Migrating existing content to your help center


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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. You can also migrate content using the following approaches:


Copying and 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 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
Importing your authors as Zendesk users
Creating categories in your knowledge base
Creating user segments (optional)
Creating sections in your categories
Creating articles in your sections
Uploading attachments (if necessary)
Importing article comments



Migrating content to your community
Creating user segments (optional)
Importing topics in your community
Importing posts in topics
Importing comments in posts





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.
After
you have successfully created a user, Zendesk returns the details of the user in
the JSON response, including the user's new
ID: {
"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.
Tip: You might
want to create a map of each author ID and their legacy articles. 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
Categories are collections of sections (see Create category). After you have
created a category, Zendesk returns a JSON response with the category's new
ID: {
"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).
After you have created a user segment, Zendesk returns a JSON response with the
user segment's new
ID: {
"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
Sections are collections of articles (see Create section). Ensure you set the
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
When you have all the section IDs and user IDs from the previous steps, you can
create articles (see Create article). In addition to the
title and body, make sure you set the
author_id and section_id in each POST
request.
Note: All authors are automatically subscribed to their articles. If
your help center has been activated, then the authors will receive an email
notification when the article is created.

Zendesk returns a JSON response that looks as
follows: {
"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.
Zendesk returns a JSON response with a URL (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
To import comments, you'll need an author ID and the article's ID. Both agents
and end users can be authors of comments (see Create comment).
Note: A comment author
is automatically subscribed to the article. If your help center has been
activated, then they'll get an email notification when their comment is
created.





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.



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