Learn when to use & organize a space

To communicate with a group of people or an organization about a topic, project, or shared interest, use a space. For example, you can create a space to discuss dogs or F1 racing.

With spaces, you can:

• Keep conversations with people in one place 
• Organize groups around shared files, tasks, and schedules
• Keep dedicated spaces for different conversations

Organize a space

Important: You can no longer create a space grouped by conversation topic. Instead, new spaces have in-line threading.

There are two types of spaces, spaces with in-line threading and spaces organized by conversation topic.

In a space with in-line threading, you can either send a message to the entire group in the main conversation window or reply to a single message. If you use in-line threading to reply to a single message, your message branches into a separate conversation. In-line threads can be helpful when you want to reply to a specific message but the topic of the main conversation changed or you want to have a side conversation that doesn’t disrupt the flow of the main conversation.

Tip: Not all messages need to be part of an in-line thread.

In a space organized by the conversation topic, messages and replies are grouped together for everyone to view.  All messages and replies must be a part of a topic and are shown directly in the main conversation window. When you reply to a previous topic, the entire topic moves to the bottom. 

You can find some benefits and limitations of each kind of space organization below.

Type of space	Benefits	Limitations
Organized by in-line threading Tip: This is the default type of Space.	Easy to scan and understand what’s discussed in the space. Fewer distractions to help you focus on topics you care about. Easy to browse topics because they’re all in one place in the thread navigation panel. Thread replies don’t interrupt the main conversation. You can toggle history on and off.	You’re only notified for threads you follow. You must manually click on threads to catch up on threads you don’t follow. Learn more about following or unfollowing threads.
Organized by conversation topic	All replies are displayed in the main conversation. This allows you to see every message without additional clicks. Topics move to the bottom when there’s an update so it’s easy to see when there’s a new reply to a topic.	It may be hard to scan the space to know what’s discussed. Hard to have side conversations. History can’t be turned off. Can’t see all topics easily. A reply to an earlier topic may interrupt the current discussion topic.

For personal email accounts, Message history is on by default. If you have a Workspace account, the administrator sets the default message history. 

These steps apply only to spaces with in-line threading. 

Create a new space with in-line threading

1. Go to Google Chat or Gmail.
2. Under "Spaces," click Create or find a space .
   • If you're using Chat in Gmail, click New space.
3. Click Create a space.
4. Enter a space name.
   • To add a space avatar, click Choose an emoji select an emoji. If you don't select an emoji, a default letter avatar is used instead.
   • Enter an optional description for the space.
5. You can also:
   • Enter the name or email of the people you want to add.
   • Enter apps or Google Groups you want to invite.
   • Pick from the list of suggested contacts.
6. Choose an access level for your organization:
   • Restricted: Only directly added and invited users have access to the space. To make your space discoverable, select “All of your organization.”
   • All of your organization: All members in your organization have access to the space and can join if they have the space’s link. Learn more about creating a discoverable space.
     • Important: If you have a work or school account with Google, you may have additional target audience options created by your administrator. If you have questions about the audience options available, reach out to your administrator.
7. To invite external people into the space, check Allow people outside your organization to join.
   • Important: If you select “All of your organization” in step 6, you won’t be able to allow people outside of your organization to join the space.
8. Click Create.

Reply in a thread

1. Go to Google Chat or Gmail.
2. Click Spaces  select a space.
3. To reply, hover over the message and on the right, click Reply in thread .
   • Tip: If a thread already has replies, you can click the message to open the thread panel.
4. In the thread panel to the right of the space, enter your message in the message window at the bottom.
5. Click Send .

Follow a thread

You automatically follow threads you start, reply to, or are @mentioned in. To follow or unfollow threads: 

1. In the space, click on the Replies  to the thread you want to follow or unfollow.
2. On the right side of the space, the thread panel opens.
3. At the top left of the thread panel, select an option:
   • To follow a thread, click Follow. 
   • To unfollow a thread, click Following.  

Interact with the thread navigation panel  

How to see the activity within a space:

1. To open the thread navigation panel, go to the upper right side of the space and click Active threads .
2. With the thread navigation panel open, you can view:
   • The latest threads with new replies
   • Number of replies for each thread
   • Your following status for each thread

Threads are ordered by most recent activity in the thread navigation panel. To filter threads and the related replies:

On the upper left side of the thread navigation panel, select an option:

• To filter threads where you’re directly mentioned in a message, click “Mentions me.”
• To filter threads you started, replied to, were directly @mentioned in, or selected to follow, click “Following.”