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Comment by nickjj

8 months ago

Slack lets you do a full export which even includes DMs depending on which plan you have.

https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-worksp...

When the org I was at moved away from Slack (due to costs) we used this method and wrote a little Python script to convert the main channels' JSON dumps into PDFs so we had a usable backup of channels.

21 comments

nickjj

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misiek08  8 months ago

Please do not include PDF and usable in one sentence. Setting up some simple Postgres with sonic for fuzzy search would be _usable_, but PDF is like migrating from Slack to Teams.

  • nickjj  8 months ago

    In this case we didn't need a long term solution for searchable data on Slack.

    We did the migration in stages, basically this:

        - Provide access to Teams
    - Create all of the new teams / channels there
    - Make Slack read-only but still keep the lights on
    - Allow folks to search and reference historic data as needed with Slack
    - Ensure everyone was moved over to Teams and felt ok enough using it
    - Remove access to Slack
    - Perform Slack export / PDF creation of important channels
    - Attach Slack PDFs to important Teams channels
    - Cancel Slack subscription

    In the end, most people never even needed to use the PDFs because they got everything they needed out of Slack before access was removed, but they are there for peace of mind and a last resort.

    We also took this as an opportunity to stop using chat as a source of truth for long lived information. Anything that should be stored long term made its way somewhere else (Jira, Confluence, etc.).

    • freehorse  8 months ago

      > In the end, most people never even needed to use the PDFs

      Or, they could not in some practical manner do searches on previous posts, so they didn’t use them?

kevin_thibedeau  8 months ago

I'd bake them into a Sphinx static site. That gives you a free client side search index along with better navigability than sheets of paper. And you can target PDF if you still want it.

andruby  8 months ago

Does that break DM’s privacy or does it only let you export your own DM’s?

  • zdc1  8 months ago

    Well as per the article (and my own experience), the free tier only gives you public channels. The paid tier gives you everything: public/private channels, group chats (called MPIMs), and one-to-one DMs.

    So yes, it breaks "privacy" (not that you should expect privacy when using a work Slack account).

  • morpheuskafka  8 months ago

    IIRC, you have to do something called a "compliance export," which just like any other compliance feature (SSO, HIPAA BAA, audit logs, etc.) usually requires the highest plan. It's designed to add some extra friction so admins can't just add themselves to a DM from the main UI like they could with a channel, but it is possible.

  • baq  8 months ago

    If you think anything you do on your work computer or saas accounts is private I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

raziel2p  8 months ago

why the extra step of making them into PDFs?

  • nickjj  8 months ago

    We had dozens of channels with almost 10 years of business information in them.

    Over time the business gravitated towards putting anything long lived into other sources but since migrating off Slack was essentially a kill switch on our data we wanted to make sure we had ways to access this historic data if needed.

    There's no way non-developers were going to parse JSON files for text. We wanted a quick and dirty way to attach the archived PDF file for a channel as a file attachment to the new Teams channel. It gave everyone peace of mind that they could find anything later.

    It all worked out in the end and was worth the few hours of dev time to make the 1 off script.

    Btw I wasn't the one responsible for making the tech choice to use or leave Slack for Teams. I was the one who was tasked to help with the migration and help make things as streamlined as possible for the business to switch.

    One of the biggest pain points was going back to a bunch of Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, etc. sources and finding + updating the links to Slack to be screenshots of the conversation. Another one was converting a bunch of Slack app / webhook integrations over. Teams is absolutely horrendous for this compared to Slack.