculty and staff are searchable in the directory. You will need to add the person as a contact before you can chat with them. For help, please see this section in the TMU Google Chat Guide.