Hangouts Chat’s Built-in Bots
The hangout chatbots is an automated way to communicate with the hangout chat and Google drive using natural language processing as well as machine learning to automatically schedule and manage meetings and manage the drive documents.
If you want to explore the power and utility that chatbots offer to enhance conversations in Hangout Chat, look for Google native @Meet and @Drive chatbots. Unlike many chatbots that integrate other apps with G Suite, @Meet bot and @Drive directly leverage the functionality of the popular G Suite apps Calendar and Drive. It is an automated way of doing the tasks using the built-in bots.
Hangout Chatbot Automation
Imagine you and your team are busy discussing an important topic when you collectively realize you’ll need to schedule a follow-up meeting. The conversation moves from the real work you were tackling to a round-robin scheduling exercise as someone asks, “What’s a good time for everyone to meet again?” This sends everyone scrambling to look at their calendars. Precious minutes slip away as messages flood back into Chat such as “I can do Tuesday at 10 a.m.,” followed by the inevitable, “No, I can’t do Tuesday, how about Wednesday at 9:30?” And on it goes until you end up with a scheduled meeting—and a lot of wasted time.
Meet @Meet
The @Meet bot integrates Chat with Calendar using natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule and manage meetings. To avoid the scheduling scenario above, you can simply add @Meet to a room in chat and give it a command using natural language:
“@Meet find us a time to meet next week”
In the backend, @Meet bot will check the calendars of everyone present in the room, find the best available times and respond with those options so you can quickly choose one:
Here are some times I found; which of these should I schedule?
A) Mon, Feb 17, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST
B) Tue, Feb 18, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST
C) Thu, Feb 20, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST
@Meet bot understands various commands related to managing your schedule and working with meetings, you can direct message the bot or @mention it in a room in a number of useful contexts:
Look up your schedule
Schedule new meetings
Modify a meeting that was just scheduled
Reschedule or cancel existing meetings
These capabilities make @Meet bot not just a showcase example of chatbots but a useful, time-saving utility as well.
Drive @Drive
@Drive is an example of using a bot to deliver information and notifications based upon events or activities that don't rely on direct user interaction. @Drive bot enables you to “subscribe” to be notified of changes that happen to any of your content stored in Google Drive. This helps you stay on top of content changes from inside of Chat, without having to “watch” Drive for updates. If you’re waiting for a colleague to add their remarks to one of your documents. @Drive notifies you as soon as new comments occur, eliminating the need to check Drive regularly or pester your colleague about whether they’ve reviewed your document yet.
You can enable the @Drive bot by simply adding it to Chat. It starts “listening” immediately for any updates to your content or for new items shared with you. You can personally keep it on all the time since you use Chat throughout the day more frequently than Drive. This way you can quickly grant permissions or respond to comments without having to invoke Drive or worry about activities getting overlooked in the Gmail inbox.
The @Drive provides notifications for:
New files or folders shared with you
Comment or action assigned to you
Access requests for files you own
When you're close to running out of storage
Key Resources to Help you Get Started
The best way to understand the value of @Meet and @Drive is to experience them yourself. Some resources to get you started learning more about chatbots.
