This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.
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Organizations often need to collaborate with customers, partners, and suppliers who use Microsoft Teams. NextPlane OpenHub was built to bridge this Google Chat and Microsoft Teams divide, and it is now launching external interoperability to allow communication across organizational boundaries. OpenHub directly connects Google Chat users to people on external Microsoft Teams tenants, making cross-platform collaboration more seamless.

This release supports external interoperability between Google Chat and Microsoft Teams, including presence, 1:1 chat, group chat, Channels and Spaces, file sharing, and meeting and call initiation. A single Google Workspace environment can connect to multiple external Microsoft Teams tenants via OpenHub, enabling cross-tenant collaboration through a single interoperability layer. OpenHub is designed to provide a familiar cross-platform collaboration experience without requiring all parties to use the same collaboration platform.

OpenHub is also designed to support enterprise governance and deployment requirements. It is deployed as a dedicated single-tenant service, can run in a customer-owned GCP project, and keeps customer data under customer control. It uses customer-managed identities and does not require fake user accounts, Nextplane-controlled user accounts, cross-tenant impersonation, or a proxy Teams tenant.

For Google Workspace admins and IT decision-makers, this can help reduce deployment friction through tightly scoped, auditable permissions aligned with customer best practices. Ongoing configuration and management are handled through the existing Google Admin console and Microsoft Teams admin center, without requiring a separate OpenHub administration console. This is especially important for Google Workspace customers working with external organizations, because it avoids imposing a separate portal or a new management process on customers, partners, and suppliers.

Examples of how this can be used include:

  • Collaborate with customers, partners, and suppliers who use Microsoft Teams
  • Support cross-Teams tenant collaboration from a single Google Workspace environment
  • Maintain cross-platform communication during multi-company projects, joint ventures, or extended partner workflows
  • Enable interoperability when domain validation requirements make internal interoperability difficult to deploy

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature requires administrator consent on both sides of the connection, and Workspace and Teams admins must register NextPlan OpenHub as an enterprise application with their respective platforms before use. Configuration is managed at the domain level through the Google Admin console and Microsoft Teams admin center. OpenHub does not require a separate administration console and is managed through existing platform controls. Visit the NextPlane site to learn more about connecting Teams and Workspace. 
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
Note that separate NextPlane licensing is required to enable interoperability.

Resources

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Making decisions in a fast-paced environment often leads to long, messy threads and lost consensus. Polly helps teams solve this by enabling the creation of interactive polls within existing Chat conversations. By keeping the feedback loop inside the "flow of work," Polly helps eliminate the friction of switching between apps, leading to faster responses and clearer team alignment.

Effortless authoring and participation
Creating a poll is as simple as mentioning @Polly in any Google Chat space. Whether you need a quick pulse on a project direction or a simple vote on a meeting time, you can author a poll in seconds. For end users, participation is just as easy: team members can cast their votes with a single click directly within the chat stream.

Real-time results
Results are updated as votes come in, providing immediate visual feedback to the entire space. This transparency ensures that everyone is on the same page and can move forward with confidence as soon as a decision is reached.

Use cases for Polly in Google Chat:

  • Driving consensus: Rapidly narrow down options for project names, design directions, or strategy shifts. 
  • Meeting logistics: Quickly vote on the best time for a sync or gather topics for an upcoming agenda.
  • Team preferences: Streamline simple office or team logistics, from lunch orders to preferred collaboration hours.

Admins can easily enable the Polly integration to empower their teams with a more structured way to collaborate without leaving the Google Workspace ecosystem.

Getting started

  • Admins: Admins can install the Polly Chat app on their users’ behalf. Visit the Help Center to learn more about installing Marketplace apps for your organization. If you’ve already deployed Polly for Google Meet, then the Polly Chat app will automatically be available as well.
  • End users: End users can search for the Polly add-on in Google Chat under Apps > Find apps. Visit the Google Workspace Marketplace to learn more and install Polly. If you’ve already installed Polly for Google Meet, then the Polly Chat app will automatically be available as well.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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We are expanding the capabilities of Gemini in Google Chat by adding support for several new languages when refining message drafts. In addition to English, users can now use Gemini to polish their messages in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. This update allows a broader range of global users to improve the clarity and professional tone of their communications within Chat.

