Explore self hosted applications

[patrick-5546]

Purpose

See if there are better alternatives to Slack's free plan that we are currently using

Options

• Slack: message history limitations
  • Tell everyone not to put anything important on Slack
• Mattermost: unlimited messages, but more maintenance (self-hosted), but mobile apps are poorly reviewed
  • Could do through UBC as well?
• Teams through UBC: convincing UBC to give admin access and ability to invite people outside UBC
  • Ability to invite people outside UBC confirmed
  • 90 day retention in group chats and DMs, unlimited in teams channels
• Rocket.chat: more popular slack alternative than mattermost, more stable client apps, but haven’t explored it’s features
  • Mattermost might have more integrations but could we even take advantage of them? Might be redundant with our current workflow

[patrick-5546]

Conclusion 09/01/22: alternatives take too much time to test and implement, revisit when there’s less going on

[patrick-5546]

• Self hosting mattermost (slack alternative): https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-mattermost-on-ubuntu-20-04
• Self hosting rocket.chat (slack alternative): https://docs.rocket.chat/quick-start/deploying-rocket.chat/cloud-deployments/digitalocean
• Self hosting outline (confluence alternative): https://thomasgriffin.com/how-to-install-the-outline-knowledge-base-wiki-on-ubuntu/

[patrick-5546]

Are we using the free Google Workspace?
https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/workspace-for-education/editions/compare-editions/

[patrick-5546]

Downsides of self hosting / migrating

• Requires maintenance
• Not using industry standard tools
• Import or lose data

Upsides of self hosting

• More control over data
• Premium features (unlimited accounts, unlimited chat history) at a discounted price

[patrick-5546]

• rocket.chat has one click deploy to digital ocean
• Outline has integration with slack
• rocket.chat has integration with confluence
• they don't have integration with each other