Google Chat APIs now generally available to all Workspace developers — Google for Developers Blog

Posted by Mike Rhemtulla, Product Manager

Programmatically manage spaces, memberships, messages, reactions and attachments

Last year, we announced new APIs in Developer Preview that enabled developers to programmatically create Chat spaces and add members on behalf of users. These APIs, in addition to the message, reaction, and attachments APIs are now generally available to all Workspace developers.

Google Chat has become a critical connectivity tool for hybrid organizations as well as a powerful tool for streamlining workflows. The Google Chat API allows developers to build user facing apps that integrate workflows into Chat and provide contextual information right into the conversation. Chat apps let users receive details and link previews directly from connected internal and third-party systems, and allows users to get up to speed asynchronously and solve issues quickly. For example, users can create or manage issues in Jira for Google Chat, all without leaving Chat.

Some developers are already leveraging the new APIs to encourage collaboration for their customers. LumApps, a leading intranet platform, enables its users to start a direct message in Google Chat from their user directory so those who are trying to find others based on job titles, roles, departments, or other attributes, can quickly start messaging each other.

In addition to the above Chat APIs now being generally available for all Workspace developers, existing Developer Preview participants can now access our newest feature: Developing Google Chat apps to import user data. If you currently use other enterprise messaging platforms and would like to bring your data into Google Chat, you can now create a Chat app to import existing messages, attachments, reactions, memberships, and more.

The key feature of the Developer Preview functionality are “import mode” spaces, which allow Chat apps to maintain historical timestamps for spaces and messages, to keep the context and ordering of the imported data as users expect. As well, import mode spaces suppress notifications and do not allow end users to access these spaces while legacy data is being imported.

As more users look to get things done within Google Chat, extending the capabilities of the product with apps will help users save time and get things done quicker. We encourage you to explore what you can do today with these resources: