Tag Archives: Google Hangouts

Recurring Calendar meetings will migrate to Hangouts Meet video calling

What’s changing

As part of the migration from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Meet that we announced last year, we’ll now begin migrating the video conferencing for your recurring Calendar events from classic Hangouts to Meet. Previously, we made the change so that new events scheduled in Calendar will use Meet. Now this change is to update previously scheduled events in Calendar as well.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why we’re migrating

We've built Hangouts Meet to have a fast, simple interface with enterprise grade meeting functionality such as livestreaming and meeting with up to 100 people. To ensure you get the best-in-class experience we’re migrating the remainder of your existing recurring Calendar events. This will happen gradually in an effort to limit any disruption and ensure that you can focus on what’s important: meetings where people can be as productive as they are when they’re face-to-face.

How to get started


  • Admins: No action needed.
  • End users: When you join a recurring Calendar event on classic Hangouts, you will see a banner that future occurrences of this meeting will be on Meet.

Additional details

Migrating existing Calendar events
This change will take place gradually as users join affected meetings. They will see a migration banner notifying them future occurrences will be on Meet. After the end of the call, all participants will get an updated event information with the new meeting details. Single instance (non-recurring) Calendar events will remain unchanged.

If your meeting doesn’t migrate
Some of your meetings may not automatically update to Meet. When this happens, you’ll see a banner in the video call notifying end users to update the Calendar event to Meet. This may happen for complex Calendar event setups, such as if different events have the same video link.

Helpful links

Help Center: Migration FAQs

Availability

Rollout details

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 11, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 25, 2019

G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This setting will be ON by default.

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Easily copy your Gmail holds to Hangouts Chat in Google Vault

What’s changing

As we previously announced, beginning on April 16, 2019, Mail retention rules and holds will stop protecting chat messages in classic Hangouts. Instead, Hangouts Chat retention rules and holds will protect chat messages in both classic Hangouts and Chat. To continue to preserve messages in classic Hangouts, before April 16, 2019, you must copy any existing Mail holds (that apply to messages in classic Hangouts) to Hangouts Chat in Google Vault. Today, we’re launching a new feature in Vault to help you copy your holds from Mail to Hangouts Chat, with a few clicks.

Who’s impacted

Vault Admins only

Why you’d use it

This feature helps you ensure all your messages in classic Hangouts and Hangouts Chat are preserved by the same Vault policies as your classic Hangouts messages are today.

How to get started

Admins: In Vault,
  • From the list of Vault matters, click on any matter that may contain Gmail holds. When viewing the list of holds in this matter, you can select multiple Mail holds at once.
  • Select the Mail hold(s) and click Copy holds to Hangouts Chat.


End users: No action required

Additional details

Note that Hangouts Chat doesn’t support holds based on date ranges or search terms, so they won’t be copied with the hold. You can also choose to extend these holds to cover conversations associated with these custodians in rooms.

Additionally, if you have a large number of holds in place, you can also use Vault APIs to duplicate your holds in bulk.

Helpful links

Availability

Rollout details

G Suite editions
  • Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions, as well as G Suite users with the Vault add-on license.

On/off by default?
  • This feature will be ON by default.
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Change to per-conversation settings in classic Hangouts on Android

Quick launch summary

We're moving notification settings for classic Hangouts conversations to notification channels on O+ Android devices. With these changes, customized ring tones and chat messaging tones per conversation/contact will be removed and defaulted to the general app settings.

New settings page

To view or edit the ring and chat messaging tone settings for classic Hangouts on your Android device, open the classic Hangouts app and, in a conversation, click the more menu > “Options.”

Availability

Rollout details



G Suite editions

  • All G Suite editions


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Upcoming Hangouts service consolidation for all G Suite customers

What’s changing

As we announced in 2017, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet are the next generation of Hangouts that focus on team communication. Later this year, we'll transition classic Hangouts users on G Suite domains to Chat and Meet. As a first step, some changes are coming on April 16, 2019.

Key dates to note

G Suite customers can expect the following timeline of changes:
  • April 16, 2019 – Several changes that may require administrator action (see below for details).
  • Between April and September 2019 – Features from classic Hangouts will come to Chat.
  • October 2019 – Start retiring classic Hangouts for G Suite customers.


Consumer impact
The above dates are specific to G Suite customers and their end users who use classic Hangouts. We will continue to support consumer use of classic Hangouts, and expect to transition consumers to free Chat and Meet following the transition of G Suite customers. A more specific timeline will be communicated at a later date.

