The Complete Guide to Migrating from Trengo to Help Scout

This guide covers the end-to-end process of migrating customer data from Trengo to Help Scout, including entity mapping, dependency ordering, and technical caveats.

Why Teams Migrate from Trengo to Help Scout

Common reasons include pricing changes on Trengo's side, a preference for Help Scout's per-user pricing model, feature gaps around reporting or workflow automation, or a strategic shift toward Help Scout's Docs-based knowledge base and Beacon integration. Whatever the driver, the migration process is the same.

Entity Mapping Reference

Before diving into steps, here is a single-reference table mapping every relevant Trengo object to its Help Scout equivalent.

Define Your Migration Scope

Before initiating any data transfer, clearly define what data is moving, what configurations need to be rebuilt, and what legacy items must be archived.

What Will Be Migrated via API?

The bulk of your historical customer data and structural elements can and should be migrated via API, although some require a careful programmatic workaround:

• Foundation Data: This includes your core customer data, such as Contacts/Profiles (which map directly to Help Scout Customers), and organizational groupings, like Contact Groups (mapping to Help Scout Organizations).
• Structural Configuration: This covers defining metadata, such as Custom Field Definitions and your knowledge base structure (Help Centers mapping to Help Scout Sites, Categories mapping to Help Scout Collections/Categories, and Articles).
• Transactional Data: Core communication objects like Tickets (Help Scout Conversations), their associated Ticket Messages (Help Scout Threads), Notes (for contacts or profiles), and Labels (Help Scout Tags) all move over. Similarly, Quick Replies (Saved Replies) move via API.

What Must Be Configured Manually?

While the API allows you to retrieve data on system components, setting up the people and environments often requires manual provisioning to ensure proper access controls.

Users (Agents) and Teams must be set up early, as their IDs are crucial for assigning migrated tickets. Certain API objects, like Webhooks, must be recreated and pointed to the new Help Scout environment.

What Must Be Archived or Rebuilt Manually?

Certain historical operational data lacks a direct migration path to Help Scout and should be archived from Trengo for reference:

• Historical Reporting Data: Trengo offers granular APIs to retrieve Reporting Data (metrics, reports, and aggregates). However, this raw historical data cannot be pushed directly into Help Scout's reporting structure; exporting it as CSVs or archival files is the recommended approach.
• Channel Logs and Templates: Specific transactional data, such as VoIP Call Logs, and channel-specific data like SMS or WhatsApp Templates/Uploads, must often be manually archived, as they pertain to channel-specific functionality that will be reconfigured in the new platform.

Prepare Help Scout for Data Import

The success of your migration relies on having the destination structure ready before pouring in historical content. Build the skeleton first:

1. Users and Teams: Begin by provisioning all your Agents (Users) in Help Scout. Simultaneously, recreate your existing organizational structure by creating Teams. This step establishes the necessary IDs needed later when assigning historical conversations.
2. Define Custom Fields: Identify the custom attributes used on your Trengo Contacts, Profiles, and Tickets. Create corresponding Custom Field Definitions in Help Scout to mirror this data structure.
3. Knowledge Base Structure: Rebuild the container structure for your self-service content. Create the necessary Help Scout Sites (from Trengo Help Centers). Within those sites, establish your primary Categories (Collections).

Migrate Objects

This phase moves the historical data using the necessary dependencies, ensuring that containers exist before content flows into them.

1. Labels (Tags) and Customer Organizations:

Start by setting up the metadata structures. Retrieve all Labels from Trengo and create them as Tags in Help Scout. Next, migrate your Contact Groups over to Help Scout as Organizations.

This creates the corporate entities needed to link customer profiles in the next step.

2. Contacts and Profiles (Customers):

Iterate through your Contacts and Profiles in Trengo and create corresponding Customer objects in Help Scout.

Critically, once the Customer object exists, immediately attach any corresponding Custom Field Values that define that customer (e.g., subscription tier, regional code).

Be sure to migrate all existing Notes associated with these records as well, inserting them as private internal notes on the new Customer profile.

