Migration · WhatsApp
Moving work off WhatsApp into Enclessa is less a data migration than a governance change: the history lives on personal handsets, WhatsApp exports one conversation at a time from within that conversation, and there is nothing an administrator can do centrally. What changes is that the organisation gets rooms it owns, accounts instead of personal phone numbers, roles, and a leaving process that actually ends access — and what you must test first is that Enclessa has no mobile apps.
Open betaThe platform is being built in the open, so parts of it are not there yet, behaviour changes between releases, and no availability figure is committed while it is in beta. What is still being built.
Enclessa has no automated importer. No tool moves messages, files, members or permissions out of another product and into Enclessa, and none is promised. Migration is a manual exercise: you rebuild the structure, run both systems side by side for a fortnight, and cut over on a date everybody knows. Every guide here is written for that reality rather than around it.
This is the first question and it decides the rest. Enclessa runs in the browser and on macOS; there is no iOS or Android application. For a team on a shop floor, a building site or a delivery round, that is likely to be decisive, and it is better tested in week one than discovered in month two.
List the distinct things happening in that single thread: the rota, the operational questions, the customer issues, the social. That list becomes the channel structure, and it is what stops the replacement from becoming one busy room again.
Photographs of documents, customer details, health information, addresses. A work group on personal handsets is usually processing personal data with no record, no retention rule and no way to delete it, and naming that is often what gets the migration approved.
Former colleagues, contractors, somebody’s partner who was added for one event in 2023. Everybody in the group has everybody’s private mobile number, permanently.
If anything in there has to be retained, it has to be exported from a personal device by the person who owns it, one conversation at a time. Decide what is genuinely worth that effort — usually very little.
| Enclessa | What changes | |
|---|---|---|
| The one big group | Several channels in a team, grouped into categories | The whole point of the move. One thread for everything is the problem, not the starting position to preserve. |
| A group for a specific project | A channel, archived when the project ends | A channel that stops being used stops being in the way, without anybody having to leave it. |
| A quiet side conversation | A group direct message | End-to-end encrypted, with no administrator override — the same confidentiality property people went to WhatsApp for. |
| Phone numbers as identity | Accounts with email addresses | Nobody has to hand out a personal mobile number to join the workspace, and nobody keeps access after they leave. |
| Admin of the group | Roles at organisation, team and channel level | Permissions are a bitmask with allow and deny overwrites, rather than one person who happens to have created the group. |
| Voice notes and calls | Voice messages, and video calls started in the channel | Calls have screen sharing, a lobby and host controls. There is no telephone number and no PSTN calling. |
| Broadcast lists | A channel, with mentions | Mentions reach a person, a role, a custom group or the whole channel. |
Enclessa has no mobile apps. Before anything else, put it in front of the people who currently work from their phones and find out whether the browser on their device is good enough for what they actually do. If it is not, stop here.
List the distinct uses in that single thread. This list is the channel structure, and doing it before creating anything is what prevents the replacement from collapsing back into one room where everything is mixed together.
Set up the organisation and its first team, and invite people to accounts rather than collecting phone numbers. The Free plan covers up to ten people permanently, with no payment card and no expiry, so a small team can do this without a purchase decision.
One channel per use, grouped into categories. Conversations that should not be in front of everybody become group direct messages, which are end-to-end encrypted with no administrator override — the property people were relying on WhatsApp for, without the personal-device problem.
WhatsApp can export a single conversation as a text file, with or without media, from within that conversation on the device it is on. It is a personal action rather than an administrative one. Pick the few things worth keeping, post them into the right channel, and leave the rest.
Keep the group open while people learn where things go, and answer every question in the new channel even when it was asked in the old group. Then announce a date, say it in both places, and close the group — one that stays open never empties.
When somebody leaves, deactivate the account and access ends across every channel at once. The organisation keeps its record, and nobody is relying on a former colleague to delete a thread from their own phone.
There is no administrative export, because there is no administrator. WhatsApp offers a per-conversation export from inside that conversation, performed by a person on their own device, producing a text file with the option to include media. There is also a separate request for a copy of your own account information in the application’s settings. Both are personal actions on personal devices, which is precisely the governance problem the migration exists to solve.
The zero-risk way to test this migration is the Free plan: up to ten people, permanently, with no payment card and nothing to cancel. Run one team on it for a fortnight before you commit anybody else.
See the Free planCreate a workspace in a couple of minutes. It is yours at your-team.enclessa.app, hosted in the European Union, with encrypted direct messages from the first one you send.
Open beta. Free plan, no payment card to start.