GAT Shield: Block Access to Google Hangouts Chat

GAT Shield now allows admins to disable the Google Hangouts chat in Chrome Browser.
This feature is useful for Schools if they want to restrict the chat between students, or if you want to disable internal chat for your users during on/off working hours.
To do this:

1. Open GAT Shield.
2. Open the Configuration tab.
3. And click on Chat/Hangouts access tab
4. The first option is to Disable Chat/Hangouts by selecting the checkmark option ‘checked’ for chat disabled and ‘unchecked’ for the rule not applied
5. Time restrictions will open a window where you can select times and days for which the rule will be applied.
6. Select ‘Scope’ and choose the users who you want to block from using Chat/Hangouts
7. Save and the rule will be applied.

Once the rule for blocking Chat/Hangouts access is applied it will take 15-20 min for the rule to propagate to all of your users.

Note: If Time Restriction and Scope are not selected and the ‘Disable Chat/Hangouts’ is selected – the rule will be applied for all users all the time – until the rule is ‘Deactivated’ by all options being ’empty’.

The Hangouts chat on your Gmail will look like the screenshot below, the chat option will be simply disabled and users will not have access to it.

When the users open the URL ‘https://hangouts.google.com/’ – and try using chat from the page itself, they will see the screen below.

When the users open Chat from the Google apps button.

The page “https://chat.google.com/”, will also be blocked.

When the ‘Time restriction’ expires the rule will be reverted and the Chat/Hangouts will be available again as normal.