Starting March 22, Worskpace users will see their Hangouts conversations automatically migrated to Google Chat as part of the old service’s replacement plan. instant messaging
from the American giant announced in 2019.
At this time, only paying users of Workpace, old G Suite or Business customers are affected, but a larger scale migration is planned for later.
A delay to catch up
In October 2019, Google announced the gradual migration of Hangouts to its new Google Chat instant messaging service for users and Workpace, then for everyone. The American giant’s plans have been delayed and the first phases only started in 2020, with the implementation of a “Prefer Chat” setting, to move faster from March 22.
” Starting March 22, 2022, we’ll enable the “Prefer Chat” setting for all customers who haven’t already, making Google Chat the default chat app “, indicates Google, which specifies in this line that Workspace users who want to go to Hangouts via Gmail or on the mobile application will be redirected to Chat without however losing their conversation history “ except in rare special cases we are told.
Google warns that there will be no backing out after enabling the setting, but it will still be allowed to go to Hangout.google.com, which will continue to work for a while. All other Hangouts apps will be disabled.
It is possible to change now
Here again, this first major migration will take place in two stages spread over time. The first will start on March 22 for organizations that have checked the “Chat and Classic Hangouts” setting and will last three weeks. Workspace users who have simply chosen “Classic Hangouts only” will see their five-week migration begin on April 4.
Google has implemented guidelines to help account administrators prepare for the migration, but it is now also possible to do it manually via the settings.
People and organizations using Google Vault will see their messages sent to Hangouts continue to be held under Chat policies. It will be possible to search and export them with the Gmail search. No information has yet been given about the migration schedule for users with a personal Google account.
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Sources: google
, The Verge
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