Google-hangouts – Google+ Hangout Video Call Chat History

As of April 2018, It actually is possible to create URL to link to a chat with a specific person. (But who knows when Google will break these given the ongoing incoherence of their messaging applications…)

First, you'll need to know that person's Gaia ID (an internal ID used by Google Hangouts and Google Plus)

• If you're looking for your own Gaia ID, login to your Google account and visit https://plus.google.com/me. This will redirect to a URL of the form https://plus.google.com/1XXXXXXXXXX. The long number at the end of the URL is your Gaia ID. (If you don't have a Google Plus profile, it'll be an error page, but it'll still have the correct Gaia ID.)
• If you're looking for someone else's Gaia ID, search for them on Google Plus. If you can find a URL of the form https://plus.google.com/u/0/1XXXXXXXXXXXX/... associated with their profile, you've got their Gaia ID.
• If you use the reverse-engineered purple-hangouts library to use Hangouts in an instant messenger desktop client, then the "About" or "Info" box for a contact should show you their Gaia ID.

Anyway, once you've got someone's Gaia ID, it's pretty straightforward to create the correct URL to start a Hangout with them. Simply replace 1XXXXXXXXXXXX below with that user's Gaia ID:

https://hangouts.google.com/chat/person/1XXXXXXXXXXXX

According to the Google support pages, you should check 4 items to be sure.

• Ensure your notifications are enabled. (Which you already said you have checked).
• Be sure you are NOT using Flashblock. If you are using Flashblock you need to adjust your settings.
  1. Open Firefox.
  2. From the Tools menu, select Add-ons and Extensions.
  3. Go to Flashblock and click Preferences on the right side.
  4. Enter mail.google.com under Whitelist for Gmail.
  5. Enter www.orkut.com under Whitelist for orkut.
  6. Click OK, and refresh your browser.
• Be sure that your speakers are not muted or your volume is very low.
• Be sure that you do not have any ad/popup blockers blocking the Hangouts page (Disable for plus.google.com pages.)
• Ensure you have Flash and Shockwave enabled. If you go to http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/welcome you can verify that flash is installed and working. (fyi: On my system I had Shockwave installed, but it did not work correctly until I did a reinstall.)

Also there is a known limitation with Hangout in the Windows 8 style interface, however, if you are running Hangouts from Desktop mode this should not be a problem.

Beyond this as far as I have been able to determine this is a limitation of the browser based version of hangouts (GMail, Google+, etc.). Each time I tested this implementation the only time I got any noticeable notification was if I already had a chat started and in some way active. New chats and messages sent when Window was not the active window we not present.

However, I did try the same after installing the Google Apps version. Since this version acts like a normal installed messaging client it was able to pop the chat box up and able to generate active system alert sounds.

Until Google finds a better method for the browser based versions of hangouts you may wish to install the apps version by going to the Hangouts homepage and selecting the Computers option for installation.