Yandex Practicum
How one of the largest EdTech services moved learning for 30,000+ students to Pachca. A customer story of migrating from Slack to a team chat app
About the company
Yandex Practicum is an online learning service where anyone can master a digital profession from scratch or pick up new skills to grow their career. Tens of thousands of students take their courses every year, and many of the programs are built together with the country's top universities. Students do all their coursework and practice online on a dedicated platform, while all communication with instructors and student support happens in Pachca.
Life before Pachca
The team used Slack for several years, but in 2022 Slack changed its terms of service. Practicum's subscription was set to expire in December 2022, so the search for an alternative started that summer.
The main goal was to find a stable tool that could handle a heavy load: even then, more than 30,000 students were enrolled. It was also critical that the app support different access levels for staff and students, allow bulk administration, integrate with other services and offer a flexible API for automations and analytics.
At the time, few independent Russian team chat apps were growing into a flexible, Slack-like service. The market was mostly full of ecosystem products that didn't work well for teaching students. After several months of comparisons, the team chose Pachca.
The moment we knew Pachca was the one
Pachca feels a lot like Slack, so all student learning could move over without any real drop in quality. Pachca met every requirement that mattered to Practicum. Two other big factors were the ability to import all chats and the team's openness to feedback from students and staff.
How Pachca changed the way we communicate
Most importantly, all automations and student conversations were preserved. Thanks to the import, all the context from Slack chats moved over to Pachca, so students kept learning without missing a beat. And with the API, Practicum set up all the integrations it needed to make work easier for the staff who talk to students.
As for what's different, adding students to chats got much easier thanks to tags. Over time, the team also set up analytics that show how well staff communicate with students. That makes it easier to manage the quality of the service students get.
Tips for making the switch
The key is to plan the process carefully. Practicum had to move 30,000 users, so the migration was rolled out in stages. First, the team identified the key integrations and workflows to move over, then built and tested them with a small group. Once a test passed, they expanded to more users.
To keep the switch from frustrating users, the team kept them in the loop the whole time. They posted several announcements in the old app, and in Pachca they helped newcomers get up to speed. It also helped that a knowledge base for staff was ready in advance, and whenever something was unclear, users could always be pointed to Pachca support.
