This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.
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What’s changing

Today we are launching a new feature to enable users to schedule messages in Google Chat to be sent at a later time or date. This  highly requested feature is part of our commitment to enable more productive and seamless communication for our users.

By scheduling messages, Chat users can be respectful of colleagues time and avoid sending messages late at night or early in the morning when recipients may be in a different time zone or unavailable.

  • When composing a message in a Chat conversation, by clicking the down arrow next to the compose bar, users can select a time to send the message up to 120 days in the future.
  • If a user has a scheduled message in a conversation, a banner will appear above the compose box. Clicking this banner or the new Drafts shortcut in the left panel will open a dedicated area to manage all scheduled messages, where users can edit, reschedule, or cancel them.
  • The Draft shortcut is only available when there are scheduled messages.
Clicking on the down arrow next to the Sent button brings up the Schedule send menu

Clicking on the down arrow next to the Sent button brings up the Schedule send menu

New Drafts shortcut to edit, reschedule, send, and delete your scheduled messages

New Drafts shortcut to edit, reschedule, send, and delete your scheduled messages

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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What’s happening

We’re launching a faster, more reliable Google Chat experience for web users. Chat will now be served from chat.google.com instead of mail.google.com/chat. Users, however, can continue to use existing mail.google.com/chat bookmarks and links. This change will reduce loading time when opening the app and does not change the Chat user interface.

Getting started

  • Admins and developers: If you've created an extension that works with Chat, you'll need to make sure it's compatible with the new chat.google.com web address. Please update your extension to ensure it can find and interact with Chat in its new home.
  • End users: If you’re using Chrome extensions to enhance Chat, they may need to be updated by their creators to function correctly after the move to chat.google.com. If you notice an extension isn't working as expected, check if an update is available on the Chrome Web Store.
  • Admins: If you've blocked Chat access for your org users using allowlist or block URLs in Chrome (or other browsers), then you will need to add the chat.google.com domain as well. If you've configured website-specific policies for permissions and behaviors (such as allowing or denying access to camera, microphone, notifications, etc.) for Chat, you will need to update these policies to include chat.google.com. Finally, if you've force installed the Chat desktop app (aka Chat PWA) for your organization through a force-install list, you will need to include chat.google.com in this list. Note that blocking chat.google.com will break your ability to use Chat within Gmail and Google Meet.

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on December 11, 2025
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting around January 7, 2025

Availability

  • Impacts all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts
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What’s changing

Earlier this year, data classification labels for Gmail became generally available. Admins can use this feature to classify and audit email content according to organizational guidelines (“Sensitive,” “Confidential,” etc.) and apply policies, such as data loss prevention (DLP) rules, to protect sensitive information in email messages.

We have expanded this functionality to include the ability to create a DLP rule that adds a header or footer message to email messages. Critically, header and footer messages will be shown to users outside of your domain, which helps ensure external users are aware of the sensitivity of the message and any handling requirements. DLP rules are applied to outbound messages from your domain based on how you have configured the rule scope and conditions. As a reminder, the actual classification label is only visible to recipients in your domain.

Admins can customize the information shown in the header or footer message, including links to further information on handling information. Headers and footers are visible on all device types, both within and outside of your domain.

Selecting “Add footer message” when creating a rule

Selecting “Add footer message” when creating a rule

Once the email is sent, the banner will appear in the body of the email.

Once the email is sent, the banner will appear in the body of the email

For more information on data classification labels for Gmail, please refer to our previous announcement.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Data loss prevention rules with labels as a condition or labels as an action are available to:

  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus, and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
  • Frontline Standard and Plus
  • Cloud Identity Premium (with Workspace plan that includes Gmail)

Resources

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What’s changing

We are extending multi-party approvals (MPA) to Google Vault. Last year, we launched MPA to protect customers from malicious actors taking sensitive admin actions by requiring that one admin must approve certain actions initiated by another.

Going forward, admins can configure multi-party approvals for the following sensitive Google Vault actions:

  • Google Vault: create export: Requiring approval before a search query can be exported.
When enabled, if an admin attempts to perform these actions in the Vault interface, they will see a "Multi-party approval required" prompt. The action will not be executed until a separate, authorized administrator reviews and approves the request within the Admin console.


Vault admins have access to highly sensitive actions, including the ability to search and export specific sensitive user data or large amounts of data across an entire domain.

