Part 1: Overview and Access

Introduction

Hello and welcome. I’m John B. HubSpot CRM Data Migration Specialist. And this lesson is a guided tour of Smart Transfer by HubSpot. In this lesson you will learn how to get started using Smart Transfer to make CRM data migrations fast and easy.

This lesson will cover the following topics.

• What is Smart Transfer?

• Using Audit to plan and troubleshoot

• Performing a Configuration Transfer to prepare the portal

• Using syncs for a migration

• Running post-sync actions for migrating additional data

• Using Clean up to wrap up a project

• Using Revert to rollback changes

This video will be an overview of Smart Transfer and how it is typically used.

Warning

A quick warning before we proceed.

Smart Transfer is fast and easy but it is an incredibly powerful tool that can make drastic changes to a HubSpot account and its data so it should be handled with care. We encourage you to complete this entire lesson before trying it out.

Testing Smart Transfer in a live environment is strongly discouraged. We instead recommend creating a test portal using a developer account for any testing. For more information on creating a developer account see the link in the Resources section of this lesson.

With that said, the two most important pieces of information to retain from this lesson are:

• It is impossible for Smart Transfer to impact the data in the source. There are zero features that make changes to source data. We strongly discourage changing settings so that data flows both ways.

• Only uninstall the integration under one of these two conditions

• The migration has been successfully completed and you have run the Clean up process in Smart Transfer

• You have Reverted everything

Uninstalling the integration in any other scenario will create complications that will require manual correction.  

What is Smart Transfer

Overview

With that out of the way, here’s an overview. HubSpot Smart Transfer consists of a set of features designed to automate, organize, rollback, and assist with QA during the data migration process. By leveraging third-party APIs and HubSpot features, these tools will take you through the migration process end-to-end, with the least amount of friction possible. These tools are designed to recreate data from third-party CRMs in HubSpot so it will be as close to the original as possible while taking data model differences into consideration.

It is also important to understand that Smart Transfer delivers a very specific kind of CRM data migration. It is purely a replication of the existing data. Once that data is migrated, HubSpot has a variety of features to enable users to transform and restructure their data and to improve its quality.

Also note that since Smart Transfer uses third-party APIs, it can only migrate data from active accounts that have API access.

Typical Process

Here is the typical process for performing a CRM Data Migration with Smart Transfer.

• Run an Audit to get insights into the data

• Use Configuration Transfer to prepare the portal for the data

• Enable the Sync connections to migrate most of the data

• Check the failing records and resolve as needed

• Get everything else ready for the transition

• Run the Post-Sync actions to migrate data that won’t sync

• Review the migrated data

• Use Clean up to disable the connections and clear out any mess from the Configuration Transfer

All of these steps are essential and we highly recommend going through the process end to end as laid out here.

Getting Started

Smart Transfer can be accessed from the Data Integration screen which can be accessed in the Data Management menu in the left hand menu. The link for Smart Transfer will be in the upper right. That will take you to the Transfer from page where there is a list of the supported CRMs with buttons to install the integrations. If an integration is already installed the button will instead say Transfer and clicking it will take you to the User Guide. Once you have installed the integration you'll be redirected to the user guide which includes additional information on the tool and the typical process for migrations using Smart Transfer.

Alternative interface

It is also possible to access Smart Transfer from the HubSpot settings in  Connected apps inside the Data Sync integration settings. There will be a Smart Transfer tab inside the Data Sync integration settings page for the supported CRMs. The tools will function the same way in both interfaces and actions taken in either interface will appear in both.

Next time

That’s it for this video. Next time you will learn about using the Audit tool.