Migration Checklist: Moving to monday.com CRM

Phase 0

Decide & Plan

Lock scope, success criteria, and the cutover window before any export starts.

• Document the full list of monday CRM entities in scope. The monday CRM template ships linked boards for Contacts, Accounts, Deals, Activities, and Leads. Decide which boards you will populate and which are deliberately out of scope.

  Risk if skipped: Discovering at cutover that Leads or Accounts were assumed but never planned forces re-scoping mid-migration.

• Define historical-data scope per board. Decide how many years of closed deals, logged activities, and archived contacts you will move. Decide whether historical Email & Activities entries and call logs are in scope.

  Risk if skipped: Pulling all history by default can multiply the dataset and force you into a higher plan tier than you budgeted.

• Confirm the target monday CRM plan and its feature ceilings. monday CRM is sold as Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise (separate from Work Management). Mass-update permissions, custom dashboards, automation actions per month, file-storage caps, and HIPAA support are all tier-gated.

  Risk if skipped: Buying Basic then discovering you need formula columns, private boards, or HIPAA coverage blocks the migration until billing is escalated.

• Decide whether monday CRM or Work Management is the correct destination. Work Management boards can be promoted into the CRM product, but Email & Activities, the item-card layout, and the mobile CRM view only exist on monday CRM. Document the rationale.
• Identify GDPR data-residency requirements and select the data region. monday.com defaults new accounts to the US AWS region. Enterprise customers can elect the EU (Frankfurt) region, but the choice is made at account creation and cannot be flipped on an existing tenant without a full re-migration.

  Risk if skipped: Provisioning on the US region for an EU-resident customer forces a second migration to the Frankfurt region to satisfy GDPR.

• Confirm HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 evidence needs against the target plan. HIPAA coverage and a signed BAA are Enterprise-only. Confirm with procurement and legal before you provision the tenant.
• Assign a single accountable migration owner (DRI). One named person owns scope decisions, cutover go/no-go, and post-migration signoff. Document their backup.
• Document explicit out-of-scope items. List source-system features that will NOT be rebuilt — chat transcripts, marketing automation flows, custom reporting macros, etc. Get sponsor sign-off in writing.

  Risk if skipped: Unwritten out-of-scope items resurface as urgent during cutover and derail the schedule.

• Set the target cutover date and source-system freeze window. Pick a low-activity window. Communicate the freeze date and time to all source-system users at least two weeks in advance.
• Define written success criteria for the migration. Examples: 100% of open deals migrated with correct Status column value; aggregate pipeline value within 0.5% of source; all owners assigned via the Person column; activities linked to the correct contact and deal items.

  Risk if skipped: Without falsifiable criteria, the migration is never formally complete and tail issues drag on for months.

Phase 1

Pre-Migration Prep

Cleanse the source, build the destination schema, and align the team.

Phase 2

Source Export

Pull a complete snapshot of every in-scope object from the source system.

• Export Contacts as CSV with every standard and custom field. Include the source-system unique ID column so re-linking to deals and activities later works deterministically.

  Risk if skipped: Omitting the source ID column means relationship reconstruction has to fall back to fragile email or name matching.

• Export Accounts (companies) as CSV with every standard and custom field. Include website domain and source ID — both are useful as match keys later.
• Export Deals as CSV with every standard and custom field including stage, value, currency, expected close date, owner, account link, and contact link. Capture the source pipeline name on each deal row so multi-pipeline maps to multi-board or multi-group correctly.

  Risk if skipped: Losing the source pipeline name forces a manual stage-by-stage reclassification.

• Export Activities (calls, meetings, tasks) as a separate CSV with type, due date, completion status, owner, and linked contact/deal IDs. Activities in monday CRM live on a separate Activities board and link via Connect Boards columns.
• Export Notes and Email threads as a separate CSV with timestamp, author, body, and linked record ID. These become Updates or Email & Activities entries on the destination item.
• Export Leads as CSV with stage, source, owner, and qualifying notes. Leads are a separate monday CRM entity from Contacts and convert into Contact + Deal items at qualification.
• Export the source user list with email, full name, role, and reporting manager. Drives the user-provisioning step in Phase 1b and the owner-mapping rule in Phase 3.
• Export pipeline and stage definitions as a reference file. Stage names, sort order, probability percentages, and any closed-won/closed-lost flags. This becomes the Status column label map.
• Export file attachments and their metadata. Two pieces: the binary files themselves, and a manifest CSV linking each file to its parent record ID. The Files column in monday accepts inline uploads up to 500 MB per item.

