Admin features for space management via the Chat API are now generally available

What's changing

Earlier this year, we introduced a series of space management capabilities for Workspace admins in the Google Chat API via the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program. These API features are now generally available for all Google Workspace customers and developers.

Using these features, admins can easily perform a variety of space management related tasks at scale. This includes membership management, like adding and removing members, onboarding and offboarding users from spaces, cleaning up inactive spaces, and more.

These features are also available when using the Google Apps Manager (GAM), an open source command-line tool that helps administrators to perform bulk operations associated with various aspects of their Google Workspace. The tool can be used to automate space management tasks with command-line scripts, helping to reduce admin overhead and potential errors when using APIs. See this article in our Help Center for more information on using a third-party tool for mass provisioning.

Who's impacted

Admins and developers

Why you'd use it

In 2023, we launched the Space Management tool, which allowed admins to view all the spaces within their organization, understand the activity within those spaces, and perform essential actions like deleting a space or assigning space managers. While finding the tool helpful to perform one-off tasks, admins expressed a desire for tools to perform these tasks at scale, for example, with the help of APIs. Admins can now use the Chat API to find information and manage spaces in their organization in bulk or programmatically. Specifically they can:

Find and delete inactive spaces: Using spaces.search, you can find spaces that haven’t been used since a specified date and time and then delete them.Onboard and offboard users: Automatically add new users to relevant spaces and remove them from spaces when they leave or change roles.Audit external members: Monitor and control access to your organization’s data by identifying and removing external members from sensitive conversations.Lookup and update space details: Easily manage space information like names, descriptions, and guidelines.Verify user membership and upgrade roles: Manage user access and roles within spaces.And more — please refer to our developer guidance for even more information.