Get Started with Google Chat - Beginner's Tutorial

hi there jamie keate here today at teachers tech hope you're having a great day today today i want to show you how to get started with google chat so if you've been a google hangout user before there's going to be some similarities with this with the chatting uh with one-on-one or group chats but you can do so more so much more now in google chat with sharing files or sending uh 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 going to show you how to access and use google chat let's get started 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 going to 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 want to 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 uh with google chat you can actually download it on your computer as a stan standalone app now a lot of times when you first log in you're going to get that prompted where it's going to say hey do you want to download this uh 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 want to 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 uh that's going to 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 watch as a group and i'll get more into this uh and notice it's google meet is right below and i like how google chat and kind of meet or connected where you can do those instant calls from google chat now so another thing i just want 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 the different things you might not notice it right away so i'm just going to 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 want to point out on the left i have the actual app that's installed on my computer and on the right is a the web-based one and i just want to 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 going to 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 uh i just started typing a name i wanted or i could look at frequency 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 want to point out that it's an external person it's outside of my workspace i have with that with the group that i have so i'm going to just say hello on here and i can hit enter or i can hit this little uh airplane send message here so if i click on it and you can see over here now i have this chat it kind of gives me some information from here but i'm going to click on it and open it up

up now what i really like is there 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 is 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 want to point out where this can turn on and off if you didn't want it if you go up to settings there's a few other things in the settings uh 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 want to 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 uh 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 and 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 i hit it send 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 want to 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's for 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 hit it's blued in so if i was typing at in this case i got two people but what it does it that person and then if i send a message to that person it gets notified directly so this is helpful especially inside a group conversation and you can change your settings to get notified for those two 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 app 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 going to 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 going to show that you are available based on activity you can see how we put our do not disturb or set us away or add a status and you can change these notifications uh through here just by clicking on this but you could add a status to give any information needed to a person they could just look at that so i just want 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 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 want to point out next is

why would you not just use a chat all the time a group conversation 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 uh it's a place where you can kind of work long term 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 going to go ahead and create a room here so i'm going to go hit create just hit plus here and create a room like so and i'm just going to call this example and notice i could enter people here if i wanted to allow it or i can but if it's outside the organization i'd have to click here use threaded replies yes i want thread to reply so you can kind of see that conversation going back and forth so i'm going to go ahead and create i haven't added anybody to the room yet because i just want to 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 going to go ahead and i'll just use my same one the external one and i turn it on so i can use external it gives me that information that this is an external user i'm going to 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 task so i could go ahead again start the chat new thread an example at the bottom i'm going to click on this and i'm just going to say hello send it and the new message reply is over here i can save 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

the this is where the files i could add files from here so everybody in this group i would have access so if i just do an example here i'm just going to 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 sent correctly shared with room members so i'm going to 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 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 be so we have our chat we have our files in here so maybe you want to sign

a task so at this point if i go over to task i could add a room task so if i click on room task 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 uh 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 and how they added i do want to point out

out i'm just going to go back here hit the plus and you might be wondering what a bot is so if i go find a bot uh a bot are these things here so you can add it kind of gives more functionality to your room so these are going to 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 at giphy and i'll just type funny and i'm just reading the instructions that they have here and send this over you'll see here so if i go over back to my chat you can see that it 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 is kind of connected with meet and you can see down below at chat we can start a do 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 you how 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 uh coming up for you so if you've used google hangouts in the past before you can see how everything's going to be connected inside google chat with google meet and if you want a tutorial on how to use google meat 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 going to go back

back over to my email here and this right here all the stuff that i did in that app google 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 is 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 uh 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 hope you like this tutorial here on uh google chat here today i think this is a great addition to google workspace and it's going to make things work much more efficiently let me know what you think down below in the comments if there's something else you want to learn on how to use in google or other products let me know thanks for watching this week on teachers tech i'll see you next time with more tech tips and tutorials