Migrating from a different vendor can be both exciting but also a bit daunting. Luckily, the Gainsight Customer Communities team has a lot of experience to help guide you through the process from beginning to end. We will provide you with a project plan including the tasks done by you and the Gainsight team, a timeline, resources, and best practices to make the move to our community successful.
What data can Gainsight migrate?
Ultimately, it will depend on which data you provide, however we can often migrate most of the things from your previous vendor. Here is a brief list of key items that are usually migrated:
- Parent/sub categories
- Topic/threads/replies
- Content including emoticons, inline images, quotes, @mentions, tables, polls, likes
- Attachments (which files types are supported can be found here, but we can convert them for you, too)
- User data (username, first name and last name, userid, avatar, followers and following, role(s))
It is also possible to migrate your ideas and product updates for an additional fee.
If you have specific requests or questions, please contact your Account Executive or your Onboarding Manager.
What cannot be migrated?
There are only a few things that we cannot migrate - mostly due to security reasons. One of them is passwords, and the other one are private messages. User settings can also not be migrated due to a lack of mirrored functionalities between platforms.
Can Gamification be transferred over?
Points, badges and ranks can be migrated, however this is an add-on. Most customers like to start with a clean slate for their users, so they build a new Gamification system in their Customer Community.
Which platforms can we migrate from?
We can migrate from any other platform, although some are simpler to migrate from than others. There are a number of vendors from which we have already migrated from, which makes these migrations a bit more streamlined.
What does the migration process look like?
We recommend that you provide us with at least two data exports - one at the beginning of your project to use for your sandbox imports, and a second for the final migration into your production environment.
During the migration process we complete at least two sandbox imports to ensure that your data looks good in the Gainsight community platform. This is achieved by collaborating and Gainsight conducting QA and you conducting UAT. We then take in your feedback and adjust our migration scripts to meet the desired outcome.
If needed, we can run more sandbox migrations. Note that each sandbox run will add ~2 weeks to the overall migration timeline; one week for UAT/QA and one week for script adjustments.
Once you give us sign-off on your data in your sandbox environment, we will migrate everything to your production environment and you are ready to launch.
Additionally, we recommend that you place your current community into a read-only state two to three days before you would like to go live with your new platform. This will ensure that there are no new posts created after you provide us the data export, and we import said data into your production environment. After we complete the final migration, you will go through a series of final data checks, ensuring that all your data looks as expected. When we receive a confirmation from you, we will add the redirects and the domain name switch will take place. Your new community is now live! 😄
How long does the migration process take?
The migration timeline starts when you have filled in your migration plan and provided us with your data. The timeline can vary depending on multiple factors, such as amount of data, the data format and the complexity of the new desired structure.
It also depends if we are migrating from a vendor we have done already, or if it is a new vendor. Traditionally, migration from a new vendor will take a bit longer as it will take our engineers some time to create new scripts in order to convert the data into our platform, as well as taking a bit more time during the early phases of the data analysis and UAT.
How are users affected by the migration?
This will depend a lot on your authentication method, as users can either use SSO or our default login to access the community platform:
- SSO: this is the easiest and most user-friendly option, users login via the SSO button and are logged in automatically.
- Default authentication: users have to request a new password in order to login, since passwords are not migrated. We recommend to create a call-to-action on the community so users are made aware of this action. In addition, you can mention this in any communications you send out around the launch of your new community.
How can we send our data?
We recommend to use our sFTP, hosted on AWS - this is a secure method of providing us the data, and does not incur any additional cost from your side. You will need to provide an OpenSSH 2048bit RSA - public key, and we will provide you the login details so you can securely transfer your data export.
Some clients have also provided us their data via file-sharing services, such as Google Drive. This is only an option for files of less than 100 megabytes.
What are the data requirements?
CSV (needs to have a (,) delimiter) or SQL (UTF-8 encoded) are preferred, but we can work with other formats. Regardless of the format, we ask that you please include all inline images and attachments, and that the data is taken from your production environment.
Please note: It is also very important to keep the same data structure when exporting since the scripts are based on the first export you will provide. If you provide data in different structures, it will result in delays in the migration process.
We will provide you with a template if you are migrating from Salesforce.
How are redirects set up?
When you are migrating from a platform known to us, we will simply copy the 301 redirects from previous migrations, resulting in a smooth and simple process.
When migration from a new vendor, we ask that you please share your current URL structures for all your content (categories/topics/questions). We also recommend sharing multiple examples, as it could be that the structure is different per category/topic.
For example:
- For topics it could look like this: /t/some-text-here/<topicID>
- For categories: /c/a-category-name/<categoryID>