Intercom — Migration Reference

Intercom — Migration Support Overview

Role in migrations

• Staff (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Company (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Contact (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Ticket (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Category (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Folder (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Article (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Conversation (HD): supported as source (source and target).

Field-level support migrating FROM Intercom (Ticket)

Field-level support migrating TO Intercom (Ticket)

Field-level support migrating FROM Intercom (Company)

Field-level support migrating TO Intercom (Company)

Field-level support migrating FROM Intercom (Contact)

Field-level support migrating TO Intercom (Contact)

Field-level support migrating FROM Intercom (Article)

Field-level support migrating TO Intercom (Article)

Field-level support migrating FROM Intercom (Conversation)

Migration options available for Intercom

• Update cross-links between articles - applies to: both (Article)
• Migrate content translations - applies to: both (Article)
• Migrate the newest records first - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Conversation)
• Retain multi-company contact associations - applies to: both (Contact)
• Select records for Demo - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Conversation), source (Article)
• Migrate records associated with tickets - applies to: source (Company), source (Contact)
• Transfer call recordings - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Conversation)
• Inline images in tickets - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Conversation)
• Skip ticket attachments - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Conversation)
• Add a new tag to tickets - applies to: target (Ticket)

Intercom — Setup & How-To Guide

For more information: https://help-desk-migration.com/help/intercom-migration-guides/ , https://help-desk-migration.com/help/intercom-data-migration-checklist/

When migrating contacts or agents with phone numbers, should the phone number validation be disabled?

When migrating contacts or agents with phone numbers, please keep in mind that if phone number validation is enabled, the data migration might encounter problems if some of the phone numbers are invalid. To prevent this, consider disabling phone number validation in your workspace settings.

Here's how: Settings > Your Workspace > People Data > Phone.

How to ensure a smooth Intercom migration for unassigned tickets?

To ensure a successful migration of tickets without assigned agents, it's essential to enable default assignment settings. Here's how to do it: Setting > Inbox Settings > Assignment Preferences, and then choose "Keep it unassigned or assigned to the team."

Can support agents disable notifications individually?

Yes, your support agents can customize their notification settings individually. To do this, visit Your Account > Notifications.

Why disable campaigns during Intercom migration?

Intercom operates under an API limit, which regulates the number of requests processed over time. Automated email campaigns contribute to this limit, potentially slowing down data migration processes.

To ensure smooth migration, it's advisable to disable active automated email campaigns before initiating the data migration process. Here's how:

1. Log in to your Intercom account.
2. Click on Outbound.
3. Go to Campaigns in the Outbound section.
4. Choose a campaign you would like to disable from the list of your > active campaigns.
5. Now, click on the “Pause campaign” button.

Repeat this process for all campaigns to disable them effectively. With your automated email campaigns disabled, you can proceed with your migration from Intercom without affecting the API limit.

How to export knowledge base data from Intercom?

It's worth noting that in Intercom, it's possible to create an article without a section, leading to a simplified structure of Collection > Article. While seemingly innocuous, this structure can cause unexpected shifts in the hierarchy when exporting Knowledge Base data to a target help desk.

Most other help desk systems support only a three-level hierarchy. Therefore, to ensure a successful migration, the Migration Wizard will automatically assign articles to the default folder and category if it doesn't find them in the hierarchy. Consequently, articles attached to categories without folders will adopt the following hierarchy - Source Default Category; Source Default Folder; Article.

Note: 'Source Default Category' and 'Source Default Folder' are simply names we use to denote the category and folder created to facilitate migration.

To mitigate these issues, we recommend checking if your articles in Intercom adhere to a three-level database hierarchy. If not, ensure to assign the necessary section within the existing collection. Otherwise, post-migration, manual assignment of articles to the appropriate folders and categories will be necessary.

By default, Migration Wizard exports your Intercom articles in a default language. Yet, you have the option to import language variations to specific destination platforms. To enable this, make sure to select "Migrate content translations" when mapping your data.

