Chat service consolidation

To ease the transition to Google Chat, the chat services and settings for classic Hangouts and Google Chat have been combined and simplified in the Google Admin console. There's now one place where you can control which chat services and settings apply to your organization.

Chat service status control

You can choose which chat services to turn on for your organization, as well as decide whether Google Chat should be included in Gmail, by navigating to AppsGoogle WorkspaceSettings for Google Chat and classic HangoutsService Status and choosing one of the settings below. You can apply these settings to your entire organization or to specific organizational units.

Service status*	Google Chat service	Classic Hangouts service	Chat Clients				Classic Hangouts Clients
			Gmail	Web	Desktop (PWA)	Mobile	Gmail	Web	Chrome extension	Mobile
Chat preferred	ON	ON	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Chat and classic Hangouts	ON	ON	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chat only	ON	OFF	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Classic Hangouts only	OFF	ON	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Both turned off	OFF	OFF	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

*You might not see every service option. For details, refer to step 5 of Choose a chat service.

While both the “Chat preferred” and “Chat only” service status settings include Google Chat in Gmail, there are important distinctions to note between the two options:

• Choosing “Chat preferred” provides the best migration experience if your goal is to upgrade users from classic Hangouts to Google Chat. It also ensures that your users can still talk to people outside your organization who still use classic Hangouts. 
  
  Because of the way Chat and classic Hangouts interoperate, if you choose “Chat preferred,” your chat history preference can override your default room history in certain situations. Learn more

• Choosing “Chat only” turns off the classic Hangouts service. Affected users will not be able to talk to classic Hangouts users. Messages sent from Chat won't be shown in classic Hangouts, and re-enabling classic Hangouts later won't bring those messages back or restore interoperation between Chat and classic Hangouts for those conversations.
  
  Choosing “Chat only” allows you to have separate forced chat history options for direct messages and unthreaded rooms. The chat history setting will never override the room history setting. Learn more

Chat settings

All Google Chat and classic Hangouts settings can be found on the “Google Chat and classic Hangouts” setting page. Unless specified, these settings apply to both classic Hangouts and Google Chat.” For more information, see Google Chat and classic Hangouts settings.