Starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat.Google has finally revealed that group conversations of Hangouts will start appearing in Google Chat from this week. This is one of the three changes that the company is bringing to Google Chat. As per the official blog, the software giant will start rolling the new changes from December 3. The update will gradually hit all the devices in about 15 days.
“Starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat. To ensure a smooth transition, we will help automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations and saved history. These changes further ensure compatibility between classic Hangouts and Chat to make migrating your users as seamless as possible,” Google said in the blog.
Once you get the update, one of the significant changes in Google Chat that you will notice is the updated group conversations. It will bring the ability to add and change members of new group conversations. Google says that whenever a new individual is added to a group conversation, all the members will be able to see a message announcing the new member. Additionally, the newly added member will also be able to see all the old conversations. One can create a group conversation by tapping on the “Start a new chat” option, located in the conversation settings menu.
The update also lets end-users toggle chat history on or off at the conversation level, and admins also decide whether they want to keep chat history for users in their organisation. Google has also asserted that the updated group conversations will also be available with a different retention policy in Vault. “If you set custom Chat retention rules in Google Vault, the scope of coverage will change. Rules set for ‘All Chat Spaces’ will apply to existing chat rooms, plus updated group messages and group messages,” the company explained.
Google has also asserted that the one-on-one messages, updated group conversations, and unthreaded rooms from Chat will only be available for those users who have Hangouts enabled. The company is said to add some of the Handout features to Google Chat.