  Risk if skipped: Without the manifest, files re-upload to the wrong item or end up unlinked.

• Screenshot or document every source automation rule, workflow, and sequence. These will be rebuilt as monday Automations recipes in Phase 7 — they do not migrate. Capture trigger, conditions, and actions for each.
• Screenshot every source report and dashboard. Dashboards rebuild manually in monday using widgets. The screenshots become the rebuild spec.
• Document the exact UTC timestamp of every export file. Defines the delta window between the export and cutover. Drives the final delta-export step in Phase 5.

  Risk if skipped: Without timestamps, the delta-load step risks duplicating rows that crossed the boundary or losing rows that came in just after.

Phase 3

Transform & Map

Convert exports into monday-shaped files with explicit column-type, relationship, and CRM-specific handling.

Phase 4

Sandbox Test Migration

Prove every transform and load path against the sandbox workspace before touching production.

• Load a 1–5% representative sample of each board into the sandbox workspace. Use the Boards > Import items from Excel/CSV wizard for small samples, or the ingest_items job for anything over a few hundred rows.

  Risk if skipped: Skipping a sample run means production becomes the first place errors surface.

• Trigger every Status column label at least once in the sample. If the Status column has 12 labels, the sample should exercise all 12 so unknown-label creation surfaces here, not in production.
• Verify 5–10 random sandbox items field-by-field against the source. Walk every column, every Status value, every Connect Boards link, every Person assignment, and every Date/Numbers value. Document and triage every mismatch.
• Test edge cases: long strings, emoji, RTL languages, leading/trailing whitespace, NULL values. Each of these has historically broken at least one CRM importer; verify monday's behavior on yours.
• Test the ingest_items job end-to-end on the sandbox. Start the import job with ingest_items, upload the CSV to the presigned upload location, then poll for completion. Capture job_id and row counts.

  Risk if skipped: Skipping the async-job pattern in test means cutover is the first time you see timeout, retry, or partial-completion behavior.

• Test the backfill_items job for the initial one-time admin-only seeding. backfill_items permits up to 20,000 rows per job and is account-admin-only. Use it for the bulk initial load; reserve ingest_items for ongoing/recurring imports.
• Test parent-child relationship import: Deal → Account, Contact → Account, Activity → Contact + Deal. Confirm Connect Boards links resolve correctly and Mirror columns populate as expected on the child item.

  Risk if skipped: Connect Boards links written before the target item exists silently fail to associate.

• Test Email & Activities import for historical activity rows. Confirm timestamp, author, body, and the dual link (Contact and Deal) all land correctly on the timeline.
• Test File column upload for a sample of attachments. Confirm files attach to the correct item, the file preview renders, and the 500 MB per-item ceiling is not exceeded.
• Run a full-volume test if the sandbox plan permits. Surfaces complexity-points throttling, ingest_items job ceilings, and timeout behavior under realistic load.

  Risk if skipped: If only small samples are tested, production hits ceilings the sample never approached.

• Time the sandbox runs and extrapolate to production volume. Confirms whether the planned cutover window is realistic. Re-plan if extrapolated wall-clock exceeds the freeze window.
• Have a sales-team domain expert spot-check the sandbox data. A rep or sales manager who knows the records walks the sandbox and flags anything that looks wrong. They catch business-logic mistakes engineers miss.
• Sign off the sandbox test results in writing before proceeding to Phase 5. Migration owner, sales sponsor, ops sponsor. Recorded in the project tracker before the cutover window opens.

  Risk if skipped: No formal sign-off means a cutover failure has no clear escalation owner.

Phase 5

Production Cutover

Execute the migration in tight sequence with idempotent loads and continuous reconciliation.

• Confirm the source-system freeze is in effect and verify no writes in the last hour. Check the source audit log, last-modified timestamps on the most recent records, and any active integration write paths.

  Risk if skipped: Late writes after the delta cut produce silent data loss at cutover.

• Take a final full export of source data as the cutover snapshot. Compute the delta against the Phase 2 baseline. Concatenate the delta into the existing exports or load it as a separate pass.
• Confirm every monday Automations recipe is disabled on every destination board. Re-check from Admin > Automations Center. A re-enable that slipped during testing fires notification cascades during the bulk load.

  Risk if skipped: Default 'Notify owner when item created' active during import sends hundreds of notification emails within minutes.

