We switched from chat (Slack) to forum (Vanilla) about a year ago and most members are quite happy about it (mainly about the better organization, search and available history). And although no one would want to switch back, we also hear that the move to the forum made some members feel more disconnected from the rest of the community.
Forum discussions tend to be quite a bit more formal compared to chat. Going to a forum is a more deliberate move since you need to actively go to the website, instead of getting notifications from your (Slack/Discord) chat app that you already have open. And probably because chat is more fleeting, people use it for more short reactions (even if it's just an emoticon) and joke around more.
Basically, forum seems to be better for documentation and organization, but chat wins when it comes to sense of community and direct interaction.
We do still have our old community Slack running and since the switch to Vanilla we have a Zapier workflow setup to post any new discussion in Vanilla to Slack, but that doesn't really get any interaction so that in itself is definitely not the answer.
So we are wondering how others solve this. Do you extend the forum capabilities somehow? Do you integrate with a 3rd party chat feature? Have you built chat into Vanilla? Do you just run another chat alongside Vanilla without any integration?
