Microsoft Teams – Migrating from Slack

There may be a time when you have multiple collaboration platforms within your organization, and you reach a point where you want to consolidate. If you reach that point, there is a new article on docs.microsoft.com that walks you through the journey of moving Slack apps, channels, direct messages, users, and workspaces into Microsoft Teams.

I am not going to dive super deep into the process as you should review the details at the link above as it will contain the latest guidance and best practices. When migrating from Slack, one of the primary considerations you need to consider is what data do you need to migrate from the old system.

Often, especially in the early deployments, when there was not a lot of structure and governance in the creation of Channels and Team structures, there can be a lot of unnecessary data and noise. Some of that data could be compliance or legal issue for your organization, and it may be time to utilize the migration effort to remove data as per your data retention policies.

One thing to consider from a files aspect is work that has been completed or nearing completion. Consider moving those core elements and removing all the chatter and drafts that were utilized to achieve those elements. I then typically focus on the most active conversions and collaborations as they will have the most impact. For the remaining conversations and collaborations, you may want to consider merely extracting the data and either archiving it for historical purposes or only carrying over the most recent conversations and files.

There are a few items to be aware of as part of your migration process.