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Skip Moore
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Skip Moore created an article,
There are many ways to migrate content from one help center to another. This article primarily focuses on using your help center API to programmatically import content, and gives a high-level overview of the process of migrating existing content to your new help center knowledge base and community. You can also migrate content using the following approaches:
- Copying/pasting - If you are only migrating a few articles, then the fastest and easiest way is to simply copy and paste content from your previous help center into a new Guide article.
- Professional services - If you have large or complex migrations, you can hire Zendesk to help you with your migration.
- Partner Apps - You can explore the Zendesk apps marketplace to find partner apps such as Help Desk Migration.
This article covers the following topics:
Migrating content to your knowledge base
Migrating content from an external system into your help center is a multi-step process where data from one step is required for subsequent steps.
Planning is critical. You'll need to map the structure of your legacy content to your help center's three-layer structure:
Importing your authors as Zendesk users
First, you must import the authors of all your articles as Zendesk users with the role of "agent" (an agent in Zendesk is not necessarily someone who solves tickets (see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles).
To create Zendesk users with the API (see Create user). Ensure you set the
role
attribute to "agent" in each POST request.
{
"user": {
"id": 9873843,
"name": "Roger Wilco",
...
}
}
Record
the ID of each user as you'll need the IDs to set the author_id
attribute of each article you create in your help center.
If you plan on using organizations in user segments to segregate sections, you must create the organizations before you create any users. You can then assign the organization ID to the user when you are creating the user (see Create organization). If your users will belong to multiple organizations, then use organization memberships to add organizations to the user record.
Creating categories in your knowledge base
{
"category": {
"id": 37486578,
"name": "Super Hero Tricks",
"description": "This category contains a collection of Super Hero tricks",
"locale": "en-us",
"position": 2,
...
}
}
Record the ID of each category, because when you create sections later, you'll need the IDs to assign sections to specific categories.
Creating user segments (optional)
If you want to restrict access to certain sections in your help center, you can assign user segments to your sections (see Create user segment).
{
"user_segment": {
"id": 7284
"name": "VIP agents",
"user_type": "staff",
"group_ids": [12, ...],
"organization_ids": [42, ...],
"tags": ["vip"],
"created_at": "2017-05-21T20:01:12Z",
"updated_at": "2017-05-21T20:01:12Z",
"built_in": false
}
}
Record the ID of each user segment because when you are creating sections later, you'll need the segment ID to assign access restrictions to the sections.
Creating sections in your categories
category_id
and user_segment_id
(if any),
in each POST request. Zendesk returns a JSON response with the section's new
ID:{
"section": {
"id": 3457836,
"name": "Avionics",
"description": "This section contains articles on flight instruments",
"locale": "en-us",
"category_id": 3465,
...
}
}
Record the ID of each section because when you create articles later, you'll need the section IDs to assign articles to specific sections.
Creating articles in your sections
title
and body
, make sure you set the
author_id
and section_id
in each POST
request.{
"article": {
"id": 37486578,
"author_id": 3465,
"promoted": false,
"position": 42,
"comments_disabled": true,
"section_id": 98838,
...
}
}
Uploading attachments (if necessary)
If an article has inline images that aren't hosted on a public file server, such
as Amazon S3, then upload the images to your help center (see Create unassociated attachment).
Ensure you set the inline
parameter to
true
.
content_url
) for the
attachment:{
"article_attachment": {
"id": 1428,
"article_id": null,
"file_name": "icon.jpg",
"content_url": "https://company.zendesk.com/hc/article_attachments/1428/icon.jpg",
"content_type": "application/image",
"size": 58298,
"inline": true
}
}
Use the content_url
to update the image URL in the HTML of the
article (see Associate attachments in bulk to
article).
Importing article comments
Migrating content to your community
Importing community content has many of the same considerations as importing a knowledge base. You'll need to import users to assign authors to posts. You'll also need to map the structure of your legacy community content to the two-layer structure of your help center community:
Creating user segments (optional)
If you want to restrict access to certain topics, you'll need user segment IDs (see Create a user segment). When creating the topics later, you'll need the user segment IDs to assign access restrictions to topics.
Importing topics in your community
If applicable, ensure you set the user_segment_id
in the POST
request (see Create topic).
Zendesk returns a JSON response with the topic ID:
{
"topic": {
"id": 115000553548,
"name": "Help Center-Tricks",
...
}
}
Record the ID of each topic because when you create topics later, you'll need the topic IDs to assign posts to specific topics.
Importing posts in topics
In addition
to the title
and details
, make sure you set
the author_id
and topic_id
in each POST
request (see Create post).
Unlike KB articles, authors of community posts can be agents or end users.
When creating a post, the author is automatically subscribed to all updates to that topic, and will be notified when a new post is created or updated.
All
subscribers of the same topic receive an email notification when the post is
created. To prevent subscribers from being overwhelmed by notifications when
bulk importing posts, include a notify_subscribers
parameter
with a value of false
in your POST
requests.
{
"post": {
"id": 35467,
"author_id": 89567,
"title": "Help!",
"details": "My printer is on fire!",
"notify_subscribers": false,
...
}
}
Importing comments in posts
After creating the posts and getting their IDs, you can now add their associated comments (see Create comment).
You can only create one comment at a time. When creating a post comment, the author of the comment is automatically subscribed to all updates to that topic and are notified when a new post is created or updated.
All subscribers of the same topic receive an email notification when the comment
is created. To prevent subscribers from being overwhelmed by notifications,
include a notify_subscribers
parameter with a value of
false
in your POST requests.
Edited Feb 07, 2025 · Skip Moore
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Skip Moore commented,
Steven Loeb, This is the 1st time I have heard of not creating the project links. Could you post here https://github.com/zendesklabs/project_app/issues anything you have on replications steps
View comment · Posted Feb 14, 2018 · Skip Moore
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Skip Moore commented,
I have fixed the code and submitted the fix to the labs team. If you want to use it right now feel free to download it and upload it as private app.
View comment · Posted Dec 31, 2014 · Skip Moore
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