Slack to Teams Migration-Per User
$1 000 projectADD TO CART |
As more organizations look to move off of Slack and onto Teams, both are popular circulating products, and user confusion is inevitable. Users have favorite teams and channels that they join and use on a daily or weekly basis. In many cases, there are a wide variety of channels, and only a small subset that the entire organization cares about. For this reason, a broad sweep of the entire organization and moving channels piecemeal is a great strategy. Migrate a broad set of channels upfront, such as only public team and project channels, so the entire organization in the team can see what happened and still interact. Make both Slack and Microsoft Teams available for a significant time period after completion so users can go to Slack if they need to find or message. Continue to onboard individual or small team private and public channels on an ongoing basis. Keep the existing Slack service in place long after the project is complete so the organization can still access archival channel data.
Introduction to Slack to Teams Migration Services
If you've made the decision to move off Slack and to Microsoft Teams, you're probably concerned about migration and the impact the transition will have. Moving individual Slack messages historically required an archive team export, followed by an import of individual conversations into the Microsoft Teams Compliance Admin Center. Both processes take time and effort and don't provide the connectivity of messaging back and forth between the two platforms. Furthermore, bulk moves using these services don't support associating a message to the user it belongs to in the export. Migrating to an Office 365 Group Teams type will generate org-wide availability of the archives; but for larger customers, this could end up with Microsoft Teams being unwieldy, noisy, and difficult to ingest.To help address these concerns, a new service is launching that eases enterprise migration concerns, governance considerations, and provides individuals the choice of what, when, and how much to migrate to Microsoft Teams. The service steps on the export file process, unzips the file, provides message reformatting, and uploads user requests into Teams in the right sequence, the right chats, channels, and private channels in addition to chats across the entire organization when required. The migration is done using a connected Office 365 Service account and an Admin consent required App registration. This service takes the onus off the user and puts it into the capable hands of our intermediate service. Task workers can focus on Teams, rather than focusing on migration scripts, accelerating timelines or deferred day-to-day capability.
Planning and Preparation for Migration
Migration begins with planning, which, in the context of moving to Microsoft Teams from Slack, means mapping Slack channels and their contents, determining the best approach for each channel, grooming the existing Slack user list to map owners of various channels and the individuals who must migrate, and segregating team owners intending to use Teams for those working in the Microsoft 365 environment. When planning to migrate, and before implementing a migration strategy, you first compile an inventory of channels and group those into categories such as "Public Conversations," "Private Conversations," "App Integration," "IRC Bridge," "Mail in a Box," "Bot," or "Team or Organization Information." Then, you must determine your security model for Teams channels in your organization, assess and plan the integration features needed, and prepare your end users for the change. Some of your compliance and legal aid teams may also get involved at this point, especially if you need to monitor the Teams environment for specific channels, or need to move a specific group of individuals to a new Teams team. If you're using the groups, you will teamify those groups. If you're working with connectors or migration tools, plan on how you intend to bulk import channels and their contents into Teams.Migration Process for Individual Users
If you are a user who hasn’t been moved automatically by an admin or through coexistence, it’s time to navigate the change. Unlike the admin-led program, here it’s at a more user-controlled, casual pace—perhaps even deliberate in order to explore and decide to move conversations later.CAUTION: If you have been moved already, do not follow these steps. Your search bar, chat, and contact app should have switched to Teams. You’ll waste time and might not see instructions that will help if you switch to Teams chats and people experiences.
On the Notification Banner, you’ll see the MOVE NOW button. Today, moving your people chats must be done by moving each chat one at a time. This is a different process than moving a team member with existing data to another team, you may be familiar with. When you click on CHATS, it takes you to a helpful instructions page, with a video. It shows you how to take an existing direct chat to a one-on-one chat. When your mailbox in Teams is also in Exchange Online, you can enjoy new features, like email, contact, and calendar free/busy features.
On the first login splash page you’ll land on, you’ll find the Welcome to Teams email with a video and these steps to watch for your enjoyment. All these steps apply even when the admin changes the notifications banner messages. Many customers manually change the Action Banner similar to the end user’s Notify users email link and the dropdown message to “those of you who haven’t yet moved should take control of your move and not wait for the 30-day deadline.” When that happens, how often notices, peek, email, live event, and website messaging will follow the same wording as manually displayed in the Action Banner. The website messages rely on the end users to choose the buttons shown on the page.
Post-Migration Support and Training
Make it clear to each user that his or her level of knowledge about using Teams is a significant factor in determining the level of support he or she should ask for when first encountering functions that differ between the applications. This should guide your efforts to tell the users about Teams' functionality before they need to use it after the migration. For users whose roles will change after migration, it might be beneficial to locate training that will be valuable for them after the migration but not before. After the migration, include an action item for the onboarding contact to distribute this information to these specific users. Encourage all users to indicate their training needs and preferences in their prep survey. After this data is available, develop your inventory and determine the delivery methods for the training items, trying to use the training formats most preferred by the most users.If your organization uses channels more often than you use direct messages, users will be used to information being widely visible. These users may have limited experience ensuring that colleagues across the organization see relevant information in the course of each day. After migration, demonstrate how channels can be used to organize and disseminate information, not just as recipients of instant messages. Teams can add to users' understanding of this principle by enabling them to see channel contents even while they are not part of the conversation. Similarly, emphasize the possibility of adding to important chats any recent staff turnover or new hires who would not previously have kept themselves informed about the content. Prominently feature this process in your training. Additionally, pay special attention to recent hires and those in roles that participate less in social conversations after the telework migration to prevent them from feeling isolated.