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Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions ne

Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions need to be kept around for reference. We have tons of one liner tickets with only a title and a link to a Slack thread, and it saves crazy amount of time and effort.

abduhl 4y ago
This is a poorly designed process because, as this pricing change underscores, Slack is not permanent unless you pay them in perpetuity. Why would you place so much power over your internal processes in the hands of a third party? It may save a crazy amount of time and effort (it does not) but it will cost a crazy amount of money through lock in subscriptions or eventually being forced out of the ecosystem because your chats are 90 days old. You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.
- chrismartin 4y ago
  Or you could use a libre and self-hostable chat platform (like Element on Matrix), and get rich discussion that costs little or nothing to keep around permanently.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I see it rarely discussed, but self-hosting has a maintenance cost beyond server time: you need people with knowledge and competences to keep it alive. If the rest of your stack is not self-hosted the same way, you'll be keeping these people around just for your chat platform and some other perhaps non critical tools, which might not make business sense depending on your company...
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I don't know for your work environment, the last few companies I've worked for had a decent portion of their budget allocated to SaaS, from our ticketing system, customer support platform, marketing tools, BI, up to the hosting of our prod environment (and yes, they were also paying for Slack, and will probably continue doing so) I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc. PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible. To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.
groby_b 4y ago
> Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. Surely, you meant to say "Slack used to be permanent...". It's a valuable lesson that, it seems, each generation of engineers gets to learn anew. If it's not under your control (direct or contractual), you will lose it at some point.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  This is a lesson, but I think we've come to this point because it practically doesn't matter that much. For instance I can't think of any document or design discussion I wrote in the past 10 years that would still matter today. Either the system is still somewhat live and running, and it's probably too far away from the original design for these docs to matter, or it's dead and buried, the company potentially not existing anymore. In a way, actual permanentness is overrated for many many applications. Now, people would be more sensible to disruptions of the current business, but arguably services like Slack or JIRA have a better track record than home made internally managed systems.
dchuk 4y ago
slack is a horrific place to store valuable things. search sucks, threads suck, and information literally floats away up off the screen over time.

abduhl 4y ago

This is a poorly designed process because, as this pricing change underscores, Slack is not permanent unless you pay them in perpetuity. Why would you place so much power over your internal processes in the hands of a third party? It may save a crazy amount of time and effort (it does not) but it will cost a crazy amount of money through lock in subscriptions or eventually being forced out of the ecosystem because your chats are 90 days old. You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.

chrismartin 4y ago
Or you could use a libre and self-hostable chat platform (like Element on Matrix), and get rich discussion that costs little or nothing to keep around permanently.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I see it rarely discussed, but self-hosting has a maintenance cost beyond server time: you need people with knowledge and competences to keep it alive. If the rest of your stack is not self-hosted the same way, you'll be keeping these people around just for your chat platform and some other perhaps non critical tools, which might not make business sense depending on your company...
makeitdouble 4y ago
I don't know for your work environment, the last few companies I've worked for had a decent portion of their budget allocated to SaaS, from our ticketing system, customer support platform, marketing tools, BI, up to the hosting of our prod environment (and yes, they were also paying for Slack, and will probably continue doing so) I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc. PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible. To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.

groby_b 4y ago

> Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. Surely, you meant to say "Slack used to be permanent...". It's a valuable lesson that, it seems, each generation of engineers gets to learn anew. If it's not under your control (direct or contractual), you will lose it at some point.

makeitdouble 4y ago
This is a lesson, but I think we've come to this point because it practically doesn't matter that much. For instance I can't think of any document or design discussion I wrote in the past 10 years that would still matter today. Either the system is still somewhat live and running, and it's probably too far away from the original design for these docs to matter, or it's dead and buried, the company potentially not existing anymore. In a way, actual permanentness is overrated for many many applications. Now, people would be more sensible to disruptions of the current business, but arguably services like Slack or JIRA have a better track record than home made internally managed systems.

dchuk 4y ago

slack is a horrific place to store valuable things. search sucks, threads suck, and information literally floats away up off the screen over time.