Transitioning hard-core Slack users to Teams

[KarenD69]

I have a small group of users in our company who are hard-core Slack users. I'm tasked with getting them transitioned to Teams. They know they don't have a choice, but as everyone here knows, it is easier to get someone to make a change if they can see an advantage or benefit from that change. This group has explained to me that they heavily use the remind feature in Slack and are asking how can they do this same thing in Teams and do them as easily as in Slack. Here are the examples they gave me:

1. I can set a reminder for myself, for someone else or to be posted in a channel in slack for everyone to see. The reminders can be once or repeat.  For example, remind me in 1 hour to call customer
2. Remind Jean on Monday at 9am to uncheck tasks in one note
3. Remind XXXXX channel to check rebates every Monday at 9am

If I needed to remind myself of things, I would probably use Outlook to create an event and attach a Flag to it. 
I could setup a Power Automate workflow to do these reminders also. 

My issue here is first that setting this up in Power Automate (or even in Outlook) is a lot more steps than just using a /command to do each of these things. I have seen one or two apps that we could pay for, but we don't want to pay for apps above what we pay for our tenant if not necessary. 

I would like to know if anyone has any other suggestions of ways to set these reminders that would super simple - if there are any. 

Thanks in advance.

🙂 Karen

[#2]

@KarenD69- Do you have the option to "Create a Task" from a Teams conversation?

[#3]

@KarenD69 , looks like this feature is going to be natively available in Teams soon. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-sg/microsoft-365/roadmap?rtc=1&filters=In%20development%2CMicrosoft%20T... 

[#4]

@Ashley - No, we don't have the add a task from a conversation yet. That still isn't what they users are requesting. I do see why you would suggest this though. I have had other users (who don't use Slack) ask for this exact functionality and they will be excited when it arrives. The current users are looking for a shortcut type of command that recognizes create a task or remind with a simple /command + Enter keystroke. Even this will require a message, click on the ellipsis, select create a task. . . and I'm not sure about the additional steps. So still not as simple as the feature they are losing. This might be halfway for them though when it arrives in our tenant. Thank you for suggesting it.

[#5]

@sohnash Thank you for the message. I had forgotten about this and saw a notification from your post which showed me additional posts as well. This will only get me part of the way, but I'll take it. Anything is better than nothing.

[#6]

@KarenD69 A couple of suggestion for motivating them to make the transition.

1. Take their complaint and show them how to fix it. You should be able to create a bot that will take a comment and convert it into a recurring reminder/task. It's more work up front than a built in "/remind" but it highlights how extensible Teams is compared to Slack.
2. Focus on their annoyances with Slack and show how Teams makes those things easy. When they understand the strengths of the Teams platform--integration being one of the biggest--when compared to what they are doing in Slack, then you can help them see that using Slack is still chockablock full of tradeoffs in functionality. The question then becomes which tradeoffs are the hardest to deal with.
3. Ask other teams in your company about their experiences and what they have found to be much easier in Teams than Slack. you can then present the experiences of that team's peers to show them the best way forward. Nothing is as convincing as personal recommendations, especially if they come from someone who resisted the change originally and then became a fan of the new system.

The idea is to show the transition as beneficial as possible while acknowledging the perceived functional losses. When they understand the greater potential of Teams vs. Slack for the work they are doing, they should get on board more easily, or at least not be so obstinate about the transition. This is the carrot approach of the job you have to do.

There will always be those who refuse to change willingly. For them, you will have to set a hard deadline. You can also let them know that their resistance to the change and it's subsequent impact on the company's ability to perform effectively and efficiently will be noted in their annual reviews. The is the stick approach of the job.

After all, your ability to get them to transition gracefully to Teams will be noted on your annual review, too.