By leveraging Gemini to adjust wording, grammar, and spelling, users can communicate more effectively across different languages and regions. This is particularly helpful for teams working in multilingual environments or for individuals composing messages in a second language, ensuring that the intended meaning is conveyed accurately and confidently.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • Other Editions: Frontline Plus
  • Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

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The latest version of the Datadog app for Google Chat allows you to integrate Datadog into your Google Chat workflows more seamlessly and stay on top of critical infrastructure without leaving the flow of team collaboration. Newly added features include: 

Link previews
Cut and paste a widget from a Datadog dashboard and see the chart inside Google Chat.

Image of link preview generated by Datadog



Improved notification set-up
Link your Workspace domain to Datadog and you’ll be able to easily create Google Chat notification handles from within Datadog.

Image of Datadog setup and notification



Incident management
Declare incidents with a command from Google Chat, and automatically create spaces in Google Chat to centralize conversations about an incident.




Note that a Datadog license is required to use the Datadog app for Chat.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts (Datadog license required)

Resources

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Google Workspace customers can now deploy the Now Assist Virtual Agent for Google Chat integration directly from the Google Workspace Marketplace. This update simplifies the deployment process for Workspace and ServiceNow administrators, allowing them to provide employees with centralized access to support and automated workflows within their primary communication tool more easily.

The Now Assist Virtual Agent allows users to perform routine ServiceNow tasks and requests without leaving Google Chat. Individuals can get answers from knowledge base articles, create support tickets, check the status of existing requests, and order new items. This integration reduces the need to switch between applications, helping users maintain focus and resolve issues more efficiently.

With Now Assist, users have a contextual conversational experience that can initiate AI Agents to further automate complex workflows and requests.




Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. To utilize this feature, customers must have both ServiceNow and Google Chat. Note that Now Assist capabilities require an additional license from ServiceNow.

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Today, we're excited to announce the general availability of guest accounts in Google Workspace. Guest accounts empower organizations to securely collaborate with customers, partners, and vendors that are not on Google Workspace. More than secure, real-time messaging in Google Chat, guest accounts enable organizations to extend their security and data protection policies to these non-Workspace users. Whether it’s collaborating on a marketing brief in Google Docs or a presentation in Google Slides, non-Workspace users with guest accounts adhere to your organization’s security policies.

How it works

When an end user in your organization invites an external, non-Workspace user in Google Chat through a direct message (DM) or Chat Space, a guest account is provisioned for that external user within your Workspace domain with a unique account identifier. These guest accounts are also automatically placed in a dedicated "Workspace Guests" Organizational Unit (OU) in the Admin console, with default security policies designed for these external users.

When communicating with guest accounts in DMs or Chat Spaces, your organization’s end users will see a teal “external” label for guest accounts. This is similar to the yellow “external” label that we have utilized in Google Chat to indicate external Workspace users. Guests can be @mentioned across supported Workspace app surfaces, similar to any other user. This means that end users can invite guests via Chat and collaborate with them using Chat, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Meet.


Granular admin settings

Workspace admins have full visibility and control. The guest accounts capability is tied to your existing external chat settings. If you have external chatting enabled, end users in your organization can now start inviting non-Workspace users in Chat to collaborate with you.

    • Manage guest access settings: Manage who can invite guests to your organization.
    • Manage guest lifecycle: View and manage all provisioned guest accounts in the admin console and through APIs.
    • Policy enforcement: Guest accounts have a few default security settings that are not inherited from the Root OU. This helps organizations get started from a baseline security posture for guest accounts. View the defaults and apply your org specific policies to the "Workspace Guests" OU, such as 2-step verification or context-aware access.
Your organization retains full ownership of data created and shared within your Workspace domain when collaborating with users using guest accounts. Moreover, external users with guest accounts cannot create or own new files in Google Drive; they can only be invited to collaborate on existing files.


