Short message conversion for Slack
This page covers information for Slack conversion. To view the Relativity supported and unsupported file type tables, see Supported file types for processing.
Slack exports are available across all Slack license plans. For information on Slack plans and their affect on documentation exports, see Export your workspace data on the Slack website.
You can choose whether or not to download short message attachments. If you do not download attachments, Relativity retains links to output RSMF files instead of downloading the actual files. See Short message conversion settings for information on enabling short message attachment downloads.
Note: If you do not download attachments, Relativity retains links to output RSMF files instead. You may see errors if Relativity cannot link to the source file. For example, an outage with Slack or network connectivity issues. See Processing error resolution for information on resolving processing errors.
Required file structure
Processing supports original structure of zip containers coming from Slack. Do not change the contents of the zip file or you may see corrupt or incomplete results.
Note: Slack exports greater than 10 GB are not supported and may be unable to process. You must repackage the contents into smaller packages if you have a Slack export over 10 GB. For example, you might split different conversation types across different zips.
You must have at least two of the following files at the root level of your zip container:
- users.json (required) or org_users.json
- Plus, one of the following:
- channels.json
- dms.json
- groups.json
- mpims.json
Generated RSMF fields
The following table lists the metadata fields found in RSMF files after Slack conversion.
| Relativity source field name | Field type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | Long Text | The name of the conversation.
|
| EmailFrom | Long Text | The display name and email of sender of first event in the conversation. |
| EmailTo | Multiple Choice | A list of display names and emails of all participants in conversation, |
| Date | Date | The date of first event in conversation. |
| Rsmf/Version | Long Text | 2.0.0 |
| Rsmf/Participants | Multiple Choice Caution: Use the Long Text field type when mapping the Rsmf/Participants field. Selecting Multiple Choice can lead to hundreds of unique choices that may impact performance. |
A list of display names of all participants in conversation. |
| Rsmf/Generator | Long Text | Relativity Processing |
| Rsmf/Application | Long Text | Slack |
| Rsmf/MessageCount | Whole Number | The number of events in the conversation. |
| Rsmf/AttachmentCount | Whole Number | The number of attachments in conversation. |
| Rsmf/EventCollectionId | Long Text | The conversation ID that is persisted between file slices. |
| Rsmf/BeginDate | Date | The date and time of first event in conversation. |
| Rsmf/EndDate | Date | The date and time of last event in conversation. |
Troubleshooting
Relativity tries to extract all available data it finds. In some cases, errors may occur due to the data in the Slack export package or availability of attachments. Errors reported include:
| Discover error message | Details |
|---|---|
| An error occurred during downloading some attachments in Slack-to-RSMF conversion. The error is likely due to attachments no longer being available to download from Slack servers. Relativity downloaded all available attachments. You can ignore this warning as the missing attachments will appear as links in the generated RSMF files. | During downloading attachments Relativity takes the URL present in JSON. While attempting to download attachment the provided response was "404 not found". For most scenarios this means the file is no longer kept on Slack servers and won’t be possible to obtain. This error serves informational purpose. |
| An error occurred during downloading attachment as part of Slack-to-RSMF conversion. The error is likely due to a transient problem connecting to the Slack servers. You can ignore this or rediscover the data to proceed with attachments. | During downloading attachments Relativity takes the URL present in JSON. While attempting to download attachment the provided response was "500 server error". This means Slack had some transient problems and it’s advised to retry this error to retry downloading attachments. |
| Relativity does not support organization-level exports for Slack-to-RSMF conversion. For instructions on how to proceed, see the Troubleshooting documentation for Slack conversion. | Provided Slack data was an organization-level export – it contains some additional file structure that is currently not supported. To process this data with Relativity Processing it needs to be repackaged into supported format. See "Processing org-level exports" section for more details. |
| An error occurred during the conversion of the Slack-to-RSMF conversion. The error may be due to an unsupported package structure. Repair the file and reprocess the data. | Relativity could not extract any RSMF data due to a corrupt Slack export file. Contact support for help in troubleshooting the file. |
| An unexpected internal error occurred during Slack-to-RSMF conversion. Rediscover the data to proceed. | Relativity encountered a transient issue. It’s advised to retry the processing job. If the issue persist contact support for help. |
Processing organization-level exports
Relativity only supports workspace-level exports coming from Slack. Depending on the export configuration, the data may be obtained as an organization-level export. Organizational-level exports may contain multiple workspace-level exports. To process these exports with Relativity, you must repackage the data into multiple packages for each workspace inside the /teams directory. See the graphic below for a visual explanation.
Known issues and limitations
- To optimize processing speed, use a single Slack zip container within a single processing data source.
- Relativity does not support Inventory for Slack export containers.
- When using Web Import/Export, you must put your Slack zip container (let's call it the child container) inside another zip container (let's call it the parent container) and then import the parent container using the Import/Export tool. Relativity cannot convert Slack files to RSMF if you import a child container directly instead of placing it in a parent container. The data is processed as JSON.
Resources
For additional information, see:
- For information on enabling short message conversion, see Short message conversion settings.
- For information on short message use, metadata, and mapping, see Relativity's short message format.
