Slack is still a super popular app for work based conversations and file sharing. It’s a great platform for remote teams to collaborate with one another and stay in touch.
However it’s not the only option and during the pandemic Microsoft Teams saw a surge in popularity. So if you are considering migrating your business to Teams from Slack you are not alone.
This is a popular option for businesses that are using Microsoft 365 as it comes as the Teams platform comes as part of the plan. It offers a better integration with other aps in the stack of Microsoft 365 so makes more sense than remaining with Slack.
You may be wondering what challenges you will have from IT and staff training point of view, let’s find out the main obstacles you’ll need to navigate.
Security of data
No matter the size of your business you need to ensure data is secure and by nature Slack will contain a lot of internal messages between your teams including important and sensitive information that you do not want to fall into the wrong hands.
While both Slack and Microsoft Teams are secure platforms as long as best practices are used, you also need to use the safest possible ways to transfer data between Slack and Teams to avoid a data leak.
The type of migration tool you use will be important and you should choose something with excellent cybersecurity policies.
New platform for staff to learn
Slack is obviously a different platform to Teams and therefore has a different layout, interface, tools and structure that staff need to adapt to. While this shouldn’t be a major issue for most staff, there still needs to be some form of training and adaptation phase that may impact on
In fact one of the reasons so many companies started using slack was because of its simplicity and ease of use. In situations where staff have been successfully using Slack for many years already, the idea of moving to another platform that may be more complex may cause some anxiety amongst your team.
Integrations
Slack allows you to add integrations into its platform to customise it to suit your business communications needs. Likewise Microsoft Teams allows integrations too. Now this is going to be one of the most difficult things to migrate. Due to compatibility you won’t be able to use the same integrations you use on Slack in Microsoft Teams.
The solution is to find a new app that offers similar capabilities in the Microsoft Teams marketplace. With over a 1000 apps available its likely you will find an app that suits your needs, or you can of course develop your own in house integrations.
Migrating Channels and Direct Messages
Microsoft offers an API to help migrate your data from Slack to Teams, however it only currently works well for Slack Channels and it throws up issues when migrating direct messages. There are third party migration tools available you can use but again, you need to do your homework and make sure you are working with a trusted and secure solution to keep your data safe.
When you are thinking about migrating your business to Microsoft Teams from the Slack platform it is worth consulting with an IT support company that knows how to make the transition run as smoothly and securely as possible.
Computers in the City, your IT partner
Computers in the City is London’s longest-standing IT partner. With over 20 years’ experience, we can assist you to meet your IT support, consulting and cloud computing needs. We’re proud to be local, offering 24-hour support in straightforward language that takes the stress out of IT support.