To learn more about the full set of capabilities for guest accounts and features available to host organization’s administrators to manage these guest accounts, take a look at the detailed documentation.

Important notes

  • Guest accounts are created only for non-Workspace external users. Functionality to collaborate with external Workspace users and consumer Google accounts remains unchanged and does not require guest account creation. API capability to create guests will be available in open beta by May 2026.
  • If you use trusted domains to only allow sharing only with certain organizations outside of your business, you can now start adding non-Workspace domains to your allowlisted domains to start collaborating securely with non-Workspace domains. Note that setting up trusted domains prevents your organisation from collaborating with consumer Google accounts. This includes collaboration with non-Workspace users who may have created consumer Google accounts using their work email address.
  • Guests are modelled as a type of user. In the Directory API, user.list will now include guests by default. The API now also includes a new field is_guest_user to identify guests. Guests will not be auto provisioned to existing 3P SAML apps that support automated user provisioning.

Getting started

  • Admins:
    • External chat settings: At launch, end users who can chat externally will be able to invite and collaborate with non-Workspace external users in Chat by default. You can control which users are allowed to chat externally using the existing external chat settings.
    • Guest invitation setting: You can restrict who can invite guest accounts in your organization using the guest invitation setting. This defaults to ON for everyone who can chat externally in your organization.

  • End users: End users who can collaborate externally and have been permitted by admins to invite end users will be able to invite and collaborate with non-Workspace external users in Chat using guest accounts.
  • Guests: Non-Workspace external users will receive an email invitation to their primary email address when invited by the host organization. Guests can sign up to start collaborating. Guests have limited feature capabilities available, similar to Workspace external users.

Rollout pace

  • Admin controls

Availability

  • Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus

Resources

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We’re introducing a dedicated Meetings section in Google Chat—a new way to organize your conversation list and keep your meeting conversations in one place.

Previously, meeting conversations lived in your direct messages, often making it difficult to find specific project discussions or meeting notes.

You can now group all past and future meeting chats into a single, dedicated section in your conversation list. Once a meeting concludes, the meeting conversation (if used) seamlessly moves into this section, providing a persistent home for ongoing follow-ups.

When the feature becomes available, users may see a promotional in-app banner or tooltip highlighting the new Meetings section and inviting them to enable it to better organize their conversation list.

Image depicts a user selecting "Try it" from the promotional prompt to initiate the new Meetings section

Once created, the new Meetings section appears as a distinct category in the conversation list, located under Direct Messages and Spaces. It acts as a smart folder that automatically aggregates any continuous meeting conversation in one place. This section can be moved, deleted, or reordered at any time.

Image depicts the newly created Meeting section under Direct Messages and Spaces in the conversation list

Key benefits include:

  • Organization: Keeps all meeting related conversations in one place.
  • Discoverability: Easily find details from a meeting days after the call has ended.
  • Control: This is an optional feature. You decide where the section sits in your conversation list, and you can move individual meeting threads to any custom section you’ve created.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be configured to “Default on” with “Hosts can modify” by default. You can adjust this setting by organizational units (OU), configuration groups, or individual users. Please note that Google Chat must be enabled for your organization to configure continuous meeting chat. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
  • End users: This feature is off by default and requires user opt-in. To activate this feature, users must go to the three-dot overflow menu found on any section of their conversation list. From the resulting dropdown, they should choose "Create a meeting section" and then click "Create." Once enabled, the section will appear in the conversation list  beneath Direct Messages and Spaces, and can be moved or removed at any time. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
Image depicts a user going to the 3 dot overflow to manually create the meeting section.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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Developers can now build more robust and efficient Google Chat apps using dynamic data sources for dropdown menus. With this update, developers can connect dropdowns to external data sources that query and filter results in real-time as a user types, addressing previous scalability issues caused by dropdown menus being limited to static lists of options. This is particularly useful for workflows that require selecting from thousands of possibilities—such as assigning a ticket in a project management tool or selecting a specific file from a large database.


