How is it possible there is still no Google Chat administrative interface?

[ben_mehling]

My org beta tested the initial incarnation of "Google's Slack competitor" back in 2017.

We have never adopted it due to the heaps of features we use in our existing enterprise chat tool (not Slack). It's definitely telling that Google corporate doesn't "dog food" this tool internally -- the features would be rapidly implemented if they tried to use this thing at any scale.

To this day, a major blocker is the inability for Workspace admins to view and manage all aspects of spaces (aka rooms or channels). Admins can manage groups, shared drives, etc., however for someone reason Google hasn't bothered to build this for Workspace. I don't understand how people in orgs or any size >50 people are managing all this communication.

Super frustrated...

[bill_pier3]

Well I agree in part.  Google does indeed test internally by eating it's own "dog food"!  Unfortunately and frustratingly some of the features promised for Chat over the last year have yet to be deployed to the wider Workspace user base.

Inline-threading, for example, was demoed in a blog entry from March of this year, (and initially last year), but has yet to be deployed.  How such a basic feature in their competitors' products has not yet been made available is beyond belief!  I can only speculate, observing the rollout of announced feature enhancements, that the deployment process is somehow stagnated or stimied, for reasons unknown to me.  I note that during the pandemic, many announced features didn't arrive in my domains till much later than the posted rollout schedule -- to the point of being frustratingly laughable, in that I'd stop watching for announced enhancements because of the deployment schedule lapse; new features just arrive ... and then I recall reading about them from the past.

As for Admin management of the Chat service, this is increasingly frustrating to Workspace Admins for all editions, wherein enhancements or features are announced with NO ADMIN CONTROL.  The Chat service specifically has been previously limited to ON/OFF for Admins, during the Hangouts deprecation.  I don't have an explanation, and since Google maintains the 'radio silence' on just about everything other than marketing or a legal challenge, it's hard to know if anyone is even listening to feedback and complaints.

[ben_mehling]

To my knowledge (based on two former colleagues that are current googlers) they do not use "our" version of chat/rooms/spaces in their corp instance of Workspace. They use some version of standalone chat. From my perspective, this product is woefully underpowered w/out the tight feedback loop normally associated w/ internal use. 

Setting aside all the user-facing features that are missing (I have a lengthy list) and we use daily in our alternative chat tool, this post was born of my frustration with the (lack of) controls given to admins over chats/spaces.

As an admin, why can't I get a list of all rooms? Filter that list by room name? Manage the settings of each room? Adjust membership in the rooms? etc.  It's ridiculous that after 5 years there's no way for admins to manage these settings.