- Hi there, Jamie Keet here today at Teacher's Tech.
Hope you're havin' a great day today.
Today I wanna show you how to get started with Google Chat.
So if you've been a Google Hangout user before,
there's gonna be some similarities with this,
with the chatting with one-on-one or group chats,
but you can do so much more now in Google Chat
with sharing files or sending your messages
right to your inbox.
I think Google really needed this
for their Google Workspace to really connect things
so that maybe you don't have to send as many emails
to each other and work within this chat group.
It reminds me a little bit more of Microsoft Teams
and how that communication works inside there.
So in this video today I'm gonna show you
how to access and use Google Chat.
Let's get started.
(words whooshing and markers scratching)
So, where do we access Google Chat?
So, there's a few different ways we can get to this.
Now, the first way I'm gonna show you
is just through your Google app launcher.
You can go up to it.
Make sure you're logged in to do this,
and you can see that chat is right here.
If you're using this a lot,
maybe you wanna move it to the top
where it's easy access to it.
So I can go ahead and click on this.
And my chat is going to open up from here.
Now with Google Chat,
you can actually download it on your computers.
It's a standalone app.
Now, a lotta times when you first log in,
you're gonna get that prompted where it's gonna say,
"Hey, do you wanna download this
"to install it on your computer?"
If that doesn't come up, take a look right here.
If I click on this here,
you can see I can go and download and install the app.
So just look for that.
And if you wanna work on that from your computer,
go ahead and install it.
Now, another way you can access this
is if I go over to my Gmail, and this is what I really like,
it's all, it's gonna be the same.
I can manage it right from my Gmail here.
So I could go ahead, start a new chat with one person
or a group of people here,
or I could create a room, which is a group,
and I'll get more into this.
And notice it's Google Meet is right below.
And I like how Google Chat and kinda meet are connected
where you can do those instant calls from Google Chat now.
So another thing I just wanted to point out,
you might not have access yet in your Gmail.
This is rolling out.
So not all my accounts have access.
And if you're part of a workspace inside of a group
that maybe they haven't turned that on, too.
So just different things.
You might not notice it right away.
So I'm just gonna go back over to chat now.
And the last thing I just wanted to mention,
if you're a mobile user, you can download the app.
You can be on your Android or iPhone,
and it virtually works the same way
on your mobile device, too.
So let's get started with how we use Google Chat now.
All right, so what I have open here
are two different chat windows with
two different ones in my account
to show you how this works.
But I just wanna point out on the left
I have the actual app that's installed on my computer,
and on the right is the web based one.
And I just wanna point out that they work exactly the same
and they look exactly the same.
So pretty easy to move back and forth from both.
Now, I'm just gonna go ahead and start a chat right away.
Pretty easy to do that.
I can hit the Start a chat right here,
or I could hit the plus right here.
It brings me to the same thing.
Notice when I click on it,
I can go ahead and start typing a person's name.
So if I just started typing a name I wanted,
or I could look at frequencts down here.
So if I started typing, if I didn't find the right one,
I could click on a name, and right away,
I can see that this person's active.
And I'll show you how to change status, too.
I can go ahead and send a message to this person.
The other thing I wanna point out that
it's an external person.
It's outside of my workspace I have
with the group that I have.
So I'm gonna just say hello on here.
And I can hit enter,
or I can hit this little airplane, send message here.
So if I click on it, and you can see over here now
I have this chat.
It kinda gives me some information from here,
but I'm gonna click on it and open it up.
Now, what I really like is are these smart replies here.
So it says if I click on one of these,
it will fill in this.
So you can see right away,
I clicked on it and says James was typing,
but I haven't sent it yet.
So I can hit enter or just hit send here.
And it comes over here.
And then notice I can do the smart reply back
and forth like this.
Now I just wanna point out where this can turn on and off
if you didn't want it,
if you go up to settings, and there's a few other things
in the settings, there's not a lot of them,
but if you go to the bottom, it says Smart Reply.