Key benefits include:

  • Improved searchability: Users can now use fuzzy search to find the correct option quickly, rather than scrolling through long lists or using "find" browser commands.
  • Faster performance: By querying data dynamically, apps avoid the latency issues associated with loading massive static lists.
  • Consistent user experience: The dropdown interface now supports search-as-you-type for both static and remote data sources, providing a smoother experience across all platforms, including web, Android, and iOS.
Developers can also specify a minimum number of characters to trigger a search, ensuring that queries are only sent when enough information has been provided to return relevant results.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.
  • Developers: Developers can implement this by reviewing the updated Chat app developer documentation.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and Workspace Individual subscribers

Resources

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We’re excited to announce that Google Chat is now available as a data source in the Gemini app (gemini.google.com) for Workspace customers, joining Gmail, Google Drive, and other Workspace apps. Like other Workspace connected apps in Gemini, Google Chat will be default off and can be enabled in your settings. If enabled, Gemini will be able to cross-reference your conversations in Chat to provide more informed, context-aware responses directly within your workflow.

By incorporating Google Chat into Gemini via the existing connection to Workspace apps, you can now ask Gemini to help you retrieve specific project details, summarize missed discussions, and surface information buried in your message history directly within the Gemini app.

Key capabilities include:

  • Information retrieval: Quickly find specific details, such as "Who’s the marketing lead for Project Clover?"
  • Project tracking: Ask Gemini, "What's the latest deadline mentioned for Project X?" to find dates directly from recent team discussions.
  • Quick summaries: Use prompts like "Summarize my unread chat messages from today" to get a high-level overview of what you missed.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU or Group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
  • End users: Once enabled by an admin, users can connect Google Chat to summarize and find information directly in Gemini. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus
  • Frontline Starter and Standard
  • Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Nonprofits

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The Figma for Google Workspace add-on helps teams seamlessly collaborate on Figma files and keep everyone on the same page without switching context. The Figma add-on makes it easy to embed Figma files in Google Docs for easy reference and collaborate on Figma files in real-time in Google Meet. 

Today, we’re excited to bring Figma into Google Chat, so you can stay on top of updates and comments wherever you work. 

Whether you’re ideating, designing, or building, Figma for Google Chat lets you:

  • Receive notifications for invites to files, projects, and teams
  • Previews Figma files in notifications and group chats
  • See new comments and tags in the files you follow
  • Reply to Figma comments directly from Google Chat

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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To make it easier to share information across different conversations, we’re introducing the ability to forward messages in Google Chat. This new feature  eliminates the need for manual workarounds such as  copying and pasting text or sharing screenshots.

This feature helps improve team collaboration through: 

  • Simplified sharing: Users can quickly share information between various direct messages and spaces, without clunky workflows.
  • Context preservation: Forwarded messages display the original sender, source, and any attachments instantly; recipients can view this content even if they are not members of the original conversation.
  • Enhanced visibility: Messages forwarded from a thread can be moved into the main conversation stream, ensuring they get necessary attention.



At this time, users cannot forward messages:

  • From entirely internal conversations to conversations that include users from other organizations, and
  • From conversations that include users from external organizations to other conversations that include users from external organizations
Users can, however, forward messages from conversations with people outside their organization to conversations entirely with people inside their organization.
Note that when users forward a message from a DM or group DM, a reminder to protect sensitive information will appear.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: To forward a message, select "Forward message" from the message action list and choose your target conversation. Visit the Help Center to learn more about message forwarding in Chat.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s changing

We’re introducing a new setting in Google Chat that gives users more control over who can invite them to 1:1 conversations and spaces. While the default setting allows invitations from anyone, users can now choose to restrict incoming requests to known senders only. This restriction can be done for 1:1 conversations, spaces, or both. 

If a user restricts this setting, they can only be contacted by someone outside their organization if they’ve previously interacted with that person or if the person is in their contacts. Invitations from users who do not meet this criteria will be sent to spam. 

Note that this setting has no impact on messages between users of the same domain; these invitations will not be sent to spam regardless of whether the users have had prior conversations. 

