How to import work notes / comments to incidents when migrating from another program

[David Morden]

I'm working on a client migration from ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to the ServiceNow platform (Istanbul).   I have been able to import all the incidents from ME SDP through import sets and transform maps.   When I use the transform maps to import the work notes and comments from the old system, all new comments are tagged with my user and time/date of the import.   Scavenging through other postings surrounding this same topic, I have not found anything with a successful outcome.   I have tried importing the comments to both the sys_audit and the sys_journal_field tables (tried individually and importing to both), but nothing shows in the UI and the created date and created by fields are overwritten with my user and the import date/time.

Can anyone help to resolve this issue?   The client needs this information available with the original info as they are a legal establishment.

[Jon Barnes]

Oh, right, I see the issue now. in your onbefore and onafter scripts, you will want to actually use the variable "target", and not "sys_journal_field". that should at least get your journals with the right data. But we will still be left with the problem of how to get the history to generate correctly.

[David Morden]

Unfortunately, I made the updates to the 'target' in the scripts, but none of the imports had the correct created date/time or created by values.   Any other thoughts?

[lordy]

Apologies for thread resurrection but it was not answered so this might be useful to others.

Took a while to work out but this seems to work on Jakarta. I've written up the approach below..

How to migrate/import Comments and Work Notes from External Systems

[reginabautista]

To get the the nfo such as who added the journal and when, you may

1. go to the sys_journal_field table by entering sys_journal_field.list on the filter navigator.

2. Open any record

3. Right click on the header then choose 'Show XML'

4. Find the fields you were looking for (i do not have access to an instance right now but I would imagine they would be created_by and created fields)

5. As to the comments field i believe the field is called 'value'.

6. Use these fields in re-building your activity stream.

Also please post your code here so we could help look at the cause of the issue.

Hth

Regina

[Allen Andreas]

Hi Regina,

You seem pretty on point with information regarding an import etc. Do you have any tips for my case...

basically we are upgrading from Express to Enterprise (not doing a migration, but a clean install and importing things over)...

So I have imported the sys_journal_field and the sys_audit tables via XML...I can see that everything came over...looks good, etc.

I then import the incident via XML and I see it show up...mostly all fields are filled in (I created everything - incident form, etc. ) as a mirror to Express to everything comes over, correct values, etc...

However...we are still having an issue where the activity is missing, the comments are out of order, the caller or opened by is listed on every single comment as if they made it, but they didn't...

I think I'm pretty close to connecting these pieces, but I'm unsure what to do now...

We really don't want to put in an HI ticket and use support time, etc.

Any help is greatly appreciated!