Set up Chat restrictions

Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Starter, Frontline Standard, and Frontline Plus; Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus; Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, and Education Plus. Compare your edition

As a Google Chat administrator, you can set up restrictions to prevent users or groups from starting new direct messages, group messages, or spaces.

These settings also help you manage how your users communicate. For example, you can let certain users send direct messages to each other, but block them from creating their own spaces.

Set up Chat restrictions

  1. In the Google Admin console, go to Menu and then Apps and then Google Workspace and then Google Chat.

    Requires having the Google Chat administrator privilege.

  2. Scroll to Chat and Space restrictions.
  3. In the Google Chat box on the left, search for the group you want to apply Chat restrictions to and click it.
  4. Select an option:
    • No restrictions: Users can create direct messages, group messages, and spaces.
    • Restrict space creation: Users can create 1:1 direct messages and group messages, but they can't create spaces.
    • Restrict all creation: Users can't create direct messages, group messages, or spaces.
  5. Click Save.
Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more

Set up automatic acceptance of your invitations

You can set chat invitations to be automatically accepted by users, so that your users don't have the option to reject new messages. For more information, go to Automatically accept chat invitations.

Control external communication

To prevent external Google Workspace users from chatting with your users, we recommend that you turn off external communication as described in Control external Chat and spaces chat options.