Control external Chat & spaces chat options

This article is intended for Google Workspace administrators. If you're looking for user help, visit Get started with Google Chat.

You can control how users chat with people outside of your organization. If you allow your users to chat externally, you can also allow them to create and join spaces with people outside your organization.

If you turn off external access to existing chat messages & spaces

• Turning off external chat does not delete already created chat messages, conversations, and spaces. They will still be visible and accessible to already invited external users. Your organization’s users will no longer be able to access those entities, but their membership status will not change. If you turn the setting back on, the messages, conversations, and spaces are accessible again. 

• Removing external access to spaces doesn’t prevent space members from accessing data shared to a space, such as Google Drive files or tasks. It only removes access to the space itself. To prevent external members from accessing spaces and space content, you need to remove them from the space. For details, go to Manage spaces in the Google Admin console. 

Auditing for activities initiated by users outside your organization

If an activity is initiated by a user outside your organization in the conversations owned by your organization, details of the chat event are logged, so that an admin can see that the chat occurred. However, they can't read the content from that chat.

Set up external chat

Before you begin: Learn more about chatting with external users.

Set up external chat

1. Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.

   If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.

2. Go to Menu  Apps > Google Workspace >  Google Chat.

   Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege.

3. Click External Chat Settings.
4. (Optional) To apply the setting to a department or team, at the side, select an organizational unit. Show me how
5. For Allow users to send messages outside your organization, select On or Off:
   • On—Allow users in your organization to send and receive messages from outside your organization.
     (Optional) To restrict participants to trusted domains, check the Only allow this for allowlisted domains box.
   • Off—Don't allow users to send messages outside of your organization.
6. Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.

   To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit. 

Turn external spaces on or off

You can also control whether users can create or join spaces created within your organization that include external people outside of your organization. Users with this setting turned off or who have editions that don't support external spaces can't create these spaces, but they can join existing spaces with external people created by a domain with an eligible edition.

Before you begin: The External spaces setting applies only if Chat externally is enabled (described in the section above). If it’s not, your users can’t create or join external spaces inside or outside of your organization—even if External spaces is On.

Turn external spaces on or off

1. Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.

   If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.

2. Go to Menu  Apps > Google Workspace >  Google Chat.

   Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege.

3. Click External spaces.
   This setting applies to your entire organization.
4. For Allow users to create & join spaces with people outside their organization, select On or Off:
   • On—Allow users in your organization to create and join external spaces within your organization.
     (Optional) To restrict external participants to trusted domains, check the Only allow users to add people from allowlisted domains box. If you checked the allowlisted domains box for Chat externally (described in the previous section), you should also check this box for spaces. Otherwise, your users who have the allowlisted domains box checked for Chat externally won't be able to create or access any external spaces. They can still chat with allowlisted domain users through other conversations (such as direct messaging) but not spaces with external users.
   • Off—Prevent users from creating or joining spaces created within your organization that include external people. Users can still join external spaces created outside your organization if Chat externally (described in the previous section) is turned on.  
5. Click Save.