zulip/templates/zerver/help/import-from-rocketchat.md

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Import from Rocket.Chat

Starting with Zulip 5.0, Zulip supports importing data from Rocket.Chat, including users, teams, channels, discussions, messages, and more.

Note: You can only import a Rocket.Chat workspace as a new Zulip organization. In particular, you cannot use this tool to import data into an existing Zulip organization.

Import from Rocket.Chat

First, you need to export your data from Rocket.Chat. Rocket.Chat does not provide an official data export feature, so the Zulip import tool works by importing data from a Rocket.Chat database dump.

If you're self-hosting your Rocket.Chat instance, you can create a database dump using the mongodump utility.

If your organization is hosted on Rocket.Chat Cloud or another hosting provider that doesn't provide you with database access, you will need to request a database dump by contacting their support.

In either case, you should end up with a directory containing many .bson files.

Import into Zulip Cloud

Email support@zulip.com with your database dump and your desired Zulip subdomain. Your imported organization will be hosted at <subdomain>.zulipchat.com.

If you've already created a test organization at <subdomain>.zulipchat.com, let us know, and we can rename the old organization first.

Import into a self-hosted Zulip server

First install a new Zulip server with Zulip 5.0 or newer, skipping "Step 3: Create a Zulip organization, and log in" (you'll create your Zulip organization via the data import tool instead).

Now, get the directory containing all the bson files in your database dump and save it inside /home/zulip/rocketchat on your Zulip server and rename it to rocketchat (the directory at /home/zulip/rocketchat should contain all the bson files).

Log in to a shell on your Zulip server as the zulip user. To import with the most common configuration, run the following commands:

cd /home/zulip/deployments/current
./scripts/stop-server
./manage.py convert_rocketchat_data /home/zulip/rocketchat --output /home/zulip/converted_rocketchat_data
./manage.py import "" /home/zulip/converted_rocketchat_data
./scripts/start-server

This could take a few seconds to several minutes to run, depending on how much data you're importing. The server stop/restart is only necessary when importing on a server with minimal RAM, where an OOM kill might otherwise occur.

Import options

The commands above create an imported organization on the root domain (EXTERNAL_HOST) of the Zulip installation. You can also import into a custom subdomain, e.g. if you already have an existing organization on the root domain. Replace the last line above with the following, after replacing <subdomain> with the desired subdomain.

./manage.py import <subdomain> /home/zulip/converted_rocketchat_data

{!import-login.md!}

Caveats

This import tool is currently beta and does not support importing the following data:

  • User avatars
  • Default channels for new users
  • Starred messages
  • Threads as separate topics
  • Messages longer than Zulip's limit of 10,000 characters.
  • Messages from Rocket.Chat Discussions are imported as topics inside the Zulip stream corresponding to the parent channel of the Rocket.Chat Discussion.
  • Messages from Rocket.Chat Discussions having direct channels (i.e. private messages) as their parent are imported as normal private messages in Zulip.

Additionally, because Rocket.Chat does not provide a stable data export API, the import tool may require small changes from time to time to account for changes in the Rocket.Chat database format. Please contact us if you counter any problems using this tool.