[CLOSED] Help Desk Migration AMA: Ask Us Anything | October 27-31, 2025

[CJuliano]

Thanks so much for all your questions this week! It's been great connecting with you all and hearing what's on your mind as you think through this transition.

If you're ready to start planning your move to Help Desk, we've put together a step-by-step migration guide that walks you through what to do before, during, and after your migration. It covers everything from preparing your team to mapping your channels to reporting on metrics.

Grab the migration guide here 

 Keep an eye out for our next AMA on AI and Automation in Help Desk—we'll be diving into how to make the most of these features once you're up and running.

Happy migrating!

Help Desk Chapter 1: Why and How to Migrate to HubSpot's Help Desk Workspace

• AMA CLOSED

Help Desk Chapter 2: AI and Automation

• AMA November 17-21

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Are you currently using HubSpot's Conversations Inbox? It's time to talk about the Help Desk Workspace—and why making the move could transform how your support and customer success team works.  

What This AMA Is About

We know switching tools—even between HubSpot products—is a big decision.
During the week of October 27-31, our Help Desk team is here to answer your questions about migrating from Conversations Inbox to Help Desk and help you understand what this migration could mean for your team. 

Meet Your Expert Panel

We've assembled a team that knows both products inside and out—from building Help Desk to helping customers make the transition:

• Caitlin Juliano - Product Marketer
• Abiola Owolewa - Product Manager
• Jenn De Mello - Manager, Product Lead
• Rose Sail - Manager, Product Management

Example Questions to Get You Started

1. Not sure what to ask? Here are some questions we'd love to answer:
2. What features does Help Desk have that Conversations Inbox doesn't?
3. We're managing fine with Conversations Inbox. How do I know when it's time to upgrade?
4. What happens to our existing conversations and ticket history during migration
5. Will my team need to relearn everything, or does Help Desk feel familiar? 
   Are there reporting or automation capabilities in Help Desk that would help us work more efficiently?

How This AMA Works

Post your questions as comments anytime between now and October 31. Our team will check in regularly throughout October 27-31 to provide answers. We'll make sure every question gets a thoughtful answer by the end of the week.

No question is too specific. Whether you're exploring the differences between products, worried about migration complexity, or need to understand how Help Desk would work for your unique setup, we're here to give you personalized guidance.

Drop your questions in the comments below.

[CJuliano]

Thanks so much for all your questions this week! It's been great connecting with you all and hearing what's on your mind as you think through this transition.

If you're ready to start planning your move to Help Desk, we've put together a step-by-step migration guide that walks you through what to do before, during, and after your migration. It covers everything from preparing your team to mapping your channels to reporting on metrics.

Grab the migration guide here 

Keep an eye out for our next AMA on AI and Automation in Help Desk—we'll be diving into how to make the most of these features once you're up and running.

Happy migrating!

[malik-waqar]

Hi team, I have a HubSpot form that allows multiple files in one upload field. A workflow sends an internal notification email that includes the form fields and the upload field via a personalization token. When a contact uploads more than one file, the email shows the file URLs combined into one long link. The result is one broken link instead of separate links. I tested different templates, plain text sections, reinserting the token, and changing field order. Support reproduced the behavior and said it appears to be a product limitation. Their workaround was to create separate file upload properties, add them to the form, and insert one token per property in the email. This works for a small fixed number of files but does not scale. My questions are: Has anyone found a way to output each uploaded file as its own link in internal emails without creating multiple properties? If not, please consider this a feature request to format values from a multi file upload as separate links, ideally one per line, in internal notification emails. Environment details: Forms with multiple files allowed in a single upload field Workflow internal notification email Using the file upload property token Outcome is multiple URLs concatenated into one hyperlink Thanks,

[CJuliano]

Hi @malik-waqar, thank you for sharing this level of detail—it's exactly the kind of feedback our product team needs to see.

I'm glad you've already connected with support on this- that was the right place to go. I've captured your specific use case and will share it directly with the product team as a feature request. 

I appreciate you taking the time to document this thoroughly. It’s outside of the scope for our AMA product team this week, but it’s great feedback nonetheless!

[SShanks]

Hello. Our team recently migrated live chats from Conversations Inbox to Help Desk as phase 1 of migration. Unfortunately, the workflow seemed to function more like emails/tickets than live chat resulting in missed SLAs and messages as a result. The previous workflow involved the Slack integration where our team could receive and reply to messages from within a slack thread attached to the ticket. When we migrated the team was not receiving notifications of new chat replies despite having hubspot notifications set up correctly. In addition, any messages added to the slack thread became internal notes in hubspot rather than replies, breaking that workflow. (Internal notes feels redundant as a "feature" as most companies already have internal comms worked out.) 

What I was hoping for before, during, and after migration was to be able to see a video or visual of how live chats are intended to function natively (without the Slack integration) so I could better understand the benefit of moving the channel. Is this something you can provide? Thanks in advance.

[CJuliano]

Hi @SShanks! Thanks for sharing all these details—this is really helpful context.

Behavior changes: Chat behavior shouldn't change much moving from Conversations Inbox to Help Desk. Notifications should still work, and agents can use the detail view like before.

