Migrating to Salesforce Service Cloud offers significant benefits, but successful migrations depend on meticulous planning, accurate configuration, and ensuring the right data flows into the platform.
Having completed thousands of migrations, we know how crucial it is to map your data properly and take full advantage of both Salesforce’s API capabilities and its UI configuration tools. This checklist will guide you from initial planning to post-migration validation.
Scope the Migration
Determine the time span of the ticket history you want to migrate. Whether it's one year, five years, or all available history, ensure this aligns with your operational needs.
Decide if you're migrating active agents only or including legacy/archived agents for proper ownership of historical tickets.
Identify which Salesforce objects need migration (e.g., Cases, Contacts, Accounts, Attachments, Custom Fields, and Notes).
Clearly define what data to exclude, like spam, test tickets, deprecated tags, or old user data that doesn't add value.
Thoroughly map old system fields, statuses, and tags to Salesforce’s data model to ensure smooth field mapping.
What Can Be Migrated Via API
Salesforce Service Cloud has a robust API that lets you migrate various key elements:
- Contacts & Accounts: Migrate contact and account data using the Salesforce API. Preserve legacy IDs, custom attributes (e.g., customer type, account status), and associated records for seamless customer experience.
- Cases & Case History: Migrate case records, including each interaction within a case. The Case Object in Salesforce can be used to recreate cases, with all case-related messages, attachments, and updates.
- Attachments: Ensure that all relevant case attachments are migrated and associated correctly with each case, using Salesforce Files API to handle file uploads.
- Custom Fields & Metadata: Migrate custom fields on cases, contacts, and accounts. Salesforce’s Metadata API helps with custom field creation and data mapping.
- Notes & Activities: Salesforce allows you to migrate internal notes and activities tied to cases or contacts to maintain workflow continuity.
- Automation Rules: Some automation and case workflows can be recreated programmatically, but rules like auto-response or escalation policies need manual setup.
- Reports & Dashboards: If you're using reports or dashboards, ensure that they are re-created in Salesforce post-migration using Salesforce Reports API.
What Needs to Be Configured in Salesforce UI
Some elements of your Salesforce Service Cloud environment cannot be migrated via the API and must be manually configured in the UI:
- Users, Roles & Profiles: Create users and assign roles and permissions through the Salesforce UI. Ensure each agent has the right permissions set before they can access cases and data.
- Queues & Teams: Set up teams and assign them to specific case queues to ensure efficient workload distribution.
- Case Assignment Rules: Salesforce’s Case Assignment Rules and Escalation Rules must be set up manually to ensure cases are routed correctly based on predefined conditions.
- Email & Social Media Channels: Configure your email channels, social media channels (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), and any other communication channels directly within Salesforce.
- Workflows & Process Builders: Recreate your workflows and business processes using Salesforce Process Builder and Flow Builder. While some workflows can be migrated via API, others require manual setup.
- Saved Replies & Knowledge Articles: Recreate Saved Replies for agents and upload Knowledge Base Articles to Salesforce’s Knowledge Management system. Knowledge articles must be organized into categories manually.
- Lightning Components: For custom Salesforce setups, you may need to build or reconfigure Lightning Components that interface with your Service Cloud.
- Custom Apps & Tabs: If your organization uses custom applications or tabs within Salesforce, these need to be configured manually via the App Manager in Salesforce.
Pre-Migration Setup in Salesforce
Before importing data into Salesforce, ensure the environment is ready for a smooth transition:
- Create the Salesforce Instance: Set up your Salesforce instance, ensuring it's tailored to your organization’s needs (e.g., case types, data residency).
- Configure Users and Teams: Invite all agents, assign roles, set permissions, and map legacy agent IDs for smooth ownership migration.
- Set Up Channels & Routing Rules: Configure email and social media channels, ensuring proper routing of incoming cases to the correct teams.
- Custom Fields & Record Types: Ensure all necessary custom fields, record types, and layouts are created ahead of time in Salesforce.
- Test Data Import: Run a small pilot migration to test how records (cases, contacts, etc.) are imported, ensuring data integrity (timestamps, attachments, custom fields).
Migration Execution
- Migrate Contacts and Companies First
Start by importing your contact and company records. These are essential for linking cases and conversations in Salesforce, ensuring customer data is properly associated with case records. - Import Cases and Case History
Migrate your case records along with their associated messages, updates, and attachments. Each legacy case should be converted into a Salesforce Case, preserving the full history and case metadata. - Import Custom Fields and Metadata
Migrate any custom fields and metadata associated with contacts, cases, and companies. This ensures all relevant data from your old system is retained in Salesforce. - Import Tags and Statuses
Import legacy tags and case statuses, ensuring they are correctly mapped to Salesforce's tagging and status model. This helps maintain workflow continuity and case categorization. - Migrate Assignments and Ownership
Assign case ownership to the correct agents and teams within Salesforce, ensuring proper continuity of case management after migration. - Run Delta Import and Finalize Routing
Perform a delta import to capture any new records generated during the migration process. Update communication routing rules and forward channels to Salesforce to ensure new cases are handled correctly.
Post-Migration Checklist
Once your data is in Salesforce, perform thorough checks to ensure everything is correct:
- Data Verification: Compare key metrics (number of cases, contacts, attachments, etc.) between the source system and Salesforce.
- Channel Testing: Test each communication channel (email, chat, social media) to ensure that new cases are routed properly.
- Automation & Workflow Testing: Ensure that workflows, case assignment rules, and escalation rules are functioning as expected.
- Agent Training: Ensure that agents are trained on the new system, particularly on workflows, case management, and custom features in Salesforce.
- Go-Live Transition: Set your old system to read-only mode, ensuring agents do not enter new data in the old system.
Common Mistakes and Pro Tips
- Missing Custom Fields: Salesforce API can only populate custom fields that already exist. Create all fields in Salesforce before migration.
- Not Testing Enough: Always run a sample import with varying data to spot-check for issues before importing everything.
- Skipping Agent Training: Even the best migration can fail if agents aren't properly trained on the new system.