OnEBoard Chat: Mastering Continuous Chat in Google Meet

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This week Nina Trankova demonstrated how to manage the new continuous Chat feature in Google Meet meetings. Continuous Chat is a persistent Google Chat group conversation for meeting invitees who are within the same Google Workspace organization as the meeting host. 

This week's background was created from the prompt "cosy cabin on the side of a pathway in a winter forest with a snowdrops meadow".

Topics

           

  • How to enable "continuous meeting chat" in Google Calendar as a Meet meeting host. 
  • Google Workspace Administrator controls. 
  • Complexity of the settings to manage this feature.
  • Limitations when the meeting includes external guests. 
  • Current technical issues and unpredictable behavior.
  • Use cases, especially for businesses. 
  • How this is an example of a shift in meeting culture. 

Enabling Continuous Meeting Chat for a Meet Meeting


If you are a Google Workspace Business, Enterprise or Frontline user, and continuous meeting chat is enabled for your organization, you can turn it on for a meeting in Google Calendar: 

1. Create a Google Calendar Event
2. Add Google Meet video conferencing. 
3. Click the gear icon for Meet, open the Waiting Room tab, and turn that off. 
4. In the Host Controls, make sure "Ongoing Chat" is turned On
5. Click Save.
6. Join the Meet meeting and send a message. 

You will be able to find the discussion after the meeting in Google Chat under Direct Messages. 

This setting cannot be changed from inside the meeting. Nina notes, "It is not a button that is active. You cannot change from inside the meeting. You need to go back to the calendar event and toggle it and turn it off from there."

Takeaways

Nina Trankova on how continuous chat works with external meeting participants: "What's interesting is that this is a tool mainly for businesses. So everyone in the organization is reading and participating. But when you have external guests, they can  text and read the messages from the moment they join the meeting until it ends. As soon as they leave the meeting, they will not be able to access this chat. Continuous chat is not for external guests. That's the confusing part because you know if you go to someone's premises and leave you would like to know how it's continuing with the talks or negotiations but you will have no access."

Nina Trankova on using Google's AI tools in Chat: "So on the Chat side live if we see any messages there on the other side it's like an archive. Imagine, for example, we are doing a sales report and it piles up each month, year after year. We could deploy an agent and ask it to analyze so we don't miss any  important detail and can eventually automate new processes. That's why I imagine this new way of continuous conversation is of great value to the businesses."

Nina Trankova on how this is a conceptual change: "To me a meeting starts and ends. [...] I prefer to think about it like started and finished. This continuous chat is another concept, it's totally different, it's like a gossip even before the meeting."

Bob Danley on technical issues: "The problem with using this is that it isn't made for the common man or woman [...] you have to have and you know pretty much an advanced knowledge of how this works behind the scenes.  You may never even get to the point that we're at right now where you're actually in a meeting and discussing the pitfalls."

Peggy Kolm on why you might not want to enable this for every meeting: "for people who have frequent meetings, if you have this turned on, it creates a new group conversation for every meeting in Google Chat. And of course, if you have one meeting every day for a week, that's five new group conversations per week. And it could actually be the same people in each of those conversations. So, I think managing that is kind of tricky. And maybe you only want to turn it on for certain important conversations. Otherwise, people could get really overwhelmed."

Andrew in the live chat: "I guess for now I'd recommend it only be used for meetings within an organization."

Limitations

In some cases continuous Chat may not be available in the meeting, even though it appears to be enabled.
 
Meeting & Host Configuration
  • Meeting Type: The feature is not supported for live streams, instant meetings, meetings with Client-Side Encryption (CSE), breakout rooms, huddles, or events without a Meet ID.
  • Waiting Room: It is not supported if the waiting room feature is enabled for the meeting.
  • Host Controls: It is not supported if the host turns off chat in the Calendar event's video call options before the meeting starts.
  • Guest List Visibility: It is not supported if the meeting organizer turns off the "See guest list" setting in the Calendar event.
  • Meeting Size: It is not supported if the meeting has more than 200 invited guests.
User & Device Limitations
  • User Type: If the user is external, not signed in, a temporary user, or not on the calendar invite, they typically lose chat history when the meeting ends, even if they participated in the Chat during the meeting.
  • Device: It is not supported if the user joins from specific hardware like Zoom or Cisco rooms, or from a mobile device with an outdated OS or without the Google Chat or Gmail app installed.
Organization & Policy Restrictions
  • Chat History: It is not supported if the administrator policy forces "Chat history off" for a user. This results in a view-only chat experience.
  • External Chat Policies: It is not supported if the host's or guest's organization has policies that restrict chatting with external users.
  • Chat Service Disabled: It is not supported if the administrator has disabled the Google Chat service for a specific user.

Related Resources

▶ Join the next OnEBoardChat on YouTube on February 1.
🔔 Subscribe to the OnEBoard YouTube channel and enable notifications so you don't miss an episode!

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