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

Import from HipChat/Stride

Starting with Zulip 1.9, Zulip supports importing data from HipChat and Stride, including users, rooms, messages, avatars, and custom emoji.

This tool has been used to import HipChat teams with thousands of members, thousands of streams and millions of messages. If you're planning on doing an import much larger than that, or run into performance issues when importing, contact us.

Note: You can only import a HipChat or Stride group as a new Zulip organization. In particular, you cannot use this tool to import data into an existing Zulip organization.

Import from HipChat or Stride

First, export your data.

{start_tabs} {tab|cloud}

1. Log in at yourdomain.hipchat.com/admin/.

2. Click on the Data Export tab.

3. Select the data to export.

4. Set a Password to encrypt your export.

5. Click Export.

Once the export has completed, the export will be available to you in the admin console.

{tab|server}

1. Upgrade to the latest version to ensure you have the latest updates to the HipChat export dashboard.

2. Log in at the domain name configured for your HipChat Server.

3. Click on Server Admin > Export.

4. Select the data to export.

5. Set a Password to encrypt your export.

6. Click Export.

Once the export has completed, you will receive an email with a link to download the file.

!!! tip "" If you are not on the latest version of HipChat Server / Data Center, you can do a command line export with hipchat export --export. See HipChat's command line export docs for more information.

{tab|stride}

1. Log in at yourdomain.atlassian.net/admin/.

2. Click on Stride in the bottom left in Application Settings.

3. Click Create export.

4. Select the data to export.

5. Set a Password to encrypt your export.

6. Click Export.

{end_tabs}

!!! warn "" Note: Only HipChat Group Administrators can export data from HipChat.

Import into Zulip Cloud

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

Also, see the caveats section notes on room subscribers and consider whether you want to also send a HipChat API key to provide a more faithful import.

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, skipping "Step 3: Create a Zulip organization, and log in" (you'll create your Zulip organization via the data import tool instead).

Use upgrade-zulip-from-git to upgrade your Zulip server to the latest master branch.

Log in to a shell on your Zulip server as the zulip user. To import with the most common configuration, run the following commands, replacing <exported_file> with the HipChat export file and <password> with the password you set during the HipChat export.

cd /home/zulip/deployments/current
supervisorctl stop all  # Stop the Zulip server
openssl aes-256-cbc -d -in <exported_file> -out hipchat.tar.gz -md md5 -pass pass:<password>
./manage.py convert_hipchat_data hipchat.tar.gz --output converted_hipchat_data
./manage.py import '' converted_hipchat_data
./scripts/restart-server

This could take 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> converted_hipchat_data

{!import-login.md!}

Caveats

While the import tool will correctly import the subscribers of private rooms, HipChat does not store or export the list of subscribers for public rooms. You can pick one of the following options for handling this:

1. Subscribe all users to all public streams (the default, which is good for small organizations).

2. Subscribe only HipChat room owners to public streams (and plan for users to subscribe to the imported Zulip streams manually after the import completes) using the --slim-mode option to manage.py convert_hipchat_data.

3. Use the HipChat API to fetch each room's current room subscribers as of the moment the import is run. Because HipChat doesn't store subscribers to a room when clients are not connected, these subscriptons will be incomplete for users who don't have an actively connected client at the time of the import. You need to pass a HipChat access token via --token=abcd1234 in manage.py convert_hipchat_data (or include it in your request, if importing into Zulip Cloud).