Slack and Microsoft Teams have been increasingly used in hyperconnected workplaces. Though the two serve as chat-based collaboration platforms fundamentally, yet Microsoft Teams outweighs Slack in many aspects. Microsoft Teams provides a 360-degree approach to communication and collaboration. With offerings like impressive features, unified user experience, matchless security and reduced overhead costs, Teams has hit the ground running. No wonder why many companies decided to migrate from Slack to Microsoft Teams and enabled productivity to next level!
If you are a Slack user inspired to adopt Microsoft Teams, you are in the right place. In this blog post, we will quickly walk you through some of the major advantages of Microsoft Teams over Slack. Later, we will discuss a few migration best practices to ensure a successful transition. Let’s begin –
Advantages of Microsoft Teams over Slack
Microsoft Teams adds new and advanced capabilities to your digital environment where you achieve more with less. Following are the reasons to consider Microsoft Teams over Slack:
- Integration with Microsoft 365 framework
Microsoft Teams is built on Microsoft 365 collaboration suite – a family of exceptional productivity apps such as SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Exchange, OneNote, etc. As all apps are tightly coupled in a large M365 ecosystem, users do not need to switch apps but can stay focused to their daily tasks sharing files, co-authoring, calling, meeting, etc., in the same platform. - Overhead cost reduction
If you are already using Microsoft 365, it makes more sense to use Teams which doesn’t incur additional costs. Choosing Microsoft Teams over Slack can help maximize your investments by dramatically reducing platform training and support costs. - Data security and protection
Teams boasts of its enterprise grade security capabilities that it inherits from Microsoft 365. With capabilities like Data Loss Prevention, Information Protection and Governance, Data Privacy and Compliance, etc., Teams keeps security at the forefront of flexible work. Whether collaboration is internal or external, Teams safeguards your sensitive data across clouds, apps, and endpoints unfailingly. With Teams, you can not just protect your critical data but also govern it through its lifecycle with comprehensive compliance tools.
Slack to Teams migration best practices
The entire migration process from Slack to Microsoft Teams can be overwhelming if you have multitude of channels and users in your organization. To avoid migration failures and ensure you have a smooth Slack to Teams migration experience, we would like to advise you a few best practices. Let’s dive in –
- Take inventory of Slack environment
First things first, you need to assess your Slack workspace and decide what data you want to migrate. It’s a good practice to clear up unnecessary workspaces and bring only what you need to the new ecosystem. For example, you can remove channels that are not in use for a long time and users who have left the company. - Find a third-party migration tool
To perform migration, you can either export Slack content manually to Teams or use a third-party software. Slack environment consists of workspaces, channels (public/private), direct messages (smaller conversations that happen outside of channels) and apps and integrations. If your Slack environment is heavily utilized, exporting and uploading content repeatedly may get difficult and cumbersome. Alternatively, you can choose to write your own script if you have an expertise to do that, but any error may cause a damaging downtime and painful experience.
The best approach is to opt for a third-party solution that can simplify and speed up the migration process. Additionally, it largely depends on your service provider what they can migrate and what not. Some providers can’t migrate apps, attachments, emojis and reactions. Here, we would recommend you use Slacko.io that transfers all your Slack data to Microsoft Teams with minimum or no disruption. - User provisioning and mapping
Having a Microsoft account for all users is a definite prerequisite for migration. Hence, you must consider user provisioning before initiating the process. Further, you need to map users correctly to avoid any glitch or data loss. Ensure that user ids are identical in source and destination environment so that you can easily map user accounts and teams in Microsoft Teams against Slack users, workspaces, and channels. - Test migration in a staging environment
Once executed, processes cannot be reversed if anything goes wrong. Testing your migration in a staging environment gives you the opportunity to identify and validate potential issues before final migration. This helps to prevent negative outcomes and impact of a failed migration on your project and business overall. - Monitor your migration
As you move to production, monitor the migration to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the project. Monitoring provides you insights into your data if it is transferring properly and is free of quality issues so that the application works as expected after migration. - Train end-users on Microsoft Teams
User resistance is natural when a new technology in introduced. To counteract this, you must devise a proper training plan to guide them on how moving to Teams can enhance user experience and foster productivity. Provide them every support they need to understand Teams and its functionality by transferring knowledge and raise awareness to boost adoption. - Perform a post-migration check
Conduct post migration testing to verify the transferred content and resolve any discrepancy if found before users get access to Teams. After this, as you finally step into Microsoft Teams, analyse Teams performance for seamless functioning.
If you have any queries regarding migration, please reach out to our migration experts or schedule a demo to learn more.