Migration from Zendesk to Jira Service Desk using JSON file

[Fergus Mc Manamon]

I'm looking to migrate my service tickets from Zendesk but am having difficulty in uploading the JSON file that was exported from Zendesk. Below is the detailed report of the error that I receive. Any assistance that anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Fergus

2020-07-01 18:08:15,056 INFO - Import started by admin using com.atlassian.jira.plugins.importer.sample.SampleDataBean
2020-07-01 18:08:15,076 INFO - ------------------------------
2020-07-01 18:08:15,076 INFO - Importing: Users
2020-07-01 18:08:15,076 INFO - ------------------------------
2020-07-01 18:08:15,076 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2020-07-01 18:08:15,080 INFO - 0 users associated with import. All of them imported as inactive, this can be changed after import in User Access step.
2020-07-01 18:08:15,080 INFO - ------------------------------
2020-07-01 18:08:15,080 INFO - Finished Importing : Users
2020-07-01 18:08:15,080 INFO - ------------------------------
2020-07-01 18:08:15,080 INFO - 0 users successfully created.
2020-07-01 18:08:15,084 INFO - Retrieving projects...
2020-07-01 18:08:15,103 ERROR - Unexpected failure occurred. Importer will stop immediately. Data may be in an unstable state: Unable to create project: ExternalProject{id='null', key='DEMO', externalName='null', name='null', type='null', template='null'}: You must specify a valid project name.
An invalid project type was specified. Make sure the project type is available in your Jira instance. Please talk to your Jira administrator if you need more help.

[Daniel Eads · Accepted solution]

Hey @Fergus Mc Manamon - without taking a look at the JSON file it's hard to make a suggestion on what might need to be changed for the Jira importer to get past the error.

I've looked around on Community a bit and found most people who are doing a Zendesk to Jira migration choose the CSV export instead.

Zendesk's documentation on exporting simply notes this limitation with CSV files:

Does not include deleted tickets, ticket comments, or ticket descriptions.

If you're ok with that, it might be a simple way forward. Otherwise, you'll need to modify the JSON file you have to include the missing details the importer is asking for (it's at least erroring on type and name). Here's our documentation on doing a JSON import so that you have an example to compare against when modifying the exported JSON file.

[Mathis Hellensberg]

Hi @Fergus Mc Manamon 

Can you confirm that your JSON contains a project name?

[Fergus Mc Manamon]

Hi Mathis,

Thanks for responding. The filename I have is zendesktickets.json. Is this what you mean?