Hi!
I’m working on the Slack migration from HipChat.
Here’s what you need to know:
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Sometime in the next week or two, community guidelines for the use of Slack will be disseminated project-wide.
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Within a week of that, DM members will be receiving an invite to join lsstc.slack.com
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There is a HipChat room to discuss the migration (Slack Migration)
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Slack’s channel name restrictions are different than HipChat; you are limited to 21 lower alphanumeric characters and ‘-’ (or
[a-z0-9-]*). We have also identified a set of prefixes for organization which channel creators are encouraged to use (below). Channels can be renamed at any time in the future. -
If you are the original creator of a HipChat room (as identified here):
- I’ve made a best-guess suggestion on an appropriate name (second column in above link) for the channel that will replace existing rooms given naming restrictions, utilizing our identified prefixes.
- Once you receive the invite to Slack, you can create the channel yourself, you can opt to not have the channel created at all, or you can let me create it for you. For channels that I create for you, I will preserve the HipChat topic in the new Slack channel, and Slack will also show me (brianv0) as the creator of that room.
- If you think your room should be private at some point in the future, it’s best if you create it.
- If you’d like to rename your room at some point without the help of an admin, it’s best if you create it.
- If you wish for the name to be something different, message me on HipChat the current HipChat room name and the desired slack channel name.
- Please message me your name and creation preferences for each room. If no message is received, I will autogenerate the channel under the identified name as a courtesy.
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HipChat history will not be migrated. After some initial testing and research, it was determined this would be an intensive, manual process, and we don’t have time scheduled for a full migration of HipChat message history. We will work on a system of backing up HipChat for historical records, but the plan for now is to generate new rooms for continuity.
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We are paying for Slack, and we will have unlimited history going forward, but community.lsst.org is still the de-facto platform for searchable and highly visible discussions.
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The users of this Slack team (i.e. lsstc.slack.com) include all of the LSST project, and all Science Collaborations.
- For logistical reasons, DM will be the first group invited on Slack; Invites to the greater project will be sent soon after.
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All DM members are urged to use their GitHub ids as their user id because it will simplify integration with automated developer support systems (such as Jenkins and Community). User ids can be changed at any time in the future.
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Science Collaborations will have their own prefixes.
- e.g.
desc-> DESC,desc-wl-> DESC Weak Lensing, etc… - We are waiting on confirmation to find out what the other prefixes will be.
- e.g.
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Channels may be created by anyone, preferably within the prefixes given below; unused channels may be archived after some time. Archived channels can be un-archived at any time by any team member.
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We’ve identified a few natural prefixes for most rooms:
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se-> Systems Engineering -
cam-> Camera -
dm-> Data Management -
sims-> LSST Simulations -
epo-> EPO -
ts-> Telescope and Site -
mtg-> Meetings (i.e. AHM, JTM, LSST@Europe, etc…) -
lsst-> LSST project (if none of the above apply)
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Other rooms
For convenience, there will be channels for some institutions and projects; these may also be used as prefixes. These are below:
Institutions
tucsonuwprincetonslacipacncsabnlin2p3
External Projects
cfhtsubarusdssdecam
Other
bookclub
Questions
What if <abc> is missing? What if I am/am not of the <xyz> group?
We realize we are probably missing things, but we hope this framework is good enough that people can self-organize Slack channels in the future, and we think this should cover the majority of use cases in how we currently use HipChat in the project and DM.
This is an imprefect process, and I’m tryin to automate as much as possible, but there will be gaps. Please bear with me on this! The important thing to note is that it’s all easily fixable!
These short channel names aren’t user friendly!
When a user is searching for a channel, they will be presented the channel name and a description of the channel. If they are still unsure if they want to go into that channel, they can click on it and get a preview before actually joining. Otherwise, the user is already in that channel and they’ll probably know what it’s for in any case.
I want my public channel to be private!
That will be perfectly possible, though most DM and project channels should be public. It’s a one-way street though, so it’s better to keep it public unless you really need it to be private. Note that all one-to-one communications are private.
I made my room private, but I changed my mind!
You can’t make a private room public. We can rename the room, archive it, and recreate a new room under the original name, but you won’t have the history available to everyone.
Your best-guess name is dumb. When I get my invite to Slack, I’m going to create the channel in Slack under a different name!
Comment here or send me an email/HipChat message and I’ll fix it. The list should still be updated so people can know where their HipChat room went.
I would like more documentation on Slack!
Slack has some truely great documentation. You can usually use Google and the first results will be a Slack help page, or you can directly browse their help center here: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us.
I’d like early access so I can work on Bots/Integrations/etc…
Message me so I can get you on