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The transition to Google Chat is right around the corner!

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As announced a couple of weeks ago, MLC is going to be moving from Classic Hangouts to Google Chat on August 3, 2020. That transition is still on track and will take place on Monday. In order to facilitate the change, we have created a help document titled Google Chat Transition over at KnightHelp.

Links to resources and answers to questions will be posted there as time goes on. That document will also gather resources once the transition has happened.

Thanks and please reach out if you have any questions!

Moving from Classic Hangouts to Google Chat

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Starting August 3, 2020 we will be moving our Google text chatting experience from the classic Google Hangouts to Google Chat. Google Chat is Google’s latest organization-grade messaging and collaboration platform that is similar to Microsoft Teams, Slack, or other team chat platforms. It integrates with many of Google’s other G Suite services (including Meet and Drive) and will be integrated in many other ways across their platform in the coming months.

Google Chat homepage banner

Google Chat is not the same as Hangouts, even as it serves a similar purpose. For a quick glance at how to accomplish some of the same tasks in Chat as you did in Hangouts in the past, you can visit the Switching to Chat from classic Hangouts page from Google.

More information will come out as we near the transition point, but for now you can do the following:

  • Visit https://chat.google.com when logged into your MLC G Suite account and take a look around to get acquainted with the new service. Google Chat has been available for a while even a we have continued to use classic Hangouts.
  • Take note of any group chats you have in classic Hangouts because they will not be migrated to Google Chat. You will need to create new groups/rooms in Google Chat.
  • Investigate the mobile app for Google Chat (available on Android and iOS devices) and some of the desktop app options as well (available through the settings/gear menu when logged into Google Chat).

If you are interested in a full list of the the known limitations of Google Chat, you can visit the Google Chat known limitations page from Google. This may help if you are wondering if the ways you are currently using classic Hangouts will be supported in Google Chat of if you will need to change how you want to work in some way.

We have created a “Chat Migration Questions” room in Google Chat in order to facilitate the migration. When you visit https://chat.google.com, you can search for available people, rooms, and bots in the upper left and just search for Chat Migration Questions and join the room to ask your questions.

Again, more reminders will be coming in the future as we near the migration date. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Network Services.

Drive File Stream launching soon for MLC users

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Google has announced that Drive File Stream, their replacement for the Google Drive desktop application, will be launching on September 12, 2017. This will not affect your usage of Google Drive from a web browser, but it will bring changes if you use the desktop application to access files stored in Google Drive.

Drive File StreamThe current version of the Google Drive desktop application will be unsupported starting on December 11, 2017 and will stop working on March 12, 2018. You will need to move tot he new Drive File Stream application if you want to continue having the same access to your files stored in Google Drive as you have in the past.

The biggest and most noteworthy change is that Drive File Stream will not download all of the files you have stored in Google Drive right away but, instead, work similarly to Micro Focus Filr by only downloading and caching files you are opening or have opened recently.

If you have any questions, please contact Network Services.

Recent Spate of Compromised Google Accounts

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Google LogoRecently, Network Services has been notified of a number of MLC Google Accounts being compromised, most often by the account information being found on publicly-available credential lists from past compromised sites. In most cases this has not meant that Google or MLC has been compromised, but that one of two things has happened:

  • A person has freely given over their account credentials after being scammed via a phishing email.
  • Another website has been compromised and the credentials gained from there were the same as what is used for an MLC Google Account.

In both cases, the same thing occurs:

  1. Google suspends the affected MLC Google Account.
  2. MLC Network Services is notified of the possible compromised.
  3. MLC Network Services staff change the password on the account and then restore the account.
  4. If a person has a personal email address listed on Portal, they are sent a password reset email and a message warning that the change has been done.

If the person does not have a personal email addresses listed on Portal, they are not notified and will not be able to log into their account until they contact Network Services and requests a password reset after verifying their identity in some way.

If your account was compromised and you have access again, then you need to do two more things:

  • Check for filters and forwarding rules so that email is not being forwarded to suspect addresses.
  • Check to make sure their signature has not been changed.
  • Check under Accounts for settings changed for how you are sending email. You will want to check what your reply-to address is set as too.

The recently compromised accounts have had a problem where incoming emails are automatically sent to Trash. Removing that filter above will fix that issue specifically.

Google has also provided a page with information on how to keep your MLC Google Account more secure. You can take a look at that page and follow any steps on it to secure your MLC Google Account beyond just a simple username and password.