What changes will take place on April 16, 2019?
For G Suite domains that have classic Hangouts enabled, Chat will also become available to users on the web and via mobile apps. They can also continue using classic Hangouts in Gmail, mobile, web or the Chrome extension. See these details for how interoperability works between Chat and classic Hangouts.

The following admin-facing changes will begin taking place on April 16, 2019:
  1. For Google Vault customers, Mail retention rules and holds will stop protecting chat messages in classic Hangouts. Instead, Chat retention rules and holds will protect chat messages in both classic Hangouts and Chat.
  2. Chat admin settings will now control chat capability in both classic Hangouts and Chat.
  3. A new setting in the Admin console under Apps > G Suite > Hangouts Chat will be added so you can disable classic Hangouts user interfaces at a time of your choosing.
  4. The "Google Hangouts" settings page in the Admin console will be renamed "Hangouts Meet." This setting will control both classic Hangouts video and Hangouts Meet.

Google Vault customers need to take action before April 16, 2019
Between March 16 and April 16, 2019, Vault customers that have any Mail retention rules or holds will have an indefinite retention rule automatically created for Chat. This rule is to protect all your chat messages in classic Hangouts when Chat rules start protecting them on April 16, 2019. Before April 16, 2019, you must:

  • Review and set new retention rules for Chat in Google Vault.
  • Duplicate any existing Mail holds for Chat in Google Vault.
  • Set any new holds on chat messages from Chat in Google Vault.
  • Once you have set your preferred retention rules and holds for Chat, in order for them to take effect, remove the indefinite retention rule that may be overriding your rules.

If you don’t take set your preferred retention rules or holds in Chat and then remove the indefinite retention rule by April 16, 2019, all your chat messages in classic Hangouts and direct messages in Chat will be retained indefinitely. Refer to this Help Center article to learn more about completing these actions.

What will happen in October 2019?
Classic Hangouts will be retired for all G Suite customers starting in October 2019 and all remaining users will be transitioned to Chat. More notices and details will be shared on the G Suite Updates blog in the future. In order to make the transition easier for your users, you can review our Chat documentation.


What is the best time to move my users to Hangouts Chat?
You can transition your users immediately if you’d like. If there’s more functionality that your organization needs before switching, rest assured that between April and September 2019, we’ll add features that will make it easier for your users to move from classic Hangouts to Chat such as:

  • Integration with Gmail
  • Chatting with external users
  • An improved video calling experience
  • Making calls with Google Voice

We will communicate availability of these new features via the G Suite Updates blog so stay tuned!

Helpful links


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Migrating all G Suite domains from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Meet

In March 2017, we announced Hangouts Meet, the next generation in enterprise video meetings. After continued positive feedback from our customers who have begun using Meet, starting May 29th, we’ll enable Hangouts Meet for all G Suite domains that are automatically upgrading on Google’s recommended schedule. This means that all newly created Google Calendar events will contain Meet video meeting details. Previously created meetings will not be impacted with this change.




You can expect these changes to take effect over the next month. If at any time you decide you want your users to schedule new meetings with classic Hangouts instead of Meet during this transition period, you can do so in the Admin console under Apps > G Suite > Google Hangouts > Meet Settings and unselecting “New meeting experience.”

Additionally, to ensure your domain has a seamless transition to Meet, we've added Meet compatibility with Firefox (starting on version 60). Unlike in classic Hangouts, Meet uses native WebRTC protocols so that it does not require any downloads or plugins when using Meet in Firefox.



To learn more about these changes, review the details of the transition plan and the differences between classic Hangouts video calls and Meet in the Help Center. You can also refer to our Meet deployment guide for materials to communicate these changes to your users.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Switch to Meet

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8 swift steps G Suite admins can take to secure business data

(Cross-posted from The Keyword)

Security doesn’t have to be complicated. With G Suite, admins can manage and help protect their users with minimal effort because we've designed our tools to be intuitive—like Vault, which helps with eDiscovery and audit needs, and data loss prevention, which helps ensure that your “‘aha”’ moments stay yours. Here are some key security controls that you can deploy with just a few clicks to get more fine-grained control of your organization's security.

