Google is moving into the final phase of its migration from Classic Hangouts to Google Chat for Workspace customers and will make Google Chat the default chat application beginning March 22.
Users of Workspace and legacy G Suite Basic and Business that visit classic Hangouts in Gmail on the web or the classic Hangouts mobile apps will be directed to Chat, while Hangouts.google.com will continue to work, the company says in a new Workspace blog.
There is no workaround or opt out for this change, but users can export their classic Hangouts and Chat data. Google notes that this does not affect the personal use of Hangouts with a Google Account.
Users with admin console settings of Chat and classic hangouts and access groups with both Google Chat and classic Hangouts turned on will see the automatic upgrade over three weeks starting March 22. Meanwhile, users with admin console settings of classic Hangouts only and access groups with only classic Hangouts enabled will see the upgrade take place over the course of five weeks starting April 4, the company says.
Read Next: What IT Admins Need To Know About New Google Workspace Updates, Features
After domains are upgraded to “Chat preferred,” all classic Hangouts applications except for hangouts.google.com will be disabled. The “Chat and classic Hangouts” and “Classic Hangouts only” settings will be removed from the Admin console, according to Google.
For Vault users, messages sent in classic Hangouts will continue to be retained and held according to policies set for Chat, and searchable and exportable with Gmail search in Vault. Messages sent in Chat will be subject to retention rules and holds set for Chat, and searchable and exportable with Chat search in Vault, Google says.
The conversation history from Hangouts will largely be available in Google Chat, but any newly created spaces in Google Chat within an organization’s domain will not appear in classic Hangouts starting mid-March, according to Google. That means messages sent in these spaces will only appear in Google Chat for affected users.
Admins at organizations with the “Classic Hangouts only” or “Chat and classic Hangouts” Admin console settings enabled for the entire domain or specific access groups will be automatically upgraded to the “Chat preferred” setting. Admins won’t need to do anything if those Admin console settings aren’t enabled.
For more information, read Google’s Workspace blog.
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