Slack retired, chat moved to what they already paid for

Result

One paid subscription fewer, and one place to talk.

Duration

2 days

Problem

The company had Google Workspace and, alongside it, several tools doing the same job — Slack among them. It was paying twice for the same thing, and people were writing to each other in two places.

What we built

An automated migration of channels and members into Google Chat through the Chat API. We ran it dry first, then against a single channel, and only then against all of them. The script is idempotent — a repeat run skips whatever already exists.

Operating status

Handed over

This was not a request for a different chat app. The company had gradually bought tools that duplicated what Google Workspace already gave it. Slack was the most visible of them.

Nothing about migrating a company's conversations can be undone, so we went in steps. First a dry run that only printed what it would do. Then a single channel to check the result. Only then all of them.

The script was written to be run more than once. It keeps a record of what it has already created, so a second run does not make duplicates. On a one-off migration that sounds like wasted caution — right up until something fails halfway through.

Tech: Python · Google Chat API · Google Workspace