Team chat
Set up Google Chat
Bring Google Chat spaces in as chat-log documents — every named space a chosen workspace account is in becomes monthly documents, threads grouped under their opening message. This is a document source, not the Chat channels feature that lets the assistant answer inside Chat itself. Direct messages are never read. Runs on your company's OWN service account — the same kind Google Drive uses, and one account can serve both. Read-only.
The service account
In the Google Cloud console (a project with the Google Chat API enabled) open IAM & Admin → Service accounts → Create service account, then Keys → Add key → JSON — a small file downloads; its entire contents get pasted into the source. If Google Drive is already connected with a service account, reuse that one and just enable the Chat API in its project.
Domain-wide delegation
Your Workspace admin authorises the service account's client ID once, under Admin console → Security → Access and data control → API controls → Domain-wide delegation → Add new, with exactly these three scopes: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.spaces.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.messages.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.memberships.readonly.
- Create (or reuse) the service account and set up the delegation as above.
- Documents → Google Chat, paste the JSON key and enter the workspace user to read Chat as — a dedicated account sitting in the team's shared spaces is the clean choice.
- Optionally list space names to narrow the sync; history reaches back 365 days by default.
- Choose access groups, Test, then Sync.
What comes in
- Only named, multi-person spaces sync — direct messages are invisible to this source by design, not merely skipped; a space with threading off gives every message its own thread instead of grouping them.
- Shared files appear as their filename only, and senders resolve to the names Chat shows in that space's own member list.
Access
Chat's API exposes no per-space member list to mirror, so every space's history carries the access groups chosen on this source, whatever the space — allow-only, the same as everywhere else.
Only the named spaces the workspace account already sits in are read — add it to a space before expecting its history here. Months already synced stay searchable once they scroll out of the sync window.
Last updated 20 Sep 2026