1. Enable Hangouts out-of-domain warnings
If your business allows employees to chat with external users on Hangouts, turn on a setting that will show warnings to your users if anyone outside of your domain tries to join a Hangout, and split existing group chats so external users can’t see previous internal conversations. This substantially reduces the risk of data leaks or falling prey to social engineering attacks. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Google Hangouts > Chat settings > Sharing options)


2. Disable email forwarding
Exercising this option will disable the automatic email forwarding feature for users, which in turn helps reduce the risk of data exfiltration in the event a user’s credentials are compromised. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Gmail > Advanced settings)



3. Enable early phishing detection
Enabling this option adds further checks on potentially suspicious emails prior to delivery. Early phishing detection utilizes a dedicated machine learning model that selectively delays messages to perform rigorous phishing analysis. Less than 0.05 percent of messages on average get delayed by a few minutes, so your users will still get their information fast. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Gmail > Advanced settings)


4. Examine OAuth-based access to third-party apps
OAuth apps whitelisting helps keep company data safe by letting you specifically select which third-party apps are allowed to access users’ G Suite data. Once an app is part of a whitelist, users can choose to grant authorized access to their G Suite apps data. This helps to prevent malicious apps from tricking people into accidentally granting access to corporate data. (Admin console > Security > G Suite API Permissions)


5. Check that unintended external reply warning for Gmail is turned on
Gmail can display unintended external reply warnings to users to help prevent data loss. You can enable this option to ensure that if your users try to respond to someone outside of your company domain, they’ll receive a quick warning to make sure they intended to send that email. Because Gmail has contextual intelligence, it knows if the recipient is an existing contact or someone your users interact with regularly, so it only displays relevant warnings. This option is on by default. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Gmail > Advanced settings)


6. Restrict external calendar
To reduce the incidence of data leaks, make sure that Google Calendar details aren’t shared outside your domain. Limiting sharing to “free” or “busy” information protects you from social engineering attacks that depend on gleaning information from meeting titles and attendees. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Calendar > Sharing settings)


7. Limit access to Google Groups
By setting default Google group access to private, you can limit external access to information channels that may contain confidential business information, like upcoming projects. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Groups for Business > Sharing settings)


8. Set Google+ access restrictions
Make the default sharing setting for Google+ restricted and disable discoverability of Google+ profiles outside your domain. Both of these actions can help you control access to critical business information. (Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Google+ > Advanced settings)





Every company has their own unique set of business requirements that need to work in rhythm with their security requirements. By evaluating and implementing some of these suggested security controls, you can make a marked difference in your company’s security posture—with just a few clicks. See this post for other security tips.


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Hangouts Meet troubleshooting data to include mobile devices

Hangouts Meet allows G Suite administrators to determine whether web video call logs should be uploaded to Google to aid with support troubleshooting. Starting on July 17th, 2017, the Hangouts Meet client logs upload setting in the Admin console will also apply to mobile devices. Such log data allows Google Support to more effectively resolve issues reported by customers to Google Support. 

Please review the updated section in the Admin console under Google Hangouts > Meet; your existing setting for Client Logs Upload will continue to remain unchanged unless you choose to modify it.

Please see the configuration in the Admin console for more information.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on July 17th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Turn Meet on or off

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
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Hangouts Meet troubleshooting data to include mobile devices

Hangouts Meet allows G Suite administrators to determine whether web video call logs should be uploaded to Google to aid with support troubleshooting. Starting on July 17th, 2017, the Hangouts Meet client logs upload setting in the Admin console will also apply to mobile devices. Such log data allows Google Support to more effectively resolve issues reported by customers to Google Support. 

Please review the updated section in the Admin console under Google Hangouts > Meet; your existing setting for Client Logs Upload will continue to remain unchanged unless you choose to modify it.

Please see the configuration in the Admin console for more information.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release on July 17th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Turn Meet on or off

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Updates in G Suite to streamline Hangouts and Gmail

