Transition from Google Currents to Google Chat

While migration is voluntary, you have until December 31, 2022 to opt into the migration if you want your data from Currents to be migrated automatically. Otherwise, Google will not migrate your data, and you will only have the option to use Takeout.

Customers who opt in to the migration may opt out until March 31, 2023 by requesting a change through Support. Please note that your Currents data will be deleted after August 8, 2023.

If you have opted into the migration, please ensure that your organization is configured with the appropriate settings:

• Set up Chat
• Enable Chat app
• Review Vault settings (if applicable). 
  Note: Chat retention settings will now apply to your Currents data in spaces. Please review your current Chat retention rules and adjust if needed. 
• Enable guest access in the admin console to migrate external members into Chat

For more details, please visit Prepare Spaces for Currents migration

Not all data from Currents will be migrated to Spaces, including data associated with:

• Low usage features.
• Data from Google+ (older than July 2020).
• Posts made outside of Communities.
• Currents features that are not compatible Chat features. For a complete list of Currents data that will be migrated, please refer to Currents to Spaces feature migration.

Starting February 1, 2023, you can request a Currents Community Report via support to get a summary of your communities and their migration eligibility.
Note: If guest access is not enabled, messages from external users will get migrated but appear as from anonymous users in spaces. External guests, however, will not be invited to the corresponding spaces.

Active vs inactive communities

Google will only migrate active communities that:

• Have posts since July 2020
• Contain at least one member in the community

Inactive communities, as defined by lacking posts since July 2020 or have no members, will not be migrated. 

Shared communities

Communities with owners across different domains will not be migrated. Please ensure that community owners are from the same domain if you wish to migrate communities to Chat.

Communities will be migrated to the domain of the owners, and members from other domains will be added as guests to the Chat space. Learn more about guest access in spaces.  

Communities with post review configuration

While you can configure Currents communities to hold posts for reviews, this feature is not available in Spaces. As such, these communities will be migrated to spaces where members can post directly to the space and posts that were held for review will not be migrated.

• Automatic start without your action required. Migration automatically will begin on the scheduled date for your organization. There is no action required from you to initiate the migration. Other than the non-dismissable in-product banners that will be added in Currents in March, 2023, there will be no other reminders from Google. Please prepare your IT/Support staff to answer any escalations and questions from your users.
• Currents will be disabled. Currents will be disabled for your domain and users will no longer be able to use the product on web or mobile. Takeout will still be available. External users in your communities (who may still have access to Currents) will see a banner redirecting them to the migrated space in Chat.
  Note: The banner will be available only after the migration completes and the space is available in Chat.
• Your Currents communities will appear in Spaces.
  • New spaces will be created for the migrated communities. 
  • These spaces will appear progressively in Chat but not all your communities may appear in Chat’s left navigation.
  • The space name will be the same as the Community name and will have [Currents] as the prefix appended to it.
  • Invited members will receive an email to join the space within 48 hours of migration.
  • Spaces will be bolded and appear in chronological order based on their most recent message.
  • Chat history will be enabled in the migrated spaces. Space managers can adjust this setting after the migration.
  • Notification settings will be set based on the per-Community notification settings and set to:
    • Following for members who have enabled notifications in the original Currents Community. 
    • Off for members who have disabled notifications in the original Currents Community.

      Note: Members are allowed to change their notification settings post-migration.

  • Guest access limitations
    • Guest access will be enabled only in spaces of Currents communities that already had external members and only if the admin has enabled this feature in Chat.
      Note: Regular communities will appear in Chat’s left navigation menu, except communities where you have been invited (and not yet joined). This can include communities where you are a guest (owned by another domain) or in spaces that have reached their member capacity.
    • External members whose domains have not been migrated will see a link to the space in their instance of the Currents community. They will be notified to post in the space instead of the community. Any posts, comments, or reactions created by external guests in Currents after the migration will not be migrated to the space in Chat.
  • You can find more details on how Currents data will map to spaces under Currents to Spaces feature migration.