Now this, if you didn't want that on,
you could just click on it.
Maybe you do want it on and it's not on,
just go ahead and click it and you get that option on it.
Now I do wanna point out some other things
that you can do inside the messages.
You can send things like an emoji back and forth here.
And you can see it pop up.
You can upload images from here.
So if I go ahead,
and I'm just gonna grab an image really quickly here,
we'll just go here,
and I hit send,
and it brings it over.
So you can share these things.
Also with Google Drive here,
if I go ahead, click on it,
I can share files from Google Drive.
I can start a Google Meet from here.
I really like this.
And this is where it gets
more and more like Microsoft Teams,
having all these options.
I can go ahead, hit it, send it,
it comes over here, and I can join a video meeting.
So you can see, rather than
emailing back and forth all the time,
you could be working in these conversations.
So just a couple more things I wanna show you
what you can do inside messaging people back and forth.
And you can see right here,
I've added a couple reactions to this picture.
If I hover over anything, I can react.
So in this case, if I go over to here,
I could go and add an emoji to this,
and I can go ahead and it pops up over here.
Now, the other thing you can do
is send something to your inbox.
So if I hover over this one,
notice it says Forward to Inbox.
If I want that to go to my inbox, to my Gmail,
go ahead and click on that.
And that's where it will go.
So before I show you how to get to the group conversation,
I just wanted to point out, I made a little example here.
If you use the at symbol in front of the person's name,
notice how it's blued in.
So if I was typing at, in this case,
I only got two people, but what it does it, that person.
And then if I send a message to that person,
gets notified directly.
So this is helpful, especially inside a group conversation,
and you can change your settings to get notified
for those, too.
So if I go up to my settings,
you see that there's email notifications.
Receive an email if you haven't read a message,
only if the at mentioned.
Because if they put the at
in front of the person's name like that,
then it's directly to that person.
And if you're inside a group,
that's gonna be important that you know
when a message is directed towards you.
The other thing I just wanted to point out
was your, this status right up here.
So the green is gonna show that you are available
based on activity.
You can see how we put our Do not disturb
or Set as away or Add a status.
And you can change these notifications through here
just by clicking on this,
but you could add a status
to give any information needed to.
If your person, they could just look at that.
So I just wanted to point those out.
Now let's make a group with, inside our chat.
So now how do you make it a group conversation?
So what you do is up here,
right now I have two people just back and forth chatting.
If I hit the plus here,
notice that there's a start a group conversation.
So if I go ahead and click on it,
I can add multiple people to it.
I can add more.
And I hit the check mark,
and then I'll have a group conversation.
And all these options will be the same.
So now what I wanna point out next is
why would you not just use a chat all the time
or group conversation?
And why would you use a room?
And notice that up here I can create a room from here
or I could create a room.
It looks virtually the same thing.
Now with a room, what it does is
it's a place where you can kind of
work longterm on a project.
You can share files.
You can assign tasks.
And you can't do that inside your,
just your conversations up here.
So if you're working on a project,
this is a great place where you can really be efficient
with your time.
So I'm gonna go ahead and create a room here.
So I'm gonna go hit create, just hit plus here,
and create a room like so,
and I'm just gonna call this Example.
And notice I could enter people here
if I wanted to allow it,
but if it's outside the organization,
I'd have to click here.
Use threaded replies?
Yes, I want threaded replies,
So you can kinda see that conversation
going back and forth.
So I'm gonna go ahead and create,
I haven't added anybody to the room yet,
'cause I just wanna show you that you can add people after.
Now in this case right here, I have my room set up.
I can point out here that it has
Chat, Files, and Tasks here.
I can add people here.
So if I was gonna go ahead, and I'll just use my same one,
but the external one, and I turned it on
so I could use the external.
And it gives me that information
that this is an external user.
I'm gonna confirm.
And over here now in my other account,
we have it here.
So now I have access to this room and notice we have Chat,
we have Files, and we have Tasks.
