Due to the possibility of the university community moving to remote work, the U-M Google team has opted to turn off the need for an invitation in classic Google Hangouts. This will make the service easier to use.
In the past, when an individual whom you’ve never chatted with via Google Hangouts wanted to send you a chat message, you would receive a notification (“Let’s chat on Hangouts!”) inviting you to accept. You would need to accept that invitation for the chat to occur.
With this change, it will be easier to connect with others using classic Google Hangouts to chat. While chat messages will now appear automatically, you will still need to accept video calls. Additionally, you will still have the option to block future messages and video calls from individuals, if desired.
According to Google, you should begin to see this change over the next 24 hours.
For more information on using classic Google Hangouts, visit the U-M Google Hangouts page.