Exporting data

Exporting data from a previous system can be simple, tricky, or next to impossible!

Many SAAS / Cloud-only solutions do no allow direct access to the database, and export and reporting capabilities in SAAS products are generally not well suited for bulk data exports (with the intention of using this data to import into another system).

Use built-in export feature within the tool

Most tools do not have such an option (at least built in the user interface), so this option is likely unavailable. Most tools have an import capability that can import certain types of data, but not so much an export feature.

Run reports and export from there

Most tools allow you to run reports on different aspects of the software (tickets, incidents, assets, CIs, sites, changes etc..) Depending on the reporting tool/mechanism being used, the reporting tool may have an export feature. This may allow you to export reports that you run into a variety of formats than can then be used for import.

If you are able to export data from reports, you may be able to customize the report to include more fields that you need, and then export the different entity types you need.

Depending on how the reports are created, you may need to do a lot of data cleanup, consolidation and de-duplification in order to get a clean data-set that is useful for importing.

Export directly from the database

If you have direct access to the database the tool is using, you may be able to use native database functionality to export data directly from tables or (even better) pre-made queries.

Other options

Contact the vendor of the previous system and ask them to assist you with exporting data. This may incur professional services charges.

See Exporting Data from HelpMaster