CRM migration
Field-level mapping, validation, and rollback between Cision and monday CRM. We move data and schema; workflows are rebuilt natively in monday CRM.
Cision
Source
monday CRM
Destination
Compatibility
7 of 8
objects map 1:1 between Cision and monday CRM.
Complexity
BStandard
Timeline
2-4 weeks
Overview
Moving from Cision to Monday.com CRM is a pivot from a specialized PR and media intelligence platform to a visual work management CRM. Cision stores journalist contacts, press release distribution records, coverage mention streams, and campaign analytics in a media-relations data model; Monday.com CRM uses a board-based architecture of Items, Groups, and columns that resembles interconnected spreadsheets more than a traditional CRM. The migration is unusual because the platforms serve overlapping PR workflow needs but with fundamentally different data structures. We map Cision media lists to Monday.com Groups, campaigns to Boards, and coverage mentions to tagged Items, while resolving Cision's dependency on assisted export requests (5-10 business day turnaround) before any data moves. The journalist database, wire distribution, and monitoring streams that define Cision's value do not have direct Monday.com equivalents; we document this gap during scoping so teams can decide whether to maintain a Cision carve-out or rebuild with integrations.
Every standard and custom field arrives verified.
AI proposes the map; you confirm before any record moves.
Parent–child, lookups, and ownership stay linked.
Calls, emails, meetings — with original timestamps.
Documents, uploads, and inline notes move with the record.
Why teams make this switch
Leaving
What's pushing teams away
Choosing
What's pulling them in
Object mapping
Each row shows how a Cision object lands in monday CRM, including any object-level transformations, lookup resolution, or schema-design dependencies.
Typical mapping — final map is confirmed during the sample migration step.
Cision
Media Contacts / Journalists
monday CRM
Contact
1:1Cision's journalist contact records (beat assignments, outlet affiliations, contact details, social profiles) map to Monday.com Contact records. The 1.4M+ Cision journalist database does not migrate; only user-curated contacts stored in Cision media lists are exportable. We map Cision contact properties (name, email, phone, outlet, beat) to Monday.com Contact fields and preserve custom properties as free-text or labeled columns. Deduplication runs against email address as the primary key.
Cision
Distribution Lists
monday CRM
Board Group
1:manyCision media lists (curated contact groupings with list-level metadata) map to Monday.com Boards with Groups representing individual lists. Each Group contains Items linked to Contact records, preserving the contact-to-list membership relationship. We extract list names, descriptions, and member email addresses during export, then reconstruct Groups in Monday.com with Items pointing to the mapped Contact records. Custom list metadata fields map to Board-level columns.
Cision
Press Releases
monday CRM
Item (in a Press Releases Board)
1:1Press release records from PR Newswire and PRWeb include distribution history, recipient lists, wire tier, and open/click metrics. Monday.com has no native press release object; we create a Press Releases Board with Items representing each release. Release content, metadata, and performance data migrate as Item columns; wire distribution tier and recipient lists become custom columns. The wire distribution itself (the actual syndication via PR Newswire) does not transfer and requires separate account management outside Monday.com.
Cision
Mention Streams / Coverage
monday CRM
Item (in a Coverage Board)
1:1Monitored coverage records from CisionOne include article metadata, outlet information, sentiment analysis, reach estimates, and tags. We create a Coverage Board in Monday.com with Items representing individual coverage mentions. Sentiment and reach data map to numeric or status columns. Cision's duplicate article issues require a deduplication pass before import. Note that Monday.com does not provide media monitoring; this migration reconstructs historical coverage records but does not replicate the active monitoring capability.
Cision
Campaigns
monday CRM
Board
1:1Cision PR campaigns group press releases, pitches, and coverage mentions into trackable units with name, date range, status, and linked contacts. We map each campaign to a Monday.com Board, with the campaign name as the Board name and linked contacts as Items or Groups within the Board. Date range and status become Board-level or Group-level columns. We resolve the parent Contact references before creating Board Items.
Cision
Media Outlets / Publications
monday CRM
Organization
1:1Cision outlet records (publication name, type, geography, beat coverage, contact relationships) map to Monday.com Organizations. We map outlet type to a custom column (Print/Digital/Broadcast), geography to a location column, and the outlet-contact relationship by linking Organization to the corresponding Contact record in Monday.com. Multi-beat outlets may result in multiple Organization records with different beat assignments as column values.
Cision
Social Streams
monday CRM
Item (in a Social Board)
1:1Social monitoring data from Brandwatch integration includes social mentions, engagement metrics, and trend attribution. We export social records with platform attribution (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook) and create a Social Board in Monday.com with Items representing individual social mentions. Engagement metrics migrate as numeric columns. Brandwatch-specific metadata is flagged as a Notes field since Monday.com has no native social intelligence equivalent and teams requiring ongoing social monitoring should plan a separate Brandwatch or equivalent integration.