Multi-party approval adds an extra layer of security for these sensitive actions by ensuring no sensitive action happens in a silo and, most importantly, helps prevent unauthorized or accidental changes from being made. This dual-authorization mechanism significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized or malicious actions, such as a bad actor attempting to exfiltrate confidential information or perform unapproved data deletions.

Additional details

  • Request workflow: Once a request is submitted, approvers (super admins or delegated admins with the multi-party approval role) receive an email notification.
  • Expiration: Requests expire after three days if not approved.
  • Granular control: Admins can choose to enable MPA specifically for Vault actions without enforcing it on other settings, or vice versa, via the Multi-party approval settings page.
  • Delegation: Super admins can delegate the responsibility of approving these requests to other leaders using the "Multi-party approval" system role.
  • API: Multi-party approval will not be required for exports triggered via the API and should not impact downstream automation via the API.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature is available for eligible Workspace customers with two or more super admin accounts. Multi-party approval for Vault exports is OFF by default and can be turned on in the Admin console. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to Google Workspace

  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Education Standard and Plus

Resources

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What’s happening

In order to help organizations, particularly those in the financial services industry, meet strict regulatory archiving requirements, today we are introducing Google Meet Compliance Recording, a new feature that can be enabled by administrators to automatically record meetings and capture transcripts for specific users or groups requiring regulatory monitoring by a registered organization. This feature helps financial firms comply with communication retention and supervision rules mandated by the SEC, FINRA, and the CFTC. It enables firms to retain, monitor, and store digital communications in the required format to adhere to specific regulations like FINRA Rule 3170 and CFTC 17 CFR 1.31. This solution can also be used for other applications, including other global financial services compliance regimes (MiFID II, etc), and for regulatory requirements in other industries like healthcare, public sector, and more. This solution is available as part of the Assured Controls add-on. 

In this article, we will refer to users who benefit from the solution as “regulated users”. This can include any persons who need to be monitored to comply with regulatory requirements; registered broker/dealers, compliance officers, broader employees who communicate with the former groups, and more.

New Google Meet Compliance Recording feature

New Google Meet Compliance Recording feature

Why this matters

  • Meet regulatory requirements: When compliance recording is turned on for a regulated user, their Meet meetings are automatically recorded, and transcripts are captured. Both the recordings and transcripts are stored in a WORM (write once, read many) compliant Google Cloud Storage (GCS) bucket with appropriate retention policies, ensuring immutable records for regulatory archiving.
  • Enable collaboration features: Historically, regulated entities had to disable several valuable collaboration features in Meet (like chat and screen sharing) to comply with SEC rules. This new framework solves that by automatically creating unalterable records of the recording and transcript when a regulated user joins a call, preserving the standard Meet experience for both participants with the feature turned on or off.
  • User experience: All call participants will have an uninterrupted experience, with the assurance that regulated user communications are automatically archived for regulatory purposes.

How compliance recording works

Compliance recording is automatic and cannot be disabled by participants once the recording starts.

  • Visibility: All meeting participants will see a Compliance badge displayed when a regulated user is present. This badge cannot be turned off. A notification is also shown on the pre-meeting screen on the web and when the recording starts.
  • Storage and Sharing: The recordings and transcripts are not automatically shared with attendees, attached to Google Calendar events, or sent via email notifications to users. They are for compliance archiving only.
  • Limitations:
    • Users cannot access these compliance recordings; they must record the meeting themselves if they want a personal copy.
    • As with existing Meet recordings, compliance recordings are limited to a maximum of 8 hours, after which regulated users might be removed from the meeting.
    • The recording will not capture content in Breakout Rooms when regulated users join them.
  • Audio/Video Options: Admins can choose to record audio only or audio and video.

Getting started

  • Admins: The compliance recording setting is off by default. This setting can be applied at the organizational unit (OU) or configuration group level to target only your regulated users. This feature is tied to the license, so only users with an eligible add-on license will be subject to these measures. 
  • End users: No action is required for end users. The recording and transcription process for compliance is automatic and transparent to the user, except for the in-meeting notification and the permanent compliance badge.

Rollout pace

  • Available now

Availability

  • Available for users with the Google Workspace Assured Controls or Assured Controls Plus add-on license

Resources

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