Migrate workspaces to Enterprise Grid

Looking to incorporate an external workspace into your Enterprise Grid organization? Review this guide to learn how to prepare and what you can expect along the way.

Before migration

Workspaces on the Free, Pro, and Business+ plans can be migrated into your Enterprise Grid org. As you prepare to migrate a workspace, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Account provisioning
  If the migrating workspace uses SAML to manage identity, turn off account provisioning in your identity provider (IDP) to prevent accounts from being de-provisioned when you disable the connector. You can also minimize migration downtime and prevent duplicate accounts by assigning access to new members after the migration is complete.
• Guest access
  If you intend to allow guests to sign in with their email address and password, ensure your Grid org settings allow them to bypass SSO.
• Workspace settings
  Your org's settings and policies will override individual workspace settings. Depending on permissions, Workspace Owners and Admins may be able to make adjustments to their workspace settings.

Initiate a migration

You can start a migration from the admin dashboard. You’ll need the ID and URL of the workspace that you’re migrating.

1. From your desktop, click your organization name in the sidebar.
   
2. Hover over Tools & settings, then click Organization settings.
3. Click  Workspaces, then select Migrations. 
4. Enter the workspace ID and URL, then click Send Migration Request.

The Workspace Primary Owner will receive a notification from Slackbot where they can approve or decline the migration request.

Complete the migration checklist

Once your migration has been approved by the Workspace Primary Owner, we’ll provide you with a checklist to ensure you complete all necessary tasks.

• Set up SSO (single sign-on)
  To proceed with your migration, set up SSO for your org (if you haven’t already). Make sure your new members can access Slack after the migration by matching the email domain in your SSO provider to the email domain for new users migrating into your org.
• Confirm matching user accounts
  If the workspace you’re migrating contains accounts with the exact same email address and account type as accounts on your Grid org, you can choose to merge them.
• Resolve conflicting user accounts
  Conflicting user accounts share some of the same profile fields, but not enough to be exact matches. If the workspace contains partial account matches, review them individually from the Migrating users tab and choose an action.
• Review conflicting settings 
  If your Grid org's settings differ from the migrating workspace, you can review them from the Conflicting settings tab. Adjust settings if you'd like then click Confirm Settings to finish. 

Once you’ve completed the steps above, you can schedule your migration. If you haven’t already contacted your Account Executive, reach out to schedule your migration.

During migration

Below is an overview of how Org Owners can view and approve migrations, plus what to expect once the migration is underway.

Note: Migrations of larger workspaces may take a few hours to complete. We recommend giving members advance notice to avoid disruption.

What to expect during a migration

• The migrating workspace will be unavailable to members for a portion of the migration. Members can use their workspace while direct messages (DMs) migrate in the background. Typically, the Enterprise Grid org will be accessible to existing members throughout the migration.
• Members will receive a message shortly before the migration begins to let them know their workspace will be temporarily unavailable.
• Slack Connect conversations between the migrating workspace and org won’t be accessible to either organization. After the migration, Slack Connect channels will become org-wide multi-workspace channels and they’ll use the privacy setting of the channel in the org.
• Members from the migrating workspace will receive an email and Slackbot message when the migration is complete.

View and manage migrations

Org Owners can cancel upcoming migrations and view the status of any that are in progress:

1. From your desktop, click your organization name in the sidebar.
   
2. Hover over Tools & settings, then click Organization settings.
3. Click  Workspaces, then click Migrations. 
4. Click the   three dots icon next to a migration, then click Cancel migration. 

After migration

Once migration is complete, here's what to expect:

• Message history, files, apps, and emoji
  Members will have access to channel and direct message (DM) history, files, apps, and custom emoji. DMs across workspaces will be merged together.
• Profiles
  During the migration process, members' profile details are merged based on the options you choose in the migration checklist. If more than one workspace was moved, profile details from the first workspace will be applied by default. Members can always update their profile after migrating if needed.
• Workspace access
  By default, any org member can request to join the migrated workspace. Org Owners can adjust how members find and join the workspace by changing the access preference.
• Member access
  The migrated workspace’s URL will redirect to your org's sign-in page. New members and guests will sign in using the method set in your SSO settings.
• Workspace roles
  The Workspace Primary Owner role for any migrated workspaces will be re-assigned to the Org Primary Owner. The former Workspace Primary Owner will become a Workspace Owner.

Have migration questions? Reach out to our Support team for help.

Who can use this feature?

• Org Owners
• Available on the Enterprise Grid plan