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The Google Chat integration lets users in your Google Workspace domain DM the Bag of words analyst directly from Google Chat. It uses Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Google publishes chat events to a topic in your GCP project, and BOW pulls them over an outbound connection.
Because BOW pulls events outbound, your server never needs to be reachable from the internet — no public URL, no inbound firewall rules. This makes Google Chat a good fit for locked-down enterprise deployments.

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Capabilities

  • Direct messages — users DM the analyst app one-on-one in Google Chat.
  • Threaded replies — answers land in a thread on the user’s message; replying continues the same conversation and report.
  • Auto-linking by email — Google vouches for the sender’s email, so users whose email matches a BOW account are linked automatically on first message.
  • Status feedback — the bot posts a 👀 “Working on it…” message while processing and removes it when the answer is ready.
  • Report links — every conversation is saved as a BOW report, with a link posted in the thread.

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How to integrate

You’ll need admin access to BOW, a Google Cloud project, and permission to configure a Chat app for your Workspace domain.
Use a dedicated Google Cloud project for this integration. In particular, never enable the “Make this Chat app available as a Google Workspace add-on” option — switching a Chat app to add-on mode is effectively irreversible and will break Pub/Sub event delivery for the project.

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Step 1: Create a project and enable the APIs

  1. In the Google Cloud Console, create a new project (e.g., bow-chat).
  2. Enable two APIs for the project (APIs & Services → Enable APIs):
    • Google Chat API
    • Cloud Pub/Sub API

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Step 2: Create the Pub/Sub topic

  1. Go to Pub/Sub → Topics → Create Topic and name it (e.g., bow-chat-events).
  2. On the topic’s Permissions tab, click Add Principal and grant:
If your organization enforces the Domain Restricted Sharing policy, this grant will fail with “IAM policy update failed” because the principal is outside your domain. A project admin can override the iam.allowedPolicyMemberDomains policy at the project level (set it to Allow all), apply the grant, and optionally restore the policy — the check happens at write time only.

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Step 3: Create the subscription

  1. Go to Pub/Sub → Subscriptions → Create Subscription.
  2. Name it (e.g., bow-chat-events-sub), select the topic from Step 2, and keep Delivery type: Pull.
  3. Note the full subscription name — you’ll paste it into BOW:

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Step 4: Create a service account for BOW

  1. Go to IAM & Admin → Service Accounts → Create Service Account (e.g., bow-chat-sa).
  2. Grant it the Pub/Sub Subscriber role (on the project, or just on the subscription).
  3. Open the service account → Keys → Add Key → Create new key → JSON, and download the key file.

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Step 5: Configure the Chat app

  1. Go to APIs & Services → Google Chat API → Configuration.
  2. Fill in the app identity:
    • App name (e.g., “BOW”), Avatar URL, and Description
  3. Under Interactive features:
    • Toggle interactive features On
    • Enable Receive 1:1 messages
  4. Under Connection settings, select Cloud Pub/Sub and enter the topic name from Step 2 (projects/YOUR-PROJECT-ID/topics/bow-chat-events).
  5. Under Visibility, make the app available to your domain (or specific people/groups).
  6. Set App status to Live and click Save.

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Step 6: Connect in BOW

  1. In BOW, go to Settings → Integrations and open the Google Chat integration.
  2. Paste the full subscription name from Step 3 and the service account JSON key from Step 4.
  3. Click Connect. BOW validates the credentials by performing a real pull against the subscription before saving.

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How to use

  1. In Google Chat, start a DM with the app (search for its name under Apps).
  2. Send a question. If your email matches a BOW account you’re linked automatically; the bot confirms once.
  3. The bot posts 👀 “Working on it…” in the thread, then replies with the answer and a link to the full report, removing the working marker when done.
  4. Reply in the thread to continue the conversation — follow-ups extend the same report.
Google Chat messages are capped at ~4,000 characters; longer answers are split across messages. Charts and data files are summarized in the thread with a link to the full report in BOW, since Google Chat apps can’t upload files with app credentials.

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Troubleshooting

  • “bow is not responding” — check the topic’s Metrics tab for publish requests. If Google isn’t publishing at all, check Cloud Logging for ChatAppLogEntry errors, and verify the app is not in Workspace add-on mode (see the warning above — if it is, create a fresh project).
  • Nothing arrives in BOW — verify [email protected] has Publisher on the topic (not Subscriber on the subscription), and that the BOW service account has Subscriber on the subscription.