If you were at Google Cloud Next this year, you may have heard that Gmail and Google Hangouts are getting several improvements designed for businesses, such as Gmail Add-ons and the evolution of Hangouts: Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. To make the most of these opportunities, we’re announcing several updates to Hangouts, Gmail and Google+ that make things much simpler for both enterprise administrators and users.
  • Streamlining the messaging experience for Android: At Google Cloud Next, we announced that we’ve evolved Hangouts to focus on two new experiences that help bring teams together and keep work moving forward: Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. We’ve been working hard to streamline the classic Hangouts product for enterprise users, and, as part of this effort, will be removing carrier SMS functionality in the classic Hangouts app for Android, starting on May 22. For administrators: If your domain is affected by this change, you can expect to receive an email notification with additional details in the coming days.
    • Upgrading SMS with Android Messages: We want to provide a consistent and easy-to-use SMS experience for Android users, right out of the box. So we’re focused on making Android Messages the primary place to access SMS and are working with carriers and device manufacturers to include Android Messages natively in Android devices. Over time, we’re working with partners to upgrade SMS to RCS—the next standard in carrier messaging that will bring features like read receipts, group chat, hi-res photo sharing and more.
    • Hangouts on Android users: In the next few weeks, you’ll see a notification in the classic Hangouts app to switch to another SMS app already on your phone for SMS, or to download Android Messages if one isn’t available. Choosing a new messaging app will not impact your SMS message history, and all your messages will be accessible in whichever new app you choose. Note: This change does not impact Google Voice users who may continue to use Hangouts for their Google Voice SMS.  Project Fi users who wish to use Hangouts as their SMS app will also not be impacted by this change, and can consult the Project Fi forum for more detail.


  • Fully transitioning Google Talk to Hangouts: Google Talk launched in 2005 as a simple chat experience between Gmail users. In 2013, we began replacing Google Talk with Hangouts, while still giving users the option to continue using Google Talk. Hangouts offers advanced improvements over Google Talk such as group video calling and integration with other Google products. With the introduction of Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, which add further improvements in meetings and team collaboration, it is now time to say goodbye to Google Talk.
    • Talk users within Gmail will receive a prompt in the next few weeks, inviting them to switch to Hangouts. After June 26, users will be automatically transitioned to Hangouts, unless contractual commitments apply. For users that preferred the Google Talk look, there is a Dense Roster setting in Hangouts that provides a similar experience.
    • Third-party XMPP clients will continue to work with Hangouts for 1-on-1 chats. XMPP federation with third-party services providers will no longer be supported starting June 26.
    • The legacy Google Talk Android app was replaced in the Play Store in 2013 and will now stop functioning. Android users are encouraged to install Hangouts now.
    • For G Suite administrators: If your domain is affected by this change, you will have already received an email notification about this change.
  • Retiring several Gmail Labs: Gmail Labs serve as a great testing ground for experimental features. Successful labs graduate, and low usage labs often retire. With the announcement of Gmail Add-ons, enterprises will soon gain the ability to add modern integrations in Gmail, which in some cases will replace or improve the functionality provided by some labs. So in the coming weeks, we will retire the following Labs: Authentication Icon, Google Voice Player, Picasa previews, Pictures in chat, Quick Links, Quote Selected Text, Smartlabels, and Yelp previews. (Expected: No earlier than April 24, 2017)
  • Retiring Google+ functionality in Gmail: As part of our continued effort to focus Google+ around shared interests, we’re retiring two legacy Google+ features in Gmail: the ability to email Google+ profiles and the use of Google+ Circles. (Expected: No earlier than April 24, 2017)
    We realize these updates may be an inconvenience, so we aimed to minimize disruption and help you navigate the changes where possible. These updates will help us focus and prioritize features that will improve the entire G Suite user experience for everyone. To monitor the retirement dates for these features, subscribe to the G Suite What’s New Calendar.

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    Hangouts Meet now publicly available and Hangouts Chat Early Adopter Program now accepting applications

    Earlier today, we announced the public launch of Hangouts Meet and the Early Adopter Program for Hangouts Chat, the new enterprise-focused video meetings and online messaging experiences coming to Google Hangouts. Learn more about the new Hangouts in our blog post here: Meet the new Hangouts.

    Getting started with Meet

    If you are a G Suite administrator, the ability to enable specific organizational units for Meet or even your entire domain is gradually rolling out starting today.
    Because Meet is launching default off for existing Hangouts users, you have the flexibility and control to plan and coordinate the rollout of Meet with your team and users.

    Applying for early access to Chat

    Launch Details

    Release track:
    Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

    Editions:
    Meet is now available to all G Suite editions; however, the ability to create meetings with a dial-in phone number is only available to Enterprise edition users

    Rollout pace:
    Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

    Impact:
    Admins only
    For existing domains, Admins can choose when to enable Google Meet for their users.
    For newly created domains, Google Meet will be enabled by default.

    Action:
    Admin action suggested/FYI

    More Information
    Help Center: Enable the new Hangouts video meetings experience (Administrators)
    Help Center: Create or join a new Hangouts video meetings experience (End-users)
    Hangouts Meet Learning Center (End-users)
    The Keyword