Discontinuation of Rocket.Chat, further extended End-of-Life phase

With Nov 1st, 2024 the service Rocket.Chat entered its end-of-life phase. Users of Rocket.Chat should act now (see below).

What changes during the end-of-life phase?

GWDG has stopped renewing the licensing of the service. With the expiration of the license some functionality of Rocket.Chat may be limited in the future. The most prominent limitations are:

• no more push notifications to mobile clients
• online presence status of users (online/busy/idle/offline) is no longer displayed

What does not change, how can the service still be used?

The main, basic functionality of the service remains unchanged. Accounts can sign in and sign off normally, messages and channels can be created, existing content can be searched for and read and new accounts can join the service. Using the service in the browser or through desktop and mobile clients (with restrictions) is still possible.

How long will the end-of-life phase last? How long can Rocket.Chat still be used?

The end-of-life phase will terminate on the September 31st 2025. After October 1st access to the service will no longer be possible, including any content and any functionality. All users of Rocket.Chat should plan for the unavailability of the service, in parts or whole, and any content or functionality of the service, directly or indirectly, from the October 1st 2025 on.
This also affects the possibility to migrate content from Rocket.Chat to Matrix.

Has the end-of-life phase consequences for the migration of content from Rocket.Chat to the new Matrix service?

No. The functionality to migrate content to Matrix is unaffected by the end-of-life phase. More information regarding this functionality are included in the announcements regarding Matrix.
After the end-of-live phase and shutting down of Rocket.Chat however migration of content to Matrix is also no longer possible.

Currently the Rocket.Chat functionality to download user data is defective. How is downloading of user data possible?

Rocket.Chat offers a functionality to download all content of a user account via the “Download My Data” function. This functionality is defective currently and has been for some time.
In order to facilitate users with possibility to export their data from Rocket.Chat a new export function was created. The necessary steps as well as the export itself can be found under https://chat.gwdg.de/export

What cause of action is recommended for current Rocket.Chat users?

Users of Rocket.Chat are recommended to act now with the aforementioned time frame in mind. The Matrix service (https://docs.chat.academiccloud.de/en/first-steps/index.html) is now in full operation and broadly available. All users are recommended to familiarize themselves with the functionality to migrate content to Matrix, if desired, and to plan to migrate content and change their processes and work-flows with regards to the planned end-date.
Additionally the new export function should be used if an export of the Rocket.Chat data is desired.