Last year, Google announced new APIs in a developer preview that should enable developers to programmatically create chat rooms and add members on behalf of users. Now these APIs are generally available to all Workspace developers, in addition to the Messages, Reactions, and Attachments APIs.
Advertisement
Google Chat to streamline workflows
Google has been trying for some time to catch up with its rival Microsoft 365 with its Workspace office package. Now the development team announced in the developer blogthat the Google Chat API is now generally available. It should enable apps to retrieve information in Google Chat and perform actions. Furthermore, developers should be able to use it to create user-oriented applications, integrate workflows into the chat and bring context-related information directly into the conversation.
This example from the LumApps intranet platform demonstrates how the Chat API can be used.
(Image: Google)
By integrating such chat apps, users should receive details and link previews directly from connected internal systems and also from third-party systems and thus be up to date asynchronously. For example, issues can be created or managed in Jira for Google Chat without leaving this chat.
Developer Preview: Bring data into Google Chat
Developer Preview attendees will also have access to another new feature: developing Google Chat applications to import user data. Those who currently use other business messaging platforms and want to bring their data into Google Chat can now create a chat app to import existing messages, attachments, reactions, and memberships.
Advertisement
The key feature of this functionality in Developer Preview is the “Import Mode Spaces” which allow chat apps to preserve historical timestamps for rooms and messages. This allows them to preserve the context and order of the imported data as users expect. Also, “Import Mode Spaces” suppress notifications and deny end users access to these spaces while legacy data is being imported.
Interested developers can find more information in the blog post as well as in a detailed Overview of the Google Chat API on the website.
(fms)