This article is for people who manage Google services or devices for a company, school, or group. If you're using a personal (@gmail.com) account, go to the Google Account Help Center.
This article describes how Google Currents communities are migrated to Google Spaces when you migrate from Currents to Spaces. For information on which posts are migrated, see Migrate Currents posts to Spaces, and for information on which users are migrated, see Migrate Currents users to Spaces.
About community migration
Communities in Currents are groups of users with shared interests. Posts in a community are shared with all members of the community. When Currents communities are migrated to Spaces:
- If a community has no owner, the community moderators or up to 3 community members are assigned the owner role.
- Communities with no members will not be migrated.
- Only posts made since July 2020 are migrated, even in communities created before July 2020.
- Communities with no posts since July 2020 are not migrated.
- If Currents is disabled, no communities will be migrated.
To keep any data that won't be migrated, you can use Google Takeout to Download your Currents data.
The following table lists Currents communities features and their equivalent Spaces features to which the Currents data is migrated.
| Currents feature | Migration | Spaces feature |
|---|---|---|
|
Communities—A group of users with shared interests. Posts in a community are shared with all members in the community. |
Yes |
Space—A shared place where members can collaborate and communicate to get things done. Messages, files, and other resources in a space are shared with all members of the space. |
|
Non-Restricted Community—Communities with members from outside your organization. |
Yes |
Space—A space that includes users outside of your organization. Make sure Google Chat has external access enabled in the admin settings. Spaces allows for users from one domain to access a space hosted on a separate domain. These are guests. If you have a non-restricted community, the community is migrated to a space with this feature only if external access is turned on for Chat. If not, your external users won’t be able to access the migrated space.
To ensure that external spaces are active, read Set external chat options. |
|
Shared Community—A community with owners from multiple domains. |
No |
No complementary feature—Spaces doesn’t allow users from external domains, called guests, to be Spaces managers. Spaces has support for communities with multiple managers, but it doesn’t allow multiple managers from different domains. If you have a community that’s shared with multiple owners from different domains, you need to decide which domain the migrated space will be sent to.
|
|
Community settings: Private—Only invited members can access the community’s content. |
Yes |
Restricted space—Undiscoverable spaces to which only users who are directly added or invited have access to. Private is a setting for communities. A private community is one that only select users can access. During migration, these communities become restricted spaces, to which only select users have access. For details, see Use Spaces in Google Workspace. |
|
Community settings: Domain visible—All members in the domain can access the community’s content. |
No |
Restricted space—Only directly added or invited users can access the space’s content. During migration, these communities become restricted spaces. You can convert the space to a discoverable space post migration. For details, see Use Spaces in Google Workspace. |
|
Community settings: Ask to join—Whether users must ask to join a community. |
No |
No complementary feature |
|
Community notification settings—When and how often a user is notified when a community is updated. |
Yes |
Space notification—Communities with notifications enabled will have the default space setting of Following. |
|
Community content control settings—Controls if posts should be held for review, or have stronger content filters and controls. |
No |
No complementary feature |
|
Community settings: Hold post for review—Whether members can post directly in the community. If restricted, moderators review and publish posts submitted by members. |
No |
No complementary feature—The community is migrated to a Space where all members are allowed to post and engage with content. |
| Community details—The community name, tagline description, and cover photo. | Yes | Space details—The community name, tagline, and description are migrated to space name, space description, and space guidelines. The cover photo is not migrated. |
|
Community members—The members of a community. |
Yes |
Space members—Members of a space from the domain that the space exists in are users, while members from outside of the space’s domain are guests. |
|
Community groups—A group of users who are a part of a community. |
No |
Space members—A group of users in Currents are added as individual members in a space. External members are invited to join as guests. |
|
Community owners—The owners who control the community. |
Yes |
Space managers—The managers who control the space. If a community doesn’t have an owner, space managers are assigned to the space created for this community. Admins manage space managers using the Admin console. |
|
Community moderators—A unique member of a community who moderates post content in the community, but isn’t an owner. |
No |
No complementary feature—Community moderators are migrated as members of the space. |
|
Archived, abusive, and banned users—Users who don’t have access to Currents. Admins archive archived users, Currents automatically removes abusive users, and admins remove banned users. |
No |
No complementary feature—Archived and abusive users are not migrated. Banned users are migrated and will have access to spaces that aren’t private. |
Large communities
Spaces has a limit of 50,000 users who can access a single space. Because of this limit, not all users of a community are migrated to the space. However, all posts made to the community are migrated as described in Migrate Currents posts to Spaces. All active users who have created posts or engaged with the post are migrated as members of the space. All inactive users are invited to the migrated space and can join, up to the limit of 50,000 users.
Review Chat admin settings
Admin settings for Currents aren’t the same as the ones for admins in Spaces, so no admin settings data can be migrated. You should review the Chat settings before migration. For details, see Prepare Currents for Spaces migration.
