About Google Chat at IU

• Overview
• How to access
• Group chat vs. rooms
• Manage rooms and groups for your department, organization, or school
• Bots in Google Chat
• Learn more

Overview

Google Chat facilitates direct messaging and collaboration within Google at IU. Faster and more interactive than email, Google Chat lets anyone with a Google at IU account chat with individuals and groups. Google Chat allows seamless collaboration across many devices and systems, including the web, desktop clients, and smartphones.

How to access

There are two ways to access Google Chat:

• Browser: Navigate directly to chat.google.com in your preferred web browser (for example, Firefox, Chrome).
• Chat app: Google has developed a standalone app which provides a fast, reliable, and engaging way to use Google Chat on any computer with the Google Chrome web browser. For more about the app, including installation instructions, see Install the Chat standalone app.
  Note:

  To use the standalone app, you must have the Google Chrome web browser installed on your computer.

Group chat vs. rooms

Google Chat offers group chats and rooms for large-scale discussions. Group chats and rooms have different features and capabilities; to determine which chat option is best for your needs, see Rooms vs. group messages.

Manage rooms and groups for your department, organization, or school

By default, you can add people to a room one at a time. However, if you would like to add users in bulk, you can create a Google Group and then invite said group to your room. To invite a group to an existing room:

1. Click the Find people, rooms, bots search bar on the left of the page or chat window.
2. Enter the name of the room desired room and click it.
3. The name of your room should now appear at the top of the chat window or page. To the right of the name, click the down arrow.
4. Click Add people & bots.
5. In the "Enter name or email of person or group" search bar, enter the name of your group.
6. Click the name of your group (for example, Test Group).
7. Click Send.

Once invited, individual members of the Google Group can join your room. Members will be notified in Google Chat that they have been invited to your room. If you'd like, you can also send an email notification when initially inviting the group.

Bots in Google Chat

Bots are a unique way for users to connect to services integrated with Google Chat. You can talk to bots and command them to perform various tasks. Bots do not interact with Google Chat directly, and they adhere to all permissions and configurations maintained in the service delivered by the bot.

The following tools are approved for use in Google Chat at IU:

• Google Drive bot in Google Chat
• Google Chat for Confluence
• Jira for Google Chat
• Meet bot for Google Chat
• Zoom

To propose other applications to be approved for use in Google Chat at IU, contact the UITS Support Center.

Learn more

To learn more about Google Chat, see:

• What can you do with Google Chat?
• Manage chat for an organization
• Google Chat cheat sheet
• Talk to people outside of your domain in Google Chat