New in Chat, in a nutshell!
- Coming soon... Forward messages: Soon you'll finally be able to forward messages from one conversation to another. Forwarded messages will immediately show the original sender, the source, and any attachments. Google Chat does have strict rules to prevent inappropriate data usage: You can't forward internal information to groups with external people or forward information from one external group to another. You can securely share information from external people with your own internal colleagues. When forwarding from private conversations, you'll always receive a warning to be careful with sensitive data.
- Send Later: This feature, similar to Gmail, lets you schedule messages in Google Chat to be sent at a later time or date. Scheduling messages allows Chat users to respect their colleagues' schedules and avoid sending messages late at night or early in the morning when recipients are in a different time zone or unavailable. Additionally, the new "Drafts" shortcut (which only appears after you've saved at least one scheduled message) provides a nice overview of planned content and is a handy way to streamline internal communication!
- New web address: Google Chat has moved to its own, faster environment at chat.google.com. Previously, this was technically linked to Gmail. The previous link still works, but the new site loads faster and is more stable!
- Block unknown senders: You can now set up chat requests to only be accepted from people within your domain or from external contacts. This helps prevent unwanted spam from unknown accounts. While the default setting allows invitations from anyone, users can now choose to restrict incoming requests to only known senders. This restriction can be set for one-on-one conversations, Spaces, or both. You will then only be contacted by someone outside your organization if they have previously communicated with you or are in your contacts. Invitations from users who don't meet these criteria will be sent to spam.
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Improved group settings: Admins have more control over who can join Spaces, including better options for adding external guests.
Read our previous update about Google Chat and Spaces here.
