Supported editions for this feature: Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Fundamentals and Education Plus. Compare your edition
As an administrator, you can set up a third-party solution to archive Google Chat messages as email journal archives. This solution can be useful to:
- Comply with electronic storage requirements, such as SEC Rule 17a-4
- Continue using a third-party archiving solution
How integration works
To integrate Chat with a third-party archiving solution, specify an email address where journal messages are forwarded.
- Archiving begins when at least one person in the 1:1 direct message, group chat, or space has archiving enabled.
Note: Only messages from spaces owned by your organization are archived. Messages from spaces owned by external users are not archived. - Archiving ends up to 3 days after the last user with archiving enabled leaves the group chat or space. Messages in the chat sent after this time aren't archived.
Important: Your third-party archiving solution must require that messages are transmitted via a Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection. TLS is a security protocol that encrypts email to protect its privacy. If you try to send journal messages to a third-party archiving solution that does not support TLS, the messages will not be delivered.
Before you begin
Off-the-record messages aren’t archived, so we recommend that you:
- Turn Chat History On. To learn how, visit Turn chat history on or off.
- Don’t allow users to change their history setting.
- Prevent users from creating or joining spaces outside your organization by turning off external spaces. For more information go to Control external Chat and spaces chat options.
Set up a third-party archiving solution
Set up a third-party archiving solution
Before you begin: If you need to set up a department or team for this setting, go to Add an organizational unit.
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Chat.
- Click Third-party Archiving Settings.
- (Optional) To apply the setting to a department or team, at the side, select an organizational unit. Show me how
- Check Archiving enabled.
- In Destination address, enter the email address where you want to send journal messages.
- In Archival frequency, enter how often messages should be generated (every 1-24 hours).
- (Optional) In Custom headers, enter a comma-separated list of any email message headers that should be used to uniquely identify Chat messages.
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Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.
To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit.