deprecationproductplaybook

Migrating users off a platform: technical and product steps using feature flags (lessons from Workrooms)

UUnknown

2026-02-12

10 min read

A practical product-engineering playbook for sunsetting platforms with feature flags, data export hooks, staged shutdowns and Workrooms lessons.

Hook: Stop guessing — migrate users safely with feature flags

Sunsetting a platform is one of the highest-risk operations product and engineering teams run. The stakes are loss of data, angry customers, compliance headaches, and expensive support incidents. Done poorly, a shutdown becomes a crisis; done well, it's an opportunity to consolidate, reduce costs, and preserve trust.

In 2026 we have fresh reminders: Meta announced the discontinuation of Horizon Workrooms as a standalone app, with key dates in February 2026. That kind of large-scale sunsetting reinforces a practical reality: migration plans must be controlled, auditable and reversible. This playbook gives a combined product-and-engineering checklist that uses feature flags to move traffic, implement data export hooks, coordinate user communication, and run a staged shutdown timeline.

Meta announced it is discontinuing Workrooms as a standalone app, effective February 16, 2026, and will stop sales of related managed services and commercial SKUs shortly after.

Why feature flags are the migration control plane in 2026

Feature flagging has moved from release toggles to an operational control plane. In late 2025 and early 2026, teams increasingly used flags not just to gate features, but to control traffic, enable exports, and orchestrate shutdown phases. The advantage is simple: flags decouple deployment from behavioral control, enabling product teams to run targeted migrations without shipping new builds or backdoors.

Precision: target subsets of users (by org, region or cohort).
Speed: flip a flag to change millions of users instantly.
Safety: an immediate kill-switch lets you roll back a risky step.
Audit: flag changes are auditable — important for compliance.

High-level migration goals and KPIs (set these first)

Start with a short list of measurable outcomes so engineering and product have aligned priorities. Avoid engineering-only success metrics.

Migration rate: % users migrated per week
Data integrity: % exports verified within tolerance
Support load: number of tickets per 1k users
Rollback time: mean time to rollback (MTTR) for each stage
Compliance: proof of data portability and retention windows

Product–Engineering checklist: end-to-end

The following checklist is ordered: the earlier items must be completed before the later ones. Treat every checklist item as a deliverable with owners and deadlines.

1. Define cohorts and migration policy

Create cohorts by business-relevant keys: org_id, billing tier, region, device type, or last-active date.
Agree migration policy per cohort: opt-in vs forced, required exports, data retention.
Record the policy in product docs and the change log of the migration project.

2. Design feature flags as your control surface

Model flags to cover traffic direction, read-only modes, export activation, and final disablement. Use strong naming and lifecycle rules.

Flag naming conventions (examples):
- migration.{platform}.enable — true/false for starting migration.
- migration.{platform}.read_only — toggles write operations to read-only.
- migration.{platform}.redirects — boolean or URL param for redirecting users.
- migration.{platform}.export.{v1|v2} — parameterized flags to switch export versions.
- migration.{platform}.kill_switch — global emergency off.
Flag types: boolean, percentage rollout, user-list (whitelist/blacklist), and parameterized (URLs, expiry dates).
Enforce a lifecycle: create → test → target → audit → remove. Every flag must have an owner and an expiry date in its description.

3. Traffic migration patterns and mechanics

Choose migration patterns that minimize user disruption:

Canary by org: move a small set of non-critical customers first.
Percentage rollouts: use feature flags set to 1%, 5%, 25%,… to validate at scale.
Session-based redirects: keep sessions sticky so users are not bounced mid-task; hosting and session strategies are covered in hosting comparisons like free-tier face-offs.
Graceful read-only: set flags to read-only to allow exports to finish before final cutover.

Example: a percentage rollout flag that redirects eligible users to a new platform endpoint. The backend inspects the flag; if true, it returns 302 to the migration URL. This lets QA and product test redirection semantics without any client update.

4. Data export hooks and verification

Exports are the single most critical user-facing component of a migration. Plan exports as a service, not an ad-hoc job.

Expose a first-class export API: authenticated, idempotent, and resumable — consider pairing this with a reviewed authorization service such as NebulaAuth for access control.
Trigger exports via feature flags or webhooks so you can enable/disable by cohort without code changes.
Emit export events to a message bus for asynchronous processing and observability; lightweight hosting options and serverless choices can impact delivery semantics (hosting comparisons).
Include verification steps: checksums, row counts, and sample data validation to prove fidelity.
Support multiple delivery channels: direct download, S3 export, partner transfer or API push to target systems.

Design for scale: exports should be chunked and resumable. Record metadata per export with timestamps, user ID, and status (“queued”, “in_progress”, “failed”, “completed”).

5. User communication and UX flows

Communication must be consistent across emails, in-app banners, admin consoles, and status pages. Use the feature flags to control message targeting and frequency.

Notify early and often: announcement → migration window → reminders → final notice.
In-app flows: use modal-driven migration wizards for admins and contextual banners for individual users.
Provide one-click data export or automated transfers where possible.
Offer contact channels (support/ticketing) and track issues by cohort with your flag context.

6. Staged shutdown timeline (sample 8-week plan)

Below is a practical staged timeline. Adjust duration based on scale and contractual obligations.

Week 0 — Planning & comms: Publish migration policy, prepare feature flags, legal review, and set up export endpoints.
Weeks 1–2 — Canary: Enable migration.enable for 1–5% (select orgs). Validate exports end-to-end. Metric: export success > 99% for canary cohort.
Weeks 3–4 — Ramp: Move to 25% and 50% cohorts. Enable read_only for cohorts where needed. Run manual audits for data fidelity.
Week 5 — Enterprise wave: Contact enterprise customers; run assisted migrations and reconcile billing.
Week 6 — Final ramp: Toggle migration.enable to 100% for public users, while keeping a brief rollback window.
Week 7 — Observation: Run services in parallel (if applicable), monitor SLOs and support metrics for 7 days.
Week 8 — Decommission: Set migration.kill_switch if necessary, remove write paths, and take final backups. Publish final deletion and retention schedule.

7. Observability, metrics and audit trails

Migration without telemetry is gambling. Instrument every flag change, export, and redirect.

Emit events for flag changes with metadata: initiator, timestamp, reason, affected cohorts.
Track per-cohort KPIs: migration progress, export success rate, number of support tickets, latency changes.
Dashboards: one migration dashboard for product and another for SRE/ops with alert rules — build monitoring and alerting the way real-time buyer guides and monitoring workflows do (monitoring workflows).
Auditable logs: store flag change history in an append-only store and integrate with SIEM if necessary.

8. CI/CD, governance and flag-as-code

Treat flags like code. Use PRs to change flag defaults, require approvals from product and security owners, and store flag definitions in source control.

Flag-as-code: define flags in YAML/JSON, include owners and expiry dates, and validate schema in CI — supported by infrastructure templates such as IaC templates.
Approval gates: merge requires product sign-off and security review for data exports.
Automated tests: unit tests to ensure flag behavior and integration tests to simulate canary to full rollout flows.

9. Rollback and incident plan

Define fast, tested rollback steps and rehearse them with game days.

Emergency kill-switch flag to instantly revert traffic or write access.
Rollback playbook: steps, contacts, timestamps, and communication templates.
Run rehearsals: simulate a failed export or an unexpected increase in support tickets and validate MTTR — consider when to trust automation and when to gate it (see autonomous agents guidance).

Lessons from Workrooms (practical takeaways)

Meta’s announcement to discontinue Workrooms in February 2026 highlights several lessons for teams running migrations today:

Early clarity: publish dates and next steps early — uncertainty breeds frustration and support load.
Hardware + software coordination: when hardware SKUs are involved (headsets, devices), include supply-chain and sales teams in the migration plan.
Business continuity: enterprise contracts and managed services need bespoke migration paths; treat them as separate cohorts with handoffs.
Public optics: transparency about timelines and data portability builds trust — silence doesn’t.

Concrete code and API examples

Below are practical code snippets you can adapt. These are minimal and focused on illustrating the control flow with flags.

Node.js express middleware: redirect by migration flag

// Assume flagClient returns boolean/variant for a given user
const express = require('express');
const app = express();

// middleware
app.use(async (req, res, next) => {
  try {
    const userId = req.headers['x-user-id'];
    const shouldMigrate = await flagClient.isEnabled('migration.platform.enable', userId);
    if (shouldMigrate) {
      // Read URL from parameterized flag
      const targetUrl = await flagClient.getVariant('migration.platform.redirect_url', userId) || 'https://new.example.com';
      return res.redirect(302, `${targetUrl}?ref=platform_migration&uid=${encodeURIComponent(userId)}`);
    }
    return next();
  } catch (err) {
    // Fail safe: serve original platform
    console.error('Flag eval error', err);
    return next();
  }
});

Python webhook to trigger user export

import requests

def trigger_export(user_id, export_endpoint, api_key):
    payload = {'user_id': user_id, 'priority': 'high'}
    headers = {'Authorization': f'Bearer {api_key}', 'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
    r = requests.post(export_endpoint, json=payload, headers=headers, timeout=30)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json()

# Example usage
# trigger_export('user-123', 'https://export.example.com/api/v1/exports', 'secret-token')

SQL snippet: select migration cohort (inactive > 90 days)

SELECT user_id, email, org_id
FROM users
WHERE last_active_at < NOW() - INTERVAL '90 days'
AND platform = 'legacy_platform'
AND email_verified = TRUE;

Compliance and legal must-dos

Data portability rules (GDPR, CCPA-like regimes) remain critical in 2026. Ensure:

Export processes satisfy subject access requests and data transfer rules — see compliance-oriented infrastructure guidance such as running compliant AI infra for parallels in audit and retention.
Retention and deletion timelines are published and followed.
Audit trails are retained for contractual and regulatory obligations.
If transferring data to a third-party platform, perform a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and ensure appropriate transfer mechanisms.

KPIs and ROI: why this effort pays off

Investing in a disciplined migration pays in several measurable ways:

Reduced support cost: a clean migration reduces escalations and hotfixes — teams commonly see 30–60% drop in migration-related tickets; plan your support waves and staffing using small-team playbooks like tiny teams support guides.
Faster decommission: feature flags and automation can shorten shutdown horizons from months to weeks, saving hosting and operational costs.
Lower legal risk: auditable exports and documented retention reduce regulatory exposure.
Customer retention: clear migrations and good export tools reduce churn and preserve trust.

Final checklist (quick reference)

Define cohorts and success KPIs
Create and own flags with expiry dates and owners
Build export API with verification and resumability
Implement redirect and read-only flows behind flags
Run canary → ramp → enterprise waves per timeline
Instrument everything and create migration dashboards
Enforce flag-as-code with approvals in CI/CD
Practice rollback and incident rehearsals
Publish final decommission & retention policy

Actionable takeaways

Start with a single flag that controls a non-destructive path (e.g., redirects) and use it to validate the control plane.
Expose exports as a first-class API and make them toggleable by cohort using flags; secure that API with reviewed auth stacks such as NebulaAuth.
Automate verification and make the export process resumable to handle partial failures; infrastructure-as-code templates and automated verification patterns can help (IaC templates).
Keep stakeholder communication in lock-step with flag stages: every flag toggle should trigger comms templates for users and internal teams.

Conclusion — a pragmatic migration plan for 2026

Sunsetting platforms will remain a painful but necessary part of product evolution in 2026 and beyond. Use feature flags as your control plane: they provide safety, speed and auditability. Combine flags with robust data export hooks, staged timelines and clear user communication to reduce risk and preserve customer trust. The recent Workrooms sunsetting underscores that even the largest platforms benefit from transparent timelines and solid migration tooling.

If you want a ready-to-run artifact, download our migration playbook and flag templates, or schedule a migration workshop with our product-engineering team to build a custom plan for your platform.

Call to action: Get the migration checklist, flag templates and sample scripts — and run your first canary within 72 hours. Contact us to start.

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