I have to admit, as a Google faithful Hangouts is my daily driver for the majority of my Text and IM needs. Now hot on the back of the recently discovered improvements to Hangouts on Android Wear, Jordanna Chord (a Google software engineer) took to Google+ this week to announce that Google was adding the ability to customise how different groups of people can contact you via the Hangouts App. In her own words “Google Hangouts is rolling out new invitation settings to make it easier for folks to communicate.”
First off you will find a new menu heading within setting “HOW OTHERS GET IN YOUCH WITH YOU”, under that you will find “Customize invites”.
Once you’re in that menu you’ll have the option to customise how people can contact you, there are four different ways you can customise the invitation system, within Hangouts;
- For people who have your phone number
- For people who have your email
- For everyone else and
- For each of your circles
For each of these groups you have the option to set customise how freely someone within that group can contact you:
- Can contact you directly – can send you a hangout unimpeded.
- Can send you an invite – you will be notified that the person want to connect with you and have the opportunity to accept or decline.
- Can’t contact you – can’t contact you (this one is self-explanatory)
This does allow some degree of flexibility and customisation for how you allow different groups of people in your Google life to contact you. From out testing, it appears that any individual who is in multiple categories, eg, has both your phone number and email as well as being in a circle will receive the most lenient setting out of those that apply to them, which makes sense. The update seems to be server side as long as you’re on the latest version of Hangouts. With Hangouts 4.0 around the corner it looks like, Google isn’t giving up on their struggling IM platform anytime soon.
Were you looking for more customisation for Hangouts invitations? Let us know in the comments.
