Slack to Roam migration guide: Move your chats. Keep your context.

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Open the Slack channel for any active project. Scroll through the message history and shared files, and you can see how the work came together – as chat threads turned into documents and spreadsheets and then into a finished product.

That history helps explain why changing chat tools can feel like a bigger undertaking than the software itself. People know where to ask questions. They remember which channel has the answer. The team has built a way of working around those conversations, and it needs that work to continue.

Roam (ro.am) now includes a Slack alternative within its virtual office platform, with #Channels, direct messages, and threads all included in its existing $19.50/user/month platform bundle. Roam’s Slack migration tool lets you bring public-channel conversations into Roam, including their messages, attachments, and membership. That gives a team a practical place to begin: carry useful history forward, then start doing the next piece of work together.

Published by Roam. Product and import details follow current first-party documentation; the rollout advice below is our recommended approach.

Bring messaging into the place your team works

The strongest reason to move is a change you want to make to the working day. Perhaps your team already meets in Roam but returns to Slack for every written update. Perhaps you want a question, the people who can answer it, and the resulting discussion to be easier to find in one place.

In Roam, messaging sits alongside the company map and live meeting rooms. AInbox brings chat and meeting follow-up into the same workspace. A discussion can begin in a channel, move into a room when talking would help, and continue afterward with the written context still close at hand.

There is also a straightforward subscription question. Roam pricing lists $19.50 per active member per month for 2026, billed monthly, with messaging included alongside the virtual office, meetings, Magic Minutes, and Magicast. For a team already paying for Roam, moving off a paid Slack plan can remove a separate bill without adding a messaging charge to Roam. What you save depends on which subscriptions you can retire.

Start with a channel people still need

Choose one active public channel to lead the move. A product launch is a useful example: the team has decisions to revisit, files to reference, and more work to do tomorrow. Moving that channel gives people something familiar to open when they arrive in Roam.

Ask the channel's regular contributors what they need to keep working. Their answers will help you choose the history to bring over and identify dependencies, such as a bot that posts release updates or a customer who joins the discussion. Decide how those dependencies will be handled before committing to a wider switch.

Set expectations about scope early. Roam documents imports of public channels. Plan separately for private channels and DMs. Slack integrations and bots do not transfer with the messages; assess their replacement workflows with Roam support where needed.

Bring the people along with the history

Before exporting, check that team members use matching email addresses in Slack and Roam. Those addresses are how Roam connects the identities in the archive to its members. Getting this right helps the imported conversations make sense to the people reading them.

Slack's Email Display setting also matters. When it is set to “No One,” Slack omits emails from the export. Roam's missing-email guide explains how an admin can temporarily change the setting, produce a fresh export, and restore the setting afterward. If addresses do not match, use Map to Roam Person during Review People where appropriate, or contact support for help.

Tell outside collaborators about the move. Active external Slack members with active guest access in the export are added to their corresponding new Roam channels as guests. Roam does not send them an email; they can access their channels by signing in with that email. Review the proposed members and administrators before importing, and give the team a clear person to contact. An explicit channel Admin is optional because account-level admins can also manage channels.

Make the move and check the work

Before importing, confirm you have Admin access and a verified company domain in Roam. With the people and scope settled, someone with Slack export permissions—typically a Workspace Owner or Export Admin—can use Slack's export tools to select a history date range and request an archive. Download the original ZIP once Slack confirms it is ready, without extracting or modifying it. Export options depend on the plan and permissions; on Slack's Free plan, exports include file links only from the last 90 days.

Upload that ZIP in Roam under Settings > Roam Administration > Calendar & Integrations > Slack. After uploading, use Review People to check identity matches, then Review Channels to select up to 100 channels per run. Roam's import instructions cover the full process. Roam accepts one workspace per import, including a single-workspace export on Enterprise Grid.

Plan the destination before recreating your Slack channels by hand. Imports can create new channels or add history to matching active Roam channels. Existing channels keep their current members, administrators, and native messages; rename the proposed destination if you want a separate channel. Historical messages still import when their authors do not have Roam accounts, with attribution depending on their profile and email.

The import is an archive migration, not an ongoing sync. A deliberate reimport skips messages already present at the same imported timestamp, but it does not synchronize later Slack edits or deletions.

Now return to that product launch. Find a decision the team made last week. Open an attachment someone still needs. Check that the intended members can participate, and ask a teammate to find the same information. This is where the move becomes tangible: people can recognize their work in the new workspace.

Let the team finish a real piece of work

Once the imported channel checks out, agree that its next project update belongs in Roam. Give the group a real task to complete there. A launch review, an unresolved design question, or the next customer update will teach you more about the fit than an empty test channel.

Suppose the launch discussion needs a quick conversation. Colleagues can check availability in Roam and meet in a room. Magic Minutes can then provide the summary and action items in AInbox. Ask the team to confirm the decision and continue the project discussion where everyone knows to look. That is the everyday benefit the migration is meant to make possible.

Watch what still sends people back to Slack. If an integration is missing, resolve the workflow. If someone cannot find a conversation, help them organize their channels. If colleagues keep posting in the old place, make the handoff clearer. Each of those is useful feedback about what the wider rollout needs.

Give the next conversation a clear home

When the first group is comfortable, use what you learned to plan the remaining channel imports. Tell each team when its conversations will move, where new updates should go, and who can help. Coordinate the export with that handoff so everyone knows which period the imported history covers.

Be explicit about the short transition period. If a customer discussion or a particular workflow must stay in Slack temporarily, name it and assign someone to resolve it. Keep access to information that has not moved, while making Roam the agreed destination for the work that has.

Before retiring a Slack subscription, confirm that the team can use its imported history, reach the right collaborators, and complete the workflows it depends on. Preserve any required archives under your organization's policies. The decision should follow the team's ability to work comfortably in Roam.

Keep the history and continue the work

The first time someone finds an old decision in the imported launch channel and uses it to answer a new question, the value of bringing that history along becomes clear. The team can pick up where it left off, with its conversations now part of the same platform as its virtual office.

Book a Roam demo to see #Channels in action and talk through how your team's Slack conversations could make the move.