Getting started

Block messages from unknown senders in Google Chat

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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We’re excited to introduce the new Feeds app for  Google Chat. This app makes it simple for teams to bring important, real-time external updates—such as news, blog posts, and industry research from any Atom or RSS feed—directly into their group conversations and spaces.

The goal is to eliminate the need for context switching to monitor external information sources. By connecting an RSS/Atom feed, new posts are automatically sent to a designated space in Chat, keeping all team members up-to-date in the context of ongoing project discussions.

Key features include:

  • Automatic content delivery: New posts from the subscribed feed are delivered directly as messages in Chat.
  • Add multiple subscriptions: Users can add and manage multiple feeds using the app settings panel.
  • Configurable by space: Subscriptions are managed per-space, and only the user who created a subscription can edit or delete it.

Updates from your subscriptions are posted directly in the conversation of your choice

Manage your subscriptions via a command in the integration menu

Manage your subscriptions via a command in the integration menu

Getting started

Rollout pace

  • Available now

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers that have enabled Chat apps in their domain, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s changing

Today we are launching a new feature to enable users to schedule messages in Google Chat to be sent at a later time or date. This  highly requested feature is part of our commitment to enable more productive and seamless communication for our users.

By scheduling messages, Chat users can be respectful of colleagues time and avoid sending messages late at night or early in the morning when recipients may be in a different time zone or unavailable.

  • When composing a message in a Chat conversation, by clicking the down arrow next to the compose bar, users can select a time to send the message up to 120 days in the future.
  • If a user has a scheduled message in a conversation, a banner will appear above the compose box. Clicking this banner or the new Drafts shortcut in the left panel will open a dedicated area to manage all scheduled messages, where users can edit, reschedule, or cancel them.
  • The Draft shortcut is only available when there are scheduled messages.
Clicking on the down arrow next to the Sent button brings up the Schedule send menu

Clicking on the down arrow next to the Sent button brings up the Schedule send menu

New Drafts shortcut to edit, reschedule, send, and delete your scheduled messages

New Drafts shortcut to edit, reschedule, send, and delete your scheduled messages

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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[Update: February 11, 2026] We've encountered unexpected delays in this rollout. Please see the updated timeline below; we'll share more specific dates as they become available.

What’s happening

We’re launching a faster, more reliable Google Chat experience for web users. Chat will now be served from chat.google.com instead of mail.google.com/chat. Users, however, can continue to use existing mail.google.com/chat bookmarks and links. This change will reduce loading time when opening the app and does not change the Chat user interface.

Getting started

  • Admins and developers: If you've created an extension that works with Chat, you'll need to make sure it's compatible with the new chat.google.com web address. Please update your extension to ensure it can find and interact with Chat in its new home.
  • End users: If you’re using Chrome extensions to enhance Chat, they may need to be updated by their creators to function correctly after the move to chat.google.com. If you notice an extension isn't working as expected, check if an update is available on the Chrome Web Store.
  • Admins: If you've blocked Chat access for your org users using allowlist or block URLs in Chrome (or other browsers), then you will need to add the chat.google.com domain as well. If you've configured website-specific policies for permissions and behaviors (such as allowing or denying access to camera, microphone, notifications, etc.) for Chat, you will need to update these policies to include chat.google.com. Finally, if you've force installed the Chat desktop app (aka Chat PWA) for your organization through a force-install list, you will need to include chat.google.com in this list. Note that blocking chat.google.com will break your ability to use Chat within Gmail and Google Meet.

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on December 11, 2025
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting in late February, 2026 (we'll update this post when a more specific timeline is available)

Availability

  • Impacts all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts
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Update (March 30, 2026): This feature is rolling out now to Workspace for Education customers. We expect it to be available to all Education plans listed below within a week.

What’s changing

We’re launching a new integration between Gmail and Google Chat designed to improve team collaboration and productivity. With this feature, you can easily share a conversation from your Gmail inbox to a Chat direct message or space. No need to start your chat conversation with, "Did you see the email I forwarded?" or dig through your inbox to find the message being discussed.

