Google Meet and Chat. What's new

Let's start with an overview of new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.

Write messages faster and easier with smart compose in Google Chat

Smart compose is now available in Google Chat on web. Coupled with the smart reply, an existing assistive tool that suggests short replies to messages, this feature will help you communicate with colleagues quicker to move conversations or projects forward more efficiently.

Many rely on Chat for their immediate communication needs. This feature helps you compose messages faster and easier, saving time and effort.

Smart compose is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian.

i Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts

Declutter your conversations in Google Chat

Following the recent launch of message quoting, Google introduced an additional feature that improves the Google Chat experience by helping you find and access your most relevant Chat conversations easier.

Chat declutter automatically hides direct messages and spaces that have been inactive for the last 7 days. This feature only activates when a section has more than 10 conversations and does not affect pinned conversations.

By toggling the “More” button, you will still have the option to view and access a comprehensive list of your Chat conversations.

i Available to all Google Workspace customers

Quote a previous message in Google Chat

May 4, 2023 - is now available. Oftentimes Google Chat conversations cover a wide variety of topics in a short period of time, causing you to potentially lose the context of a Chat sent earlier in the message stream.

To improve your web and mobile Chat experience in scenarios such as this, Google introduced a feature that allows you to quote a previous message when sending a reply in a direct message, group message, or space (if configured with in-line threading).

This feature helps provide context to a message response by allowing you to directly reference a previous message. People may use message quoting when they want their response to show up in the main message stream, compared to in-line threading, where message responses are shown in a separate thread.

i Available to all Google Workspace customers

Chat Team messaging	Business Starter	Business Standard	Business Plus	Enterprise
Turn history on or off by default	+	+	+	+
Auto-accept invitations	+	+	+	+
One-to-one external chat	+	+	+	+
Advanced chat rooms, including threaded rooms and guest access		+	+	+

Enhanced experience for picture-in-picture for Google Meet in Chrome

Updating the Google Meet picture-in-picture experience to be more engaging and feature-rich. Directly from the picture-in-picture window, you can now:

• Raise your hand
• Use in meeting chat
• Turn captions on and off
• More effectively resize the picture-in-picture view
• Access flexible layouts

Previously, you could only turn your camera or microphone on/off or leave the meeting from the picture-in-picture window.

A new picture-in-picture experience provides greater flexibility when screen sharing or navigating to a relevant screen for a more dynamic experience.

i Available to all Google Workspace customers

Better control the flow of meetings with viewer mode in Google Meet

To help provide a better experience and scale attendance for larger meetings, you can now select “Everyone is a viewer” when creating your Calendar invite. Viewers are defined as meeting attendees who cannot share their audio or video in the meeting. You can designate attendees who are leading, presenting, or moderating a meeting as co-hosts and contributors.

Further, it keeps the attendees focused on the speaker and the content of your meeting.

Configure viewers in Google Meet by going to Video call options (gear icon) > Guests.

When it’s time for the larger group to engage, hosts can transition viewers to contributors. We hope this update creates a more seamless experience for hosting and attending large-scale Google Meet calls.

You can switch a user between viewer and contributor via the people panel

Viewers will be able to use Meet features such as Q&As and polls. Viewers will not be able to use in-meeting chat or emoji reactions — viewer support for these features is coming in the future.

Additional details

Google Workspace Enterprise Plus customers can scale their meetings to 1,000 attendees, with 500 attendees being viewers

Using these new viewer and contributor roles, Google Workspace Enterprise Plus customers can expand the maximum number of meeting attendees to 1,000 — an increase from 500. If a host does not pre-configure the meeting, all users will be designated as viewers after 500 contributors have joined the call.

The maximum number of meeting attendees will not change for the remaining Google Workspace editions that are receiving the viewer functionality.

Availability: Assign viewers

Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus

Availability: 1,000 meeting attendees

Available for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus customers

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