Talk to people outside of your domain in Google Chat
Monday, May 18, 2020
Beginning today, conversations with external users in classic Hangouts will also appear in Chat as new messages are sent.
Additionally, you’ll need to designate a room as "External" when you create it, and you won’t be able to change this setting after the room is created. This means you won’t be able to add external users to any rooms created before this launch, as those will remain "internal."
Note: While you can add external users to a room in Chat, you cannot include external users in a group chat.
You’ll also be able to control whether users can create and join external Rooms within your organization through the “External Rooms” setting in the Admin console.
End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Chat with external users.
- Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on May 18, 2020
Ability to start new conversations with external users
- Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on May 26, 2020. You’ll know this feature has been enabled for your domain when your users begin to see the options to create external rooms and add external users.
- Available to all G Suite customers
- G Suite Admin Help: Chatting with external users
- G Suite Admin Help: Turn on external chat options
- Google Help: Chat and classic Hangouts interoperability
- This feature was listed as an upcoming G Suite release.