Migrating to Respondo
Moving from another helpdesk? Bring your knowledge base, conversation history, saved replies, and workspace settings over in one guided pass — a one-time import with no ongoing connection to your old tool.
Overview#
The migration wizard connects to your current helpdesk with a read-only API credential, shows you exactly what it found, lets you choose what to bring over, and then imports everything in the background while you keep working. When it finishes, your articles power the AI agent, your past conversations sit in the Inbox with full history, and your saved replies are ready to use.
One-time import
Data is copied once. Respondo does not sync back to your old helpdesk or keep a live connection to it.
You pick what moves
Each category — articles, conversations, saved replies, settings — can be toggled on or off. Articles can even be cherry-picked one by one.
Honest progress
A live progress screen shows real per-category counts — imported, updated, skipped, failed — and you can cancel at any point.
Supported sources#
Respondo can import from three helpdesks. Each one names things a little differently — the wizard uses the vendor's own terminology throughout:
| Source | Knowledge base | Reusable answers |
|---|---|---|
| Zendesk | Help Center articles | Macros |
| Intercom | Articles | Saved replies (not available — see limitations below) |
| Freshdesk | Solutions | Canned responses |
What gets imported#
The import runs in four independent categories. You choose which ones to include on the Choose step of the wizard:
| Category | What it becomes in Respondo |
|---|---|
| Knowledge base articles | Published articles become a knowledge source for the AI agent you select — the agent can immediately answer from them. You can import everything or cherry-pick individual articles, with a per-language filter for multilingual help centers. |
| Past conversations | Tickets and conversations arrive in the Inbox as resolved conversations with their full message history and contacts. High-quality question-and-answer pairs are also mined from them as training data, so the agent learns how your team actually answers. |
| Macros / saved replies / canned responses | Your reusable answers become saved replies (Settings → Macros) that teammates can insert into any conversation. |
| Workspace settings | Timezone, business-hours schedules (including holidays), and your company name. Nothing is applied blindly — the wizard shows a side-by-side diff of each setting, and only the changes you accept are written. |
Imported conversations do not trigger any automation: no bot replies, no escalations, no notifications. They arrive quietly as history. Because a human resolved them in your old helpdesk, they are filed under Resolved by team rather than Resolved by AI.
Credentials you need#
Each provider needs a read-only API credential. The Connect step of the wizard tells you exactly where to create it:
| Source | You enter | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Zendesk | Subdomain, admin email, and an API token | In Zendesk: Admin → Apps and integrations → APIs → Zendesk API |
| Intercom | Access token and your data region (US, EU, or Australia) | In the Intercom Developer Hub: create an internal app under Your apps, then copy its Access Token from Authentication |
| Freshdesk | Domain and an API key | In Freshdesk: Profile settings → View API key (an admin's key imports the most) |
Running the wizard#
Open the migration hub at /migrate, or reach it from Knowledge → Add source → Switch from a helpdesk. Pick your source and the wizard walks you through four steps:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Connect | Enter the read-only credential. Respondo verifies it and reads your workspace to count what is available to import. |
| 2. Choose | Toggle the categories you want, pick the AI agent that should receive the knowledge, and optionally cherry-pick individual articles. |
| 3. Preview | Review the workspace-settings diff — each proposed change is shown against your current value, and you accept them individually. |
| 4. Run | The import runs as a background job with live per-category progress. You can leave the page and come back — the hub shows the running migration on its provider card. |
Only one migration can run at a time per workspace. You can cancel a running import from the progress screen, and you can run an import again later — already-imported items are recognized and updated or skipped instead of duplicated.
Imported conversations are native#
Every imported conversation is assigned to the real channel the customer used — a ticket that arrived by email becomes a native email conversation, a chat from a website messenger becomes a native widget conversation. There is no separate "migrated" channel and no special migrated behavior: imported conversations filter, search, assign, and reply exactly like conversations that started in Respondo.
When the original channel cannot be determined, Respondo places the conversation where you can actually continue it: if the contact has a usable email address, it becomes an email conversation; otherwise it becomes a widget conversation, which needs no address to remain readable.
Limitations#
What can be imported is bounded by what each vendor's public API exposes. The wizard is honest about this — a category a source cannot serve is shown as unavailable with the reason, instead of silently importing nothing:
- Intercom saved replies cannot be migrated — Intercom's public API does not expose them.
- Intercom settings transfer only the workspace timezone; the API does not expose office hours.
- Very long Intercom conversations (more than roughly 500 parts) are imported truncated — the API returns at most 500 parts per conversation.
- Zendesk and Freshdesk support all four categories: conversations, knowledge base, reusable answers, and settings.
If a run finishes with some categories failed, its status is reported as partial and the progress screen shows which category failed and why. You can fix the cause (for example, an expired API token) and run the import again.