• Confirm every third-party integration is paused. Gmail/Outlook sync, Salesforce sync, HubSpot sync, calendar sync, Slack notifiers, outbound notifications.
• Load Users first if any new users are still missing. Confirm every Person column reference in the load files maps to an existing user email.

  Risk if skipped: Person column values that reference non-existent users assign to nobody and require a re-link pass.

• Load Accounts via backfill_items keyed off the Source ID Text column for idempotent upsert. Account items must exist before Deals reference them via Connect Boards.
• Load Contacts via backfill_items keyed off Source ID; populate the Account Connect Boards column on each contact. Contacts depend on Accounts existing for the Connect Boards link to resolve.
• Load Leads via backfill_items keyed off Source ID. Leads are independent of Accounts and Contacts; load in parallel with Contacts where useful.
• Load Deals via backfill_items keyed off Source ID; populate the Account and Contact Connect Boards columns on each deal. Deals depend on both Accounts and Contacts existing.

  Risk if skipped: Loading Deals before Contacts and Accounts strands their Connect Boards values empty.

• Load Activities via ingest_items keyed off Source ID; populate the Contact and Deal Connect Boards columns. Use ingest_items rather than backfill_items so the job behaves the same as ongoing post-cutover loads.
• Load Notes and Email & Activities entries via ingest_items. Apply the historical timestamp into the 'Source Created Date' Date column per Phase 3 decisions.
• Re-upload file attachments to the Files column. Track failures in a skip log and retry idempotently.

  Risk if skipped: File uploads consume complexity points fast; budget headroom or files mid-batch start failing.

• Capture job_id, row counts, and error logs for every ingest_items and backfill_items job. Poll fetch_job_status until done. Persist the output for the Phase 6 reconciliation.
• Cross-check destination row counts against source row counts at each step. If any board's count is off, stop and diagnose before loading dependent objects.

  Risk if skipped: Pushing dependent loads on top of an incomplete parent load doubles the cleanup cost.

• Re-enable Automations recipes and paused integrations only AFTER all loads complete and reconciliation passes. Bring them up one category at a time and watch for notification storms.

Phase 6

Validate

Prove the migration was correct before any end-user is granted access.

Phase 7

Post-Migration Cleanup

Close out the project: cut over users, rebuild what does not migrate, decommission the source.

• Send the go-live announcement to every end user. Login URL, what changed, who to contact for help, first-responder schedule for the next 48 hours.
• Run training sessions on monday CRM basics segmented by role. Sales reps focus on pipeline view and Email & Activities. Managers focus on dashboards and reporting. Ops focuses on board configuration and Automations.

  Risk if skipped: Skipping role-segmented training means adoption stalls and 'where do I do X' tickets dominate the first month.

• Set the source system to read-only and announce the read-only date to all users. Confirms the freeze is permanent and ends the temptation to keep writing to the old system.
• Rebuild every report and dashboard as monday CRM Dashboards with the appropriate widgets. Dashboards do not migrate. Use the Phase 2 screenshots as the rebuild spec. Chart widget, Numbers widget, Battery widget, Table widget.
• Rebuild every Automations recipe in the Automations Center. Use the Phase 2 captures. Test each recipe on a single non-production item before activating on the full board.

  Risk if skipped: Activating an untested recipe on a full board triggers a notification cascade and may corrupt Status values.

• Rebuild every email template referencing monday merge fields. Source merge-field syntax does not translate. Test each template against a real contact before going live.
• Help each rep connect Gmail or Outlook two-way sync to their monday CRM account. Email sync is per-user. Distribute the setup steps and confirm completion via Admin > Connected accounts.
• Re-establish calendar sync, Slack notifiers, and any Apps Framework apps from the Marketplace. Bring them up one at a time and confirm each is firing as expected.
• Turn on required columns now that the bulk load is complete. Up to 100 columns per board can be marked required. Turn on the ones documented in Phase 1b.
• Schedule a 30-day post-migration retrospective. What went well, what went wrong, what to capture for the next migration. Migration owner, sponsors, first-responders attend.
• Document the source-system decommission date. Typically 90 days after cutover, after the final retention window. Capture in the project tracker with the responsible owner.
• Archive the source-system exports and the cutover snapshot to long-term storage. Per the retention policy defined in Phase 0. Tag the archive with a forensic-retention label.

  Risk if skipped: Without an archive, a later dispute over what the source held cannot be resolved.

• Close out the migration project formally. Final status report, lessons-learned doc, project closure note. Hand off ongoing administration to the steady-state owner.