Starting from a Gmail thread, you can initiate a chat with the existing email recipients, a subset, or a new group. The email is automatically forwarded and recipients can open it directly from a link in Chat.

This enables you to switch to Chat for active discussion while preserving the connection to the original message. Two-way linking helps ensure that everyone has the full context they need for a productive discussion and reduces the need to jump between tabs.

This feature is helpful in common scenarios such as:

  • Resolving an issue in real time instead of going back and forth over email
  • Chatting about an email with a subset of the original group before responding
  • Discussing a customer email with coworkers
  • Signal boosting an announcement by company leadership 
  • Sharing meetings notes and action items

Sharing an email in Google Chat
Sharing an email in Google Chat

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. Organizations must have both Gmail and Chat enabled for the feature to appear.
  • End users: This feature will be on by default for users who have Chat enabled in Gmail, available on desktop at launch and on mobile soon (currently available in limited testing on mobile for selected users). Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to share in Chat from Gmail.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Education: Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus
  • Other Editions: Frontline Starter, Standard, and Plus; Nonprofits
  • AI Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

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What’s changing

We are introducing a new setting in Google Chat that allows space owners and managers to control whether users can request to join a space.

Previously, if someone received a link to a space that required permission for them to join, they could send a request to space owners and managers. With this new feature, space owners and managers can now further restrict access by disabling the "request to join" option. If users try to access a space via a link, they will no longer be able to request to join.

New permissions control in the space settings menu
New permissions control in the space settings menu


‘No access’ message for users without permission
‘No access’ message for users without permission

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: Go to space settings and flip the toggle under “Allow requests to join.” 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources


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What’s changing

We’re excited to introduce a new way to triage your messages. Now, you can preview the last unread message in conversations directly from the left-hand menu, without marking it as read. 

Simply hover over a bolded conversation to peek at the message. When you are ready to engage, click to jump straight into the conversation or thread and take action. 


Preview unread Google Chat messages

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. This feature will be ON by default as it rolls out.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s changing

We’re excited to announce that inline threading is rolling out for direct messages (DMs) and group direct messages (gDMs) in Google Chat. This has been a highly requested feature, and we're pleased to deliver it as part of our effort to simplify the Chat experience and address top user feedback about conversation consistency.

Until now, inline threading was only available in spaces. With this update, you can now reply in-thread to any message in a direct conversation, just as you do in a space. This helps to keep conversations organized, allowing you and your colleagues to follow specific topics and avoid cluttering the main chat stream.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. This feature will be ON by default as it rolls out.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s changing

We are introducing a redesigned Google Chat conversation header on the web. The new header offers a simpler, more consistent layout that makes key tools easier to find and use. It includes a side panel where users can access shared content and manage tasks without leaving the conversation view. The panel’s width can be adjusted or expanded to a full-screen view as needed.

Specifically, the new header has icons which can be used to: 

  • Select “Shared” to access shared files, links and media. 
  • Select “Tasks” to create and manage space tasks.
  • Select “Threads” to see and respond to active threads. 
  • Select “Board” to see pinned messages, files and shared links.  
Navigating between Shared, Tasks, Threads, and Board by clicking on header icons


Navigating between Shared, Tasks, Threads, and Board by clicking on header icons


Side panels can expand into fullscreen with the drag bar
Side panels can expand into fullscreen with the drag bar

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be on by default. There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be on by default for users on the web. To use it, look for the icons in the top right of your Chat window. Use our Help Center to learn how to navigate Google Chat. 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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Useful Links

Join the official community for Google Workspace administrators

In the Google Cloud Community, discuss the latest features with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like you. Learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what's happening with Google Workspace.

Learn about more Google Workspace launches

On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.

Learn about our customers

Discover how a diverse range of organizations, from small businesses and nimble startups to globally recognized Fortune 500 corporations, leverage the collaborative power of Google Workspace. Explore examples of how teams of are streamlining workflows and driving productivity by utilizing Google-Workspace.