Chat tools and AI assistants · Coming soon
Google Chat
Institutions on Google Workspace for Education coordinate teaching in Google Chat rather than Teams or Slack. The route in would be an interactive Chat app: it answers when someone @mentions it or types a slash command in a space, and responds with a card or a short dialog. A Workspace super admin deploys an app like that from the Admin console, to the whole domain, to one organizational unit, or to a group, the same path any Marketplace app takes; Chat apps are unusual in also letting a person add one to a space on their own. It would sit in a space the teaching team already uses, not one a student is in. None of it is built yet.
Not yet verified
- There is no Chat app of any shape: no Google Cloud project registered for it, no HTTP endpoint, nothing a Workspace admin could even find in the Marketplace.
- Nobody has decided whether it would be domain-wide, scoped to one organizational unit, or scoped to a group, because there is nothing yet to scope.
- What a shared space would be allowed to show about a named student's grading is not designed, beyond the standing rule that it would never be a space a student is in.
How it connects
Google's Chat platform actually supports three different app shapes, and only one of them fits a course assistant. A webhook app only posts outward, useful for a one-way status ping but unable to answer a question back. An event-driven app subscribes to space activity, such as a member joining, the wrong trigger for anything conversational. The shape that fits is an interactive app: it responds to an @mention or a slash command with a card or a short dialog, the same pattern a search or action command takes in Teams or Slack. Deployment runs through the Admin console rather than an OAuth screen: a Workspace super admin installs the app to the whole domain, to one organizational unit, or to a specific group from the Marketplace apps page, though Chat apps are the one category where a person can also add an app to a space themselves. Whichever route installs it, it would answer in a space the teaching team already uses for a course, never one a student is in. Lectora has no student-facing surface, and a grade or comment still reaches a student only through Canvas, under the educator's own Canvas identity. Nothing of this is built yet: there is no Lectora Chat app to add to a space.
Data and access
Lectora reads only what the assessment needs, and writes nothing back until an educator approves it. The Canvas access page documents the full scope, and our privacy policy, subprocessors and DPA cover the legal side.