Moving a team to a new chat tool sounds like a project. Mostly it isn't. The setup takes an afternoon. What takes longer is deciding what not to move, and getting everyone to look in the new place by default.
This is a playbook that works with most chat tools, in the order you would actually do it.
Pick a switch date
Choose a day and say it out loud. Monday is a good choice: people start the week in the new tool rather than switching halfway through a conversation. Avoid month-end, release weeks and the days before a holiday, when half the team is away and the other half is busy.
Announce the date about a week ahead: time enough to install the apps, not enough to forget.
Decide what really needs to move
Most teams overestimate this. What usually needs to move:
- The channel structure. Which channels exist, what they are for, who belongs in them.
- The people. Everyone who should be there, with the right role.
- Pinned and important material. Links, runbooks, the one message everyone refers back to.
- Integrations. The alerts and bots that people rely on.
What usually doesn't need to move: years of conversation nobody has scrolled back through. It is an archive, and can be treated as one.
A useful exercise is to list the channels that had any activity in the last few months. The rest can probably stay behind. Anything important that currently lives only as a pinned chat message may be better as a proper document anyway.
Export first, and keep it
Before you change anything, export what you can from your current chat tool. Check what the export actually contains: messages, files, channel list, user list. Some tools limit exports by plan or by role, so find out early.
Store the export somewhere with sensible access controls, and write down where it is. If you have legal or contractual retention duties, this export is part of how you meet them. Don't cancel the old subscription until you have checked the export opens.
Set people up automatically
Don't send forty individual invitations from a spreadsheet. If your company uses a directory, such as Google Workspace, use directory sync so accounts, names and teams arrive on their own. If directory sync isn't available, restrict sign-in to your company domain so anyone with a work account can join and nobody else can.
Either way, people who join later are handled without anyone remembering to invite them.
Build the structure before anyone arrives
An empty tool invites improvisation, and improvisation produces a channel called "general-2". Before inviting people:
- create the channels you listed, with clear names and a one-line purpose each
- agree a naming pattern, such as
team-,proj-andhelp-prefixes - pin the documents and links people will look for first
- set up a channel for questions about the switch itself
When people arrive, the place should already look lived in.
Write one paragraph to the team
Keep the announcement short. People read the first paragraph and skim the rest. Something like:
From Monday 5 October we're using the new chat tool for all team conversations. You can sign in with your work account, and your channels are already set up. Please install the phone app before Monday and check that notifications arrive. The old tool stays open, read-only, until the end of that week, and its full history is exported and kept. Questions go in #help-switch, or ask me directly.
That covers the date, how to get in, what to do before the date, what happens to the old tool and where to ask. It is enough.
Overlap for a week, then go read-only
For the first week, leave the old tool open so people can look things up. Ask everyone to post new messages only in the new tool. Gently redirect anyone who replies in the old place.
At the end of the week, make the old tool read-only if it allows that, or archive its channels. Leaving both writable indefinitely is how a team ends up with two half-used chat tools and nobody sure where anything is.
Move integrations and webhooks
Make a list of everything that posts into chat or reads from it: monitoring alerts, deployment notices, form submissions, calendar reminders, bots. For each one, note who owns it and where it should post in the new tool.
Pay most attention to the alerts that matter at three in the morning. Test each one after you move it, by triggering it on purpose, rather than waiting to find out it was missed.
Check notifications on phones
Most switching complaints in the first week are about notifications. On the day, ask everyone to install the phone app, sign in, and have a colleague mention them. If nothing arrives, the usual culprits are the phone's own notification settings and battery-saving modes. Ten minutes of this on day one prevents a week of "I didn't see it".
Day one and week one
| When | What to check |
|---|---|
| Before day one | Export taken and stored; channels created and pinned; sign-in or directory sync working; announcement sent. |
| Day one morning | Everyone can sign in; the help channel is watched; critical alerts arrive in the right place. |
| Day one afternoon | Phone notifications tested; anyone missing from channels added. |
| During week one | Old tool used only for lookup; stray conversations redirected; remaining integrations moved. |
| End of week one | Old tool made read-only or archived; export confirmed and its location written down. |
How Tandly helps with the move
First, the honest part. Tandly does not yet import message history from other chat tools. An importer is being built. Until it ships, the export from your old tool is your archive, so keep it somewhere safe as described above. From the day you switch, Tandly keeps your full message history and search on every plan, Free included. More on that in full history on the Free plan.
The rest of the playbook maps onto Tandly directly:
- People. Sign in with Google can be limited to your Google Workspace domains, and e-mail sign-up covers everyone else. On the Business plan, Google Workspace directory sync brings in users, titles, departments, managers, locations and groups on a schedule.
- Structure. Channels can be organised in nested sidebar folders, up to four levels deep. Pins and bookmarks hold the material people look for first.
- The switch channel. Temporary channels archive themselves on a date you choose, which suits a help channel for the switch.
- Trying it first. Paid plans have a 14-day trial with no card needed, and downgrading never deletes data. Pricing has the details.
If you would like help planning the move, see how switching works.
Questions people ask
Should we move our message history at all?
Usually not all of it. Most teams find that recent, active channels and a handful of important documents cover what people need day to day. Keep a full export of the old tool as an archive for the rare occasion someone needs to look something up.
How long should both tools run side by side?
About a week, with the old one used only for looking things up. Much longer and people keep replying in both places. Much shorter and people lose track of something they needed.
What if some people keep using the old tool?
Make it read-only at the end of the overlap week, and it stops being a choice. Until then, a short reply in the old tool pointing to the right channel in the new one works better than a stern announcement.
Can a small team do this on a free plan?
Often, yes. Many tools, Tandly included, have a free plan for small teams; Tandly's covers up to 10 active members. Check the member limit and storage before switch day, not after.