Cision
Team Workspaces / Users
monday CRM
User
1:1Cision user accounts (name, email, role, workspace assignments) map to Monday.com User records. We extract active users by email match and provision corresponding Monday.com User accounts. Workspace-based access controls from Cision are documented for manual rebuild in Monday.com Workspace permissions. Owner assignment on Items (Contacts, distribution list Items) resolves by email match to the mapped User.
| Cision | monday CRM | Compatibility | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media Contacts / Journalists | Contact1:1 | Mapping required | |
| Distribution Lists | Board Group1:many | Mapping required | |
| Press Releases | Item (in a Press Releases Board)1:1 | Mapping required | |
| Mention Streams / Coverage | Item (in a Coverage Board)1:1 | Mapping required | |
| Campaigns | Board1:1 | Fully supported | |
| Media Outlets / Publications | Organization1:1 | Mapping required | |
| Social Streams | Item (in a Social Board)1:1 | Mapping required | |
| Team Workspaces / Users | User1:1 | Mapping required |
Gotchas + challenges
Platform-specific issues from each side, plus the pair-specific challenges that don't show up on either platform's page on its own.
Cision gotchas
No self-service bulk data export
Pricing model is opaque and contract-dependent
Data accuracy gaps in monitoring streams
Alert and dashboard configurations are not portable
Brandwatch social data stored separately
monday CRM gotchas
Subitems are not included in bulk exports
Daily API call limits vary sharply by plan
Legacy automations (Sentence Builder) are being deprecated
Excel and account exports only include table views
Enterprise admins can disable non-admin exports
Pair-specific challenges
Migration approach
Discovery and assisted export coordination
We audit the customer's Cision account across sub-products (CisionOne, PR Newswire, PRWeb, Brandwatch) to identify which data types are in scope. We immediately submit assisted export requests for all required data types on the customer's behalf and use the 5-10 business day fulfillment window to design the Monday.com board architecture. We document active monitoring alerts, custom dashboard layouts, and distribution list structures during a discovery call and deliver a written scope confirmation before proceeding.
Monday.com board architecture design
We design the destination Board structure in Monday.com based on the customer's Cision data types. The default architecture uses separate Boards for Contacts, Distribution Lists (with Groups per list), Press Releases, Coverage, Campaigns, Organizations, and Social. We define custom columns to capture Cision metadata (wire tier, outlet type, sentiment, reach estimates) that has no direct Monday.com equivalent, and we configure cross-board Lookups for Organization-to-Contact relationships. Board permissions and Workspace structure map from Cision workspace assignments.
Data preparation and deduplication
We parse Cision export files (typically delivered as CSV or Excel with non-standard formatting) and run a deduplication pass on coverage mention records using article URL and outlet-plus-timestamp as the dedupe key. We reconcile outlet names across Cision records to identify统一的 publication entities for Organization mapping, and we flag records with incomplete outlet metadata for customer review. Distribution list membership is extracted as a separate relation table linking contact email to list name, which we use to reconstruct Group membership during Board population.
Schema provisioning and test import
We provision the designed Board structure in a Monday.com test workspace, create all custom column types, and run a sample import of 50-100 records for each data type. The customer spot-checks record accuracy, verifies that the column mapping captures the intended Cision metadata, and confirms that Board and Group structure matches their distribution list and campaign hierarchy. Any mapping corrections happen in this phase before full production migration.
Production migration in dependency order
We run production migration in record-dependency order: Monday.com Users (resolved by email match to Cision Owners), Organizations (from Cision Media Outlets), Contacts (with Organization Lookup resolved), Board Groups (from distribution lists with Contact membership reconstructed), Press Releases Board Items, Coverage Board Items (with deduplication applied), Campaign Boards, and Social Board Items. Each phase emits a row-count reconciliation report before the next phase begins. Attachments and file links migrate as URL columns or external references.
Cutover, validation, and handoff
We freeze Cision writes during cutover, run a final delta migration of any records modified during the migration window, then hand Monday.com over as the system of record for migrated data. We deliver the saved alert and dashboard documentation for manual rebuild, the automation inventory for Monday.com rebuild, and a data gap summary documenting the journalist database, wire distribution, and monitoring capabilities that were not transferred. We do not rebuild Cision workflows or automations as Monday.com automations inside the migration scope.
Platform deep dives
Cision
Source
Strengths
Weaknesses
monday CRM
Destination
Strengths
Weaknesses
Complexity grading
Standard CRM migration. All 8 core objects map 1:1 between Cision and monday CRM.
Overall complexity
Standard migration
Derived from compatibility, mapping clarity, API constraints, and data volume across Cision and monday CRM.
Object compatibility
All 8 core objects map 1:1 between Cision and monday CRM.
Field mapping clarity
Field mapping is derived from defaults — final spec confirmed during the sample migration.
Timeline complexity
8-object category — typical timelines run 2–7 days end-to-end.
API constraints
Cision: Not publicly documented.
Data volume sensitivity
Cision doesn't expose a bulk API — REST + parallelization used for high-volume runs.
Estimator
Rule-based pricing — no per-record fees, no manual quotes. Migrations over 2M records are scoped individually.
Step 1
Pick a category, then your source and destination platforms.
Category
FAQ
Answers to the questions buyers ask most during Cision to monday CRM migration scoping. Not seeing yours? Book a call.
Walk through your Cision to monday CRM migration with a real engineer — 30 minutes, free, written quote within 24 hours.
Book a free 30 minute consultationAdjacent paths
Other ways to leave Cision
Other ways to arrive at monday CRM
Ready when you are
Tell us record counts and timeline. We'll come back with a written quote inside 1 business day — no commitment, no sales pitch.
