Enable your users to report inappropriate messages for review

06/06/2023

Table of contents

What’s changing

For select Google Workspace customers, admins can enable content reporting for their Google Chat users. Once a user has flagged a message, admins can find more information about the incident in the Security Investigation Tool and decide whether further action is needed. This feature is available for Google Chat on the web and mobile devices.

Admins can turn content reporting on for 1:1 messages, group messages, or messages in spaces, and select which reporting categories are available for their users, such as harassment or rude behavior, sensitive information, and more. Admins can also customize the language in the reporting dialog box to educate users about next steps following the report submission.

When you turn content reporting on, you can select which reporting categories to show to your users and which conversation types content reporting is available for.

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why it’s important

Effective collaboration in the modern workplace requires a sense of psychological safety for users and appropriate protections for sensitive business data. Content reporting in Google Chat enables users the opportunity to report inappropriate messages for review. This can include anything from offensive , discriminatory or explicit content, sensitive data that should not be shared (personal or proprietary), and more. This is critical for Google's customers, especially those of larger organizations and in regulated industries, to stay on top of potential abuse and inappropriate use of Chat in their organization.

Further, admins can use the Security Investigation Tool to decide whether data protection rules need to be created to proactively prevent similar messages from being shared in the future.

In the Security Investigation Tool, you can search for reported messages, view additional conversation information, and view chat transcripts for additional context.

Along with recent updates such as managing Google Chat spaces in the admin console, Google hopes this feature helps admins manage Chat across their organization.