3. Knowledge Base Content: With the basic Knowledge Base structure defined (Sites and Categories), you can now flood the system with content. Iterate through all Articles found in Trengo and recreate them within the appropriate Help Scout Categories/Collections.

4. Tickets (Conversations) and Message History: This is the most complex phase, involving sequential creation steps:

• Create the Conversation: Retrieve historical Tickets and create them as Help Scout Conversations. Ensure the conversation is linked to the correct Customer (migrated in step 2) and placed in the correct Inbox.

• Assign Status and Attributes: Immediately apply all relevant attributes, such as assigning the ticket to the correct User or Team using the IDs created in the preparation step, and tagging the conversation using the appropriate Labels. If the ticket was closed, update the status accordingly. Also, update any remaining Custom Field Values attached to the ticket itself.

• Reconstruct Messages (Threads): The final step is rebuilding the communication timeline. Retrieve all Ticket Messages in chronological order. These messages must be imported into the newly created conversation as Threads. Depending on the original format, use tools to specifically import the original text or email message formats.

5. Quick Replies: Finally, gather your existing Quick Replies and recreate them as Saved Replies in Help Scout.

Post-Migration Verification

Before declaring the migration complete, validate data integrity:

• Record count comparison: Compare the total number of Contacts, Tickets, and Articles in Trengo against the corresponding Customers, Conversations, and Articles created in Help Scout. Any discrepancy signals dropped records during import.
• Thread ordering spot-checks: Select a sample of migrated Conversations and verify that Threads appear in the correct chronological order. Out-of-order threads break the readability of customer history.
• Custom Field validation: For Customers and Conversations that carried Custom Field Values in Trengo, confirm the values transferred correctly to their Help Scout counterparts.
• Tag and Organization linkage: Verify that migrated Tags are applied to the correct Conversations and that Customers are associated with the right Organizations.

Post-Migration Configuration

After the bulk data transfer is complete and verified, configure the remaining operational tools manually to reactivate your customer service environment.

• Webhooks Activation: Recreate all automated Webhooks that were active in Trengo, ensuring they are correctly pointed to the new endpoint services they trigger.
• Automated Workflows: Any automated responses, routing rules, or workflows used in Trengo must be manually reviewed and rebuilt entirely within the Help Scout workflow editor. This is often the best time to review and optimize old processes.

Technical Caveats

Success in this migration often lies in anticipating technical edge cases and adhering strictly to data formats.

• Date Precision: When handling reporting or audit logs, time fields — such as those used for Trengo Reporting v2 data — must typically be submitted and queried using ISO 8601 format (e.g., 2024-01-15T09:30:00Z). Deviating from this format causes timestamp parsing errors.
• Rate Limits on Docs API: Help Scout enforces rate limits on Docs API requests, which are tied to the number of Sites you run. If you have a large knowledge base, pace the migration of Help Center Articles to stay within limits.
• Idempotent Contact Creation: A contact already created via one channel may return an HTTP 200 response when you attempt to recreate it, returning the existing record instead of generating a new Customer. Your migration script must handle this — check the response and map the returned ID rather than assuming a new record was created.
• VoIP and SMS Logs: If you relied on Trengo to manage channel history like VoIP Calls, the Trengo listing API may only return calls made through specific integrations (e.g., Twilio). You may need to pull complete logs directly from the third-party provider.
• Error Handling: When a conversation import fails mid-thread — for example, due to a malformed message body or a rate limit hit — your script should log the failure, skip to the next record, and queue the failed record for retry. Do not re-import the entire conversation; create only the missing Threads to avoid duplicates.

Summary

Migrating from Trengo to Help Scout is a substantial project, but approaching it systematically ensures data integrity and continuity.

By tackling foundational elements like Users and Custom Fields first, then moving essential resources like Contacts, Organizations, and your Knowledge Base, and finally importing the intricate message history layer, you can effectively relocate your customer service history.

Always prioritize archiving non-transferable data, such as detailed Reporting Metrics, Boards/Cards, and specific channel logs, to maintain complete organizational records and allow your team to start fresh in Help Scout with full historical context.

Further reading

• Help Scout Docs API
• Help Scout Mailbox API
• Trengo API Reference