Google has introduced a new feature it named “Conversation Summaries” in Google Chat which will help its premium users tackle the problem of too many chat messages and documents flooding their inboxes.
“Today, we are excited to introduce conversation summaries in Google Chat for messages in Spaces,” the company says in a blog post.
Google built Spaces into Gmail web, and the feature is accessible via Gmail and Google Chat for mobile and desktop premium users. You can create a group of people, share files, assign tasks, and collaborate seamlessly with others to collaborate.
Gmail isn’t limited to sending or receiving emails. It’s an integrated workspace to create a new space for different topics and discussions, share files, and compose Google Meet group calls without leaving the Gmail tab.
Previously known as Rooms, Spaces lets you invite and chat with team members, collaborate on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, compose a quick Meet call, and improve the group productivity to the next level.
So while Chats in Spaces are perfectly good for conversations, in larger Workspaces these Chats conversations can be difficult to keep up with unless you’re always checking your Spaces for new conversations in Chats.
Conversation Summaries is now the solution to this crisis which will summarise conversations for users in their Premium Workspace.
Google claims Conversation summaries provide a helpful digest of conversations in Spaces, allowing users to quickly catch-up on unread messages and navigate to the most relevant threads.
To turn the conversation summary on and off, you need to go on Google Chat, then click Settings > Conversation summary and then tick or untick the box next to ‘show summaries in spaces that have many unread messages.’
You will then find the Conversation Summary of your Workspace Spaces Chat messages at the top of the Chats within Spaces. This is a summary of any unread conversation in the Chats.
If you click on the summary of the Spaces Chats, you’ll go straight to the conversation, even if it’s already visible and the Conversation summary only has a few lines from the conversation.
Google says this feature is enabled by its abstractive summarisation model, Pegasus, which generates useful and concise summaries for chat conversations.
As mentioned earlier, it is currently available to selected premium Google Workspace business customers.