So I could go ahead again, start the chat,
new thread and example at the bottom,
I'm gonna click on this,
and I'm just gonna say, hello, send it.
And the new message reply is over here.
I can say something back.
Smart Reply is on again, and it goes back and forth.
So I have this chat through here.
Right away notice that I can Share a file
and Assign task also.
So if I go to files,
this is where the files I could add files from here.
So everybody in this group would have access.
So if I just do an example here,
I'm just gonna grab this and select it.
And you can see that it comes up here, I'll send it.
And it makes sure that the permissions are,
are sent correctly, share with the room members.
So I'm gonna say that they can comment,
and I could change that if I wanted it to.
And it becomes over here.
So you can see here's the document.
I go over to my files and the document is here.
So it's just storing this all in this easy place
I can access.
I don't have to go through all the thread,
all the thread to find the individual document.
I can just go through here.
And notice I have the options Add shortcut to Drive,
and I can view in chat from here.
So that's, so we have our Chat.
We have our Files in here.
So maybe you wanna assign a task.
So at this point, if I go over to Tasks,
I could add a room task.
So if I click on room tasks,
I could tell a person to finish something.
I could add a date or time.
We'll make it for this time here.
I won't set a time,
but I can assign it to a person that's inside the group,
and hit Add.
And so now this person over here
should have a task right here that they go through.
And so if I check it off,
let's say they finished it.
And then it becomes a finished task here and it goes away.
So it's a great way to manage with it.
And this is where I find it a lot
like Microsoft Teams in how they add it.
I do wanna point out,
I'm just gonna go back here, hit the plus.
And you might be wondering what a bot is.
So if I go find a bot,
a bot are these things here,
so that you can add.
It kinda gives us more functionality to your room.
So these are gonna be added to a certain room.
You can see all these different ones,
and I'll just go to GIPHY here to give an example.
I click on it, add it to a room,
and you can look through the different bots that are there.
I'll add it to example, I click Add.
And so this is added.
So I get this, tells me about how to use it a little bit.
So if I just start typing @GIPHY and I'll just type funny,
and I'm just reading the instructions of what they have here
and send this over.
You'll see, here.
So if I go over it back to my chat,
you can see that it's just added that GIF to it.
Tells me how to do things a little bit more
with some of the other features in here,
but you can look for more bots.
Just go find a bot right through here.
So if you did use Google Hangouts before,
you're familiar with your video chatting.
Now everything's kind of connected with Meet.
And you can see down below at Chat.
We can start a new meeting here.
Now just like in the conversations,
we can start our video chats,
but we can start new from here.
We can send our invite or join now from here.
I like it, if they have it,
if we go to My meetings,
and then they just have your list of new meetings
or joining meetings here,
but they also will have your meetings
if there's any scheduled coming up for you.
So if you've used Google Hangouts in the past before
you can see how everything's gonna be connected
inside Google Chat with Google Meet.
And if you want a tutorial on how to use Google Meet,
if you've never used that before, I do have one of those.
And I'll put that down below in the description here.
Now, I just wanted to point out,
I'm just gonna go back over to my email here,
and this right here,
all the stuff that I did in that app,
on the Google app, is right here in my Gmail here.
So if I go ahead and click,
the conversations are the same over here.
I can maximize the window, and you can see this,
the conversation that I was having back and forth.
If I click on the Example room,
this was the different rooms,
and we have our Files and Tasks,
so I can manage everything right inside my Gmail.
And this is probably how I probably
would end up working on it,
just so I can be inside this one app,
and it works all the same.
So definitely take advantage of that
when it comes to Gmail for everybody.
So I hoped you liked this tutorial here
on Google Chat here today.
I think this is a great addition to Google Workspace,
and it's gonna make things work much more efficiently.
Let me know what you think down below in the comments.
If there's something else you wanna learn on how to use
in Google or other products, let me know.
Thanks for watching this week on Teacher's Tech.
I'll see ya next time with more tech tips and tutorials.