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When using Google Chat I can see that a chat room has a link on the following format:

https://chat.google.com/room/XYZKLMabCde

I know from notifications that if someone pings me in a conversation thread inside such a room that a more specific link gets created:

https://chat.google.com/room/XYZKLMabCde/RT2w_FQ4ERN

When following this link (or the correct one, the two above have been obfuscated) I get taken directly to the specific conversation thread in the room that hosts it.

That link I got from a notification because someone pinged me, and I wasn't present, so it ended up in my email inbox.

The question is simple, how can I manually get this kind of link? I cannot find a single UI element that links to the conversation, do I have to hack it with a ping and waiting for that email?


OK, I've found a manual hack to obtain it, but if there is an UI element that I have missed, please leave a better answer.

If I right-click the conversation thread "box" and select Inspect (this is Google Chrome), I get to a div, if I open this div and go to the immediate child div, it has an attribute called "data-id" with the ID I require.

So, as an example, if I were to do this with the url in the second example above, I would see:

nested div with conversation id attribute

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7 Answers 7

17

I found a way that uses the UI of Google Chat and that is to use the Search feature.

So here are the steps:

  1. Click the magnifying glass to enter the search feature
  2. Enter something (relatively) unique from the conversation to search for

    if necessary briefly leave a rather unique message which you can later remove, just to have a unique text to search for

  3. Find your conversation in the list of hits and click the "Go to conversation" link
  4. Notice that the URL in the address now points directly to that conversation
  5. Copy and paste the URL where you need it
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  • I'll hold off on accepting this as the accepted answer if anyone can leave a better way that doesn't seem so hackish. May 24, 2018 at 13:46
  • 2
    It does not work for me anymore
    – max630
    Sep 10, 2021 at 6:35
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I use this (equally tedious) method:

  1. Hover the mouse on the first message of the thread, whose id is needed, a small toolbar is displayed as follows which has a button (envelope icon) to forward the message/thread to yourself. Click the same and you would receive an email in your gmail-inbox.

message actions toolbar

  1. Now open the message that arrives in the mailbox, which would have a blue "Open Message" button. Right click the same and click "Copy link address" to get the full URL of the thread.

Copy link address

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There is another way...but only if you are the creator of the thread, otherwise the answer you found is still the only way without inspecting code.

https://developers.google.com/hangouts/chat/how-tos/bots-develop

If you use a Bot to create the new chat thread you can specify your own thread id. This means you can store this and use it when posting to the thread.

Posting this in case it's helpful - certainly was for my needs. :)

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You can use a Hangouts Chat Bot that can easily be hosted on Google Apps Script here - https://github.com/schoraria911/google-apps-script/blob/master/Hangouts%20Chat/Bot/getThreadID.gs

Here's the official documentation on Developing bots with Apps Script - https://developers.google.com/hangouts/chat/how-tos/bots-apps-script

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  • 1
    Welcome to Web Applications! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.
    – Glorfindel
    Jul 12, 2019 at 8:04
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You can use this plugin that shows thread links directly at the top of the thread, and just right-click+copy. https://github.com/paveyry/better-hangoutschat

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I am not sure if this is what you needed. In the google chat, if I want a specific link to the thread I would type in '@Scratch-Bot threadurl please' and it will give me the link to the thread.

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I would like to know how can I put a link in the body of the email to jump to any specific email in the same thread in Gmail?

Regards,

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