Moving to Zulip
Welcome to Zulip! This page will guide you through the process of transitioning
your organization to Zulip. It assumes that you have completed your initial
evaluation of Zulip, decided whether to use Zulip
Cloud or self-host, and are ready to
introduce Zulip to your organization.
The following steps are described in more detail below:
- Instructions for all platforms
Each organization is unique, but we hope these common practices will help you
think through the transition process in your own context.
Create your organization
You can create a new Zulip Cloud organization in less than two minutes. Setting
up a self-hosted server will take a bit longer, but is easy to do with Zulip's
robust
installer.
Zulip has import tools for Slack,
Mattermost and
Rocket.Chat. You can import your organization's
chat data, including message history, users, channels, and custom emoji. To
inquire about importing data from another product, contact Zulip
support.
Data is imported into Zulip as a new organization, so the best time to import is
when your team is about to start using Zulip for day-to-day work. This may be
part of your evaluation process, or after you've made the decision to move to
Zulip.
- New organizations
- Imported organizations
Sign up for a plan
If you require features that are not available on Zulip Cloud
Free or the Zulip
Free plan for self-hosted organizations,
you will need to upgrade your plan.
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Create your organization profile,
which is displayed on your organization's registration and login pages.
-
Create user groups, which offer a flexible way to
manage permissions.
-
Review organization permissions, such as who
can invite users, create channels, etc.
-
If your organization uses an issue tracker (e.g., GitHub, Salesforce,
Zendesk, Jira, etc.), configure linkifiers to
automatically turn issue numbers (e.g., #2468) into links.
-
Set up custom profile fields, which make it
easy for users to share information, such as their pronouns, job title, or
team.
-
Review default user settings,
including language, default visibility for email
addresses, and notification preferences.
-
Create channels, unless you've imported
channels from another app. Zulip's topics
give each conversation its own space, so one channel per team should be
enough to get you started.
-
Set up integrations so that your
team can experience all their regular workflows inside the Zulip app. Zulip's
Slack-compatible incoming
webhook makes it easy to
move your integrations when migrating an organization from Slack to Zulip.
Prepare users for the transition
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Plan how you will introduce users to Zulip. You may want to:
- Share Zulip's getting started guide.
- Prepare a live demo / training session. Consider recording it for
future use!
-
Inform users about the transition, including why you're moving to Zulip, the
timeline, and what they'll need to do.
Invite users to join
- Require invitations
- Allow anyone to join
- Imported organizations
-
Configure allowed authentication
methods. Zulip offers a variety of
authentication methods, including email/password, Google, GitHub, GitLab,
Apple, LDAP and SAML. Users can log
in with any allowed authentication method, regardless of how
they signed up.
-
Invite users by sending email invitations or
sharing a reusable invitation link.
-
Allow users to join without an invitation.
-
Configure the appropriate email domain restrictions
for your organization.
-
Share a link to your registration page, which is
https://organization.zulipchat.com for Zulip Cloud organizations.
-
Configure allowed authentication
methods. Zulip offers a variety of
authentication methods, including email/password, Google, GitHub, GitLab,
Apple, LDAP and SAML. Users can immediately log
in with any allowed authentication method that does not require
a password.
-
Share a link to your Zulip organization, which is
https://organization.zulipchat.com on Zulip Cloud.
-
(optional) To log in with an email/password, users will need to set their
initial password. You can:
-
Automatically send password reset emails to all users in your
organization. If you imported your organization into Zulip Cloud, simply
email support@zulip.com to request this. Server
administrators for self-hosted organizations should follow these
instructions.
-
Let users know that they can request a password
reset
on your organization's login page.
Update your guidelines
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Update any links and login instructions to point to your Zulip organization.
-
Share basic instructions for getting started with Zulip. You can refer users
to Zulip's help center, getting started
guide, and any onboarding content you've
created.
-
Consider updating your organization's communication policies and best
practice recommendations to take advantage of Zulip's organized
conversations:
-
Many organizations find that with Zulip, there’s no longer a reason to use
email for internal communications. You get the organization of an email
inbox together with all the features of a modern chat app,
like instant delivery of messages, emoji reactions, typing notifications,
@-mentions, and more.
-
Using Zulip, you can discuss complex topics and make decisions with input
from all stakeholders, without the overhead of scheduling meeting. Are
there standing meetings you might not need?
-
With conversations organized by topic, you can review prior discussions to
understand past work, explanations, and decisions — your chat history
becomes a knowledge base. Should it be standard practice to link to Zulip
conversations from docs, issue trackers, etc. for additional context?
Congratulations on making the move! If you have any questions or feedback
throughout this process, please reach out to the Zulip
team.
Related articles