It will not be wrong to begin this article with the assumption that you like millions of other organizations across the globe have adopted the Digital Workplace. If you have done so, you must have graduated from email-based organization to messaging. You must be enjoying benefits like greatly reduced email traffic to your inboxes, lesser lost or overlooked emails and loss of productivity because of that. Your project teams no longer need to spend time with stand-up meetings or status reports as everybody is up-to-date with the project status from the conversation history. In many ways, these messaging platforms are great productivity tools and fun to use at the same time. The question is which tool you are using currently? If the answer is Slack, you indeed made a good choice there as you did not have a viable alternative at that time. However, is it now pinching you that

Slack is not completely integrated with your wider content and collaboration platform and operating in a silo

Licensing cost is way high for the benefits you are receiving

If you have already subscribed to Microsoft Office 365 for one or other reasons, you now have a great alternative for Slack in Microsoft Teams. In this article, we will discuss why you should consider migrating to Microsoft Teams and what you can expect in your journey of migration from Slack to Teams.

Why should you consider migrating from Slack?

Why pay double?

As your organization is already in Office 365, let your team be also on Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams provides a true messaging platform for teamwork and gives the opportunity to create a more open, fluid, and digital environment. Teams has all the features that Slack offers

Slack has high licensing cost, which you are paying separately, whereas Teams is within Office 365 suite.

One Repository, simplified approach

Teams files are stored in related SharePoint sites and in OneDrive.

This gives a better search result and reduces duplicate content.

Unified user experience with other Office 365 workloads

Microsoft Teams is a part of Office 365 licensing. It enjoys the generic infrastructural support of Office 365 like Security and Compliance, Information Protection, Auditing, Search etc. Teams conversations and files are accessible through Office 365 Search.

Advantage of Microsoft Teams over Slack

Larger Ecosystem

Teams is part of wider Office 365 ecosystem. Subscribing to it automatically enables you to enjoy loads of features

Above all, if you are already adopting Office 365 for one reason or another, using Teams for your team collaboration makes perfect sense for that unified user experience

Information Protection

With Azure Information Protection (AIP) and Office 365 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) you are guaranteed to have industry best protection for your content while shared within the Teams or outside

With Slack you do not have much control and visibility on what information is being shared with whom. With Teams, using Office 365 Activity API, you can trace and analyze complete details of activities performed on content

User Experience

Teams provides a much superior document management experience with support for document versioning and co-authoring

Support for audio & video communication using Skype is another great advantage of Teams.

Teams tabs significantly improve user experience by presenting and highlighting the important content /apps right upfront

Wider Global Reach

Teams is better equipped to cater multinational organizations with global operations. Teams as of date support 18 languages which is significantly higher than that of Slack

Migration experience from Slack to Microsoft Teams

Now that you are convinced (hopefully), the following section explains what you can expect from the migration of Slack to Teams

Migration from Slack includes

Slack channels (Private & Open)

Chats with history

Files

Content mapping with features and functionality

First thing came to our mind that where will my content goes to a new environment? Will I get the same features which I am working now? All my users will get access to the new environment?

Ok, let talk about the feature mapping and how migration process will take care of the existing content.

Slack Features Migration Mapping Microsoft Teams Features Channel Channels to hold most of your conversations with other members. They can be organized around anything — departments, projects, or even office locations Slack channels can be mapped to Microsoft Teams. Teams gives a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments for the team members. Teams can be created based on departments, projects, or even office locations — and you can create as many as you need. Channel Type Teams type Public Channels are open to your entire team. Microsoft Teams with Public group Public Teams – Anyone from the organization can join the group Private channels allow a group of teammates to discuss and share privately within Slack. Microsoft Teams with Private group Private Teams – Only Team Owners can invite another team member Messages & Files Direct messages Microsoft Teams has the same feature and functionality Private & secure message, send to the team member directly Communication in Slack happens through messages in channels • All previous individual threads will be Converted to HTML Microsoft Teams has the same feature and functionality • If message with file, then file will be uploaded to the doc library • Teams Chat Post created with the HTML content & file (if any) Files Slack supports drag, drop and share files All files will be uploaded to SharePoint document library with authorship information Microsoft Teams has the same feature and functionality Slack does not support one drive Files indirect message uploaded in OneDrive and shared securely Apps API integration are available in Slack Microsoft Teams has the same feature and functionality No facility to use MS Apps Microsoft Teams has the facility to use other Microsoft products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint – right within

Few Points on Migration

Private channels:

Slack private channels allow a group of teammates to discuss and share privately. Microsoft Teams does not support private channels, so we came up with private Teams with external members.

Posts:

Microsoft Teams API as of now does not support threaded chat post with delegated users. So, the solution is Slack Posts are migrated as HTML content and posted to Teams as Root post with files attached (if any).

Teams API does not support retaining of authorship information during post creation. Also, the original timestamp cannot be applied to the posts when created through API. To overcome these scenarios, we came up with some custom solutions.

Files:

Files are uploaded to SharePoint site with as-is authorship information.

If you have any question whether Teams is the perfect replacement of your Slack environment, or what the features of Teams, please feel free to ask. I’ll be happy to help you.