How to clean up data prior to migration

Usually, we suggest cleaning up your records as one of the preparation steps before the data migration. It’s because not only the speed but the cost of your migration depend on the number of records you have in your source help desk. Yes, the more records you have, the more time it will take for the tool to process and transfer the data. In terms of the price, it will also grow depending on the number of records you want to move.

So in this article, we’ll show and explain how to clean up your data before the process. Specifically, how to delete it correctly.

Let’s start with the preparation actions before the data cleanup:

1. Determine what data is unnecessary for you. This step is especially important for those who have been using their help desk for some time. Go through all your records and determine which data you don’t need in your target platform. Here is also some advice in this case:

• Our tool doesn’t migrate tickets marked as spam, so there’s no need to delete them. However, some of the tickets can bypass the spam filter in your old help desk. Check if there are such spam tickets and remove them before the transfer.
• In case you have historical data that you haven’t used for quite some time, you may also want to get rid of it because usually, it’s just not important anymore.
• Remember to delete ticket duplicates as most of the help desks just don’t allow having identical names, phone numbers, and other info in different tickets. The data migration will just fail because the tool won’t be able to transfer the record that contradicts the requirements of the target system.

2. Verify if your records contain valid data, especially for older records. If not, either delete it or replace irrelevant details with the relevant ones.

3. Fill out the missing data on all the tickets. Some fields can be obligatory while creating a ticket on certain platforms. Look up these fields and make sure to provide all the necessary information there.

4. We suggest you to always have a data backup. This way, you certainly won’t lose any of the important customer records as you will be able to restore them in the future if needed.

Here are some recommendations for deleting data for certain help desks:

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Deleting Data in Zendesk

In Zendesk, you can’t delete end user’s or agent’s accounts if at least one ticket that was requested by them is not closed. It means that you must solve the ticket first, then it has to be closed, and only after that, you can delete the requester’s account. Remember, that this action cannot be undone.

Deleting Data in Freshdesk

In Freshdesk, you cannot delete contact’s account permanently, unless you’re using Freshdesk Mint. When you delete a contact, it is automatically moved to the Deleted contacts folder, but it still remains in the system. However, all the tickets coming in from this contact will arrive in the Spam folder automatically. Remember, that our tool doesn’t migrate spam tickets, so if you need some of them on the future platform, you have to restore them.

If you need to delete agents from Freshdesk, remember that their accounts also won’t be permanently removed from the system. They will be converted into contacts. As to the tickets assigned to them, they will automatically become unassigned.

Deleting Data in Help Scout

Similarly to Freshdesk, if you delete your agents, the tickets assigned to them, will become unassigned. Also, any workflows they created, will be deactivated.

Deleting Data in Kayako

In Kayako, you can only delete the user permanently. If means that all conversations, notes, or any other data connected to this user or their activities will no longer exist in your help desk. You won’t be able to search the user within Kayako anyhow. This action is impossible to undo, so carefully think if you need all this data in your future system or no.