Google Chat Will Let You Rename Group Chats, Adding ‘board’ Tab

A nice quality-of-life improvement for Google Chat will let you rename group conversations, while teams will benefit from a new “board” feature.

Besides project/team-focused Spaces, Google Chat offers 1:1 and group direct messages. The title for group conversations was previously just the first name of everyone in the chat.

Google Chat is now letting you “create names for existing and new group direct messages.” This is rolling out for all users over the coming weeks.

Named group direct messages will continue to show in the direct messages section of Chat.
Named group direct messages are still private to the members of the group.
The group name will be visible to all members of the group direct message.

Meanwhile, Google is adding a new “board” tab to all conversation types that appears as a column next to that chat. This “virtual bulletin board” can show pinned messages, links, and files (resources), with Gemini suggestions that let you “quickly find and add relevant resources.” In terms of access:

By default, all users can pin, add resources, edit, and delete information from the board with the exception of announcement spaces.
For spaces, a space manager has the ability to restrict board modification access.
For announcement spaces, only space managers can edit a Board by default. Managers can change this default if needed to allow all members to edit it.

Touted use cases include:

A project manager can maintain a single source of truth for all project-related files and resources shared with their team
A workgroup leader can provide one location to find relevant information and resources used on a regular basis
A new team member can quickly find resources to get up to speed on their role and responsibilities so they can contribute to the team as soon as possible

This is rolling out over the coming weeks to “all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.”