Because of certain new enhancements to the tool, using Google Chat Spaces alongside your Gmail account may become very handy very soon.
Spaces, which debuted in 2021 as part of Google Workspace, the company’s replacement for G Suite for Enterprise, is simply a group chat for Google Chat users, bringing together groups of coworkers or friends in one area.
However, because of a lack of functionality and flexibility, Spaces has not been particularly popular – at least not until recently.
Google Chat Spaces
In a blog post announcing the changes, Google noted, “We’re introducing several improvements for Spaces in Google Chat to help you better organize people, topics, and projects,”
The option to add “Managers” to watch after specific Spaces and function as an admin over the entire chat is one of the new features. Managers will be able to manage the chats, adding and removing members as appropriate, and will be given to the Space’s creator by default but can be modified or edited.
Managers will also be able to provide descriptions to Spaces in order to provide context or information on what will be addressed. Users will be able to develop standards in order to create “safe and effective communication environments”
“We hope this feature makes it easier to share the purpose and guidelines for a particular space, making it easier for your collaborators to navigate quickly to the appropriate space,” Google said, stressing that the new capabilities are now rolling out to users.
Google envisions Spaces as a de facto successor for its much-loved Google Currents product, which the firm recently announced will be phased out over the course of 2022.
Currents will be decommissioned in 2023, and its services will be relocated to Spaces, which Google claims offers much better and closer interaction with other Google products including Gmail, Meet, and Google Drive.
