Data migration / import to different Product from JSM

Question

Hi Team,

One of our clients is planning to move from Jira Service Management (JSM) to BMC Helix ITSM. As part of this transition, we are currently evaluating options to migrate the client’s historical data from JSM to Helix.

The client has approximately 3 years of historical data, totalling around 2000 requests, which include:
Incidents
Bugs
Enhancements
Service Requests
We would like to understand the best approach for data migration from JSM to another platform (Helix).
Specifically, we would like to migrate the complete ticket history, including:
Summary and Description
Closure review / resolution details
Comments (internal and public)
Attachments
Custom field data and other metadata

Our questions are:
What is the recommended way to export this data from JSM so that it can be imported into another ITSM tool (Helix)?
Is there a way to export tickets along with comments, attachments, and field details in a structured format suitable for migration?
Are there any native export capabilities, APIs, or marketplace apps that are commonly used for this type of migration?
If full migration is not practical, are there recommended approaches for archiving or retaining historical data outside JSM?
Currently, the client wants to retain access to historical requests for compliance and audit purposes. Because of this, we may need to maintain both systems:
JSM (for historical data until the retention period ends)
Helix (for all new requests)

However, maintaining access to both platforms significantly increases operational cost, so we are exploring whether data migration or archiving is feasible.

Any recommendations, tools, or best practices from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Dr_ Ankita Mehta-OpsHub_ Inc · Answer

Hi @Ashok Murugesan

Thanks for sharing the details. Since the client wants to retain several years of request history for audit purposes, a few practical points are worth considering early:

* Native export limitations: JSM can export issues to CSV, but this mainly captures ticket fields. Comments, attachments, and full change history are not completely preserved in standard exports.
* API based extraction: The Jira REST APIs allow extraction of issues, comments, attachments, and metadata in structured formats. This usually requires scripting to rebuild the relationships between tickets and their associated data.
Field and workflow mapping: Incident, bug, enhancement, and service request fields from JSM must map correctly to Helix equivalents so historical tickets remain meaningful.
* History and attachments: If the goal is compliance or audit access, make sure resolution details, comments, and attachments remain linked to the original tickets.
* Operational overhead: Migrating historical tickets can help avoid the need to maintain JSM in read-only mode just for archival access

In your case, try exploring this listing on Atlassian marketplace, OpsHub Migration Manager (OMM),  that helps move historical tickets between ITSM platforms while preserving comments, attachments, relationships, and field mappings. It supports phased or full migrations and is designed to move data with no downtime, no disruption, and no data loss.

Hope it helps!

Aron Gombas _Midori_ · Answer

@Ashok Murugesan

If you decide to take the CSV route, then the Better Excel Exporter app can be handy during the process, because:

* it can export the Summary, Description, Resolution system fields, Comments, and custom field values (including JSM specific custom fields)
* in Excel you can manually process the ticket information
* you can export the processed information from Excel to CSV
* you can import the CSV to the target system

(Discl. this paid and supported app is developed by our team. Free for 10 users.)

Salih Tuç · Answer

Hi @Ashok Murugesan ,

It seems you're on the Cloud version of JSM. For just the records; you can export all issues into CSV file and then import it back to other ITSM tool.

However, this approach won't cover the attachments. For getting attachments, you can use the Rest API and/or Full system backup.
For comments; you can get the comments by exporting the issues via "CSV (all fields)" option which will give the comments as separate columns. (For further information)

I usually suggest following steps:

* Take a backup for all data from Jira, just in case.
* Write a script that gets the related issues via JQL
* For each issue* Get the related field values
* Get the historic comments
* Get the attachments

* Store this information somewhere

Then, if they insist to see some records in Helix, organize the data as your wish (i.e to the Helix's desired format; Excel or Helix's Rest API) and import to the Helix.

With this way, even if the Jira license expires, they can access the data easily.

For some cases, I am just inserting the data to the Excel (Sharepoint or Google Docs link) and share this link to the users for seeing historical data.

Also, you may check extensions in Helix, they may have some apps that migrates from Jira directly.