Tip: Before starting your Intercom export, be sure to add the same languages to the new one platform. This helps ensure that translations migrate correctly.

How to calculate contacts in Intercom?

Intercom breaks your contacts into categories and shows their count next to each. Here’s how you can find it.

1. Select Customers from your sidebar.
2. The People dropdown contains all contact categories and shows their number next to each category.
3. Click +Add filter to filter your contacts by specific data.

How to calculate conversations in Intercom?

Intercom sorts your conversations into categories and counts them for you. You can create views to find specific conversations.

1. Go to Inbox from the sidebar menu.
2. Check the number of tickets next to each category
3. To add more filters, click Create view.
4. Then click +Add filter option. Choose one or more filters and click Save.

How to calculate articles in Intercom?

In Intercom, you can check the number of all articles or calculate them using filters.

1. Choose Articles from the Intercom sidebar menu.
2. Find the number of Intercom articles above the list with your articles.
3. You can filter articles by status, language, tag, and collection and check the number of filtered articles.

How to access unsupported attachment file types in Intercom?

Intercom supports text files, images, videos, and PDF files as default so after the data switch everything works right. But if you imported unsupported file types, you will see an error message.

If you want to migrate unsupported files types, you need to change settings in Intercom before starting your data migration. To access unsupported attachment file types:

1. Go to your Intercom account.
2. Click the User icon in the lower-left corner.
3. Choose the Settings option.
4. Under Settings, select Security.
5. Then click Attachment settings.
6. Open Control which file types can be received.
7. Enable Allow more file types.
8. Fill in the file types you have and want to import from your source platform. Separate them with a comma.
9. Put a tick next to I understand the security risk involved by allowing these file types.
10. Then Save.

Note: Intercom doesn’t support certain file types as they may pose a threat for malicious content or malware. The list of unavailable file types includes .exe, .sys, .scr, .shb, .wsf and others.

Intercom Migration Limitations

1. If the Organization has no connected contacts, it won't be visible on Intercom
2. If the comment has more than five attachments, another comment gets created with the rest of the attachments
3. If the ticket is requested by the agent, a new contact with the same email gets created. Then, all comments on that ticket will be displayed via the agent's profile. The contact with the same email will just become the ticket requester
4. When migrating from Intercom closed date gets value from updated_at field as Intercom doesn’t have native close date field.
5. Agents must be created before starting the migration.
6. If a client has CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys configured, these may be sent out during migration. The client should be informed to disable them beforehand.
7. When migrating from Intercom, all contacts migrate except deleted ones.
8. When migrating to Intercom, the source ID of the company being migrated (created) is inserted.
9. Data migrates from one workspace to one workspace. If the client has multiple workspaces, a separate migration must be set up for each. The workspace can be selected at account connection.
10. At least one ticket type must be created in Intercom for tickets to be migratable.
11. Tags are added to the first comment, since Intercom has no ticket-tag functionality — only comment-tag functionality.
12. If a client is already actively using Intercom and can't disable automations, notifications, etc., they can be offered a separate workspace dedicated to the migration.
13. Both conversations and tickets can be migrated from Intercom; only tickets are migrated to Intercom. Migrating as conversations to Intercom is possible as a custom migration.
14. When migrating from Intercom, companies and contacts have a relationship, but the company field isn't included in conversations.
15. A three-level Help Center hierarchy isn't mandatory in Intercom — an article can belong to just a folder or just a category. Migrating multi-level categories and folders is supported.
16. Brands in Intercom are an attribute of the conversation, not the ticket — but tickets are what gets migrated to the target. So if a client wants a brand set on a migrated ticket, the ticket needs to be updated as a conversation and the brand set there (when tickets are migrated to Intercom, they can later be pulled by the same ID via the conversations endpoint). This requires the client to provide the ID of the desired brand (found under Settings → Brands → select the brand → Brand ID).
17. Team Inboxes in Intercom are output to the mapping as groups. However, if a ticket in Intercom is assigned to an agent, it won't appear in its Team Inbox — only unassigned tickets are shown there.