Differences between Inbox and Help Desk for Slack: 

For Conversations Inbox: You can reply to live chats directly from Slack threads, and those replies go to the customer (Manage notifications in Slack Knowledge base article)

For Help Desk: Slack replies sync as internal comments in HubSpot, not customer-facing messages (Sync and manage help desk tickets in Slack Knowledge Base article).

So your old workflow—replying from Slack to customers—doesn't work the same way in Help Desk. That's the current integration behavior, not a bug.

Notifications: Check that your team has Slack integration settings configured under Settings > Integrations > Connected Apps > Slack, where you map inboxes to Slack channels. Also verify their regular HubSpot notification preferences in Settings > Notifications > Other Apps > Slack

What I'd recommend:

1. Have your team check their notification settings
2. Test the native Help Desk workflow (responding directly in HubSpot)
3. Use Slack for internal team coordination via synced comments, but reply to customers in HubSpot

The Help Desk & Slack integration is built more for internal collaboration than customer-facing responses right now.

Video: We don’t have a video of this now, but it’s something I can look into. Can you tell me more about what you’re looking to see?

Let me know any additional questions you have on this!

[SShanks]

Thank you. Despite correct notification settings (confirmed via
screenshots), the team was not being notified of new replies to chats which
is why - integration or not - the Help Desk flow for chats did not work for
us.

What we'd like to see is a video of how the live chats are intended to
function within help desk as from our experience they seemed to function
like emails rather than live chats as they functioned in the conversations
inbox. Thanks in advance.

[CJuliano]

Interesting @SShanks! Here's an example video of a live chat.

Additionally here is what it looks like on the chatter end. Is this different from what you're experiencing? 

 

[SShanks]

Thank you for this

[SShanks]

Hello, 

We recently migrated our Live Chats to Help Desk as phase 1 of migrating from Conversations Inbox to Help Desk. Unfortunately, what we found was that they no longer functioned as live chats (we use the Slack integration and reply in thread in channel as messages come in), but, rather, functioned more like email tickets. The team was missing new replies (despite having the corrected notifciations settings on in hubspot), and the workflow was creating delays for them. In addition, the Slack integration no longer worked because HelpDesk only sends Slack replies as internal notes on the ticket. We had to revert back to our original workflows. 

It would really help to better understand how live chats are intended to function natively (without Slack integration) within Help Desk (ideally with a video) as none of the materials we found gave us a visual on the workflow for live chats. Is that something you can offer? Thanks in advance. 

[chighsmith]

Hi everyone!

First, I would like to extend a big thank you to @CJuliano for hosting this week's (October 27-31) Help Desk Migration AMA.

Inviting our Community users -- @danmoyle  @KareemT @karstenkoehler @ScottPennwood @StjepanGrcic  @warrendavey  @Anton  @TomM2 @RubenBurdin

Do you have questions about planning your Help Desk Migration, best practices for transferring data, integrating your current Conversations setup with Help Desk tools, or automating workflows during the migration process?

Thank you,

Cassie, Community Manager

[CJuliano]

Thanks, Cassie! Happy to get all the feedback we can! 

[2muchpaywall]

I dont want to break your community guidelines, so with all due respect, and no ai was used here... What happened to hubspot? I've used it at different levels/orgs in 2008-2010, 2013-15, 2020-2022, and now trying once again... I have to read the help documents, community notes, and watch videos, to understand a feature, not use it. The duplication of features in hubs is very confusing. The errors from linked docs to a single email flags across most email services so not a good use to track doc openings per email. also one email per link? really? a user should be able to upload mutliple emails to track a document or within the email to track the document link. I'm going to try hubspot once again, but i will be testing your competitors. I run a nonprofit now, and the discount is nice, but the time it has taken to get going, is absurd. I used to be able to get a new hubspot instance up and running a campaign within a day. Very discouraging. 

[CJuliano]

Hi @2muchpaywall , thank you for this detailed feedback. I hear your frustration—you've used HubSpot across multiple decades, and what used to feel intuitive now requires help docs just to get started. That's not the experience we want.

The specific issues you've raised are really helpful:

• Feature duplication across hubs
• Document tracking links flagging as errors
• One-email-per-document-link limitation
• Overall setup time compared to your previous experiences

I want to be transparent: HubSpot has grown significantly since your 2008 experience, and that growth has added complexity. Some changes enable powerful capabilities, but I recognize from your comment that it's made getting started feel harder. For nonprofits especially, where time equals budget, that matters.

I've shared your feedback directly with our product and onboarding teams. We're tracking comments like yours to prioritize improvements.

For immediate help with your setup, please reach out to our support team (info on how here). They can help cut through the complexity for your specific use case.

Thank you for giving HubSpot another chance and for the specificity here—it helps us improve.

[FPalmisano]

Is there any space for improving the "Split ticket" experience? For example use personalization tokens to automate ticket name or description?

[smerrow]

Hi @FPalmisano this is a great question! There are no immediate plans on the roadmap around the split ticket action, but the reason for that is because we are planning larger improvements to the general ticket re-opening management experience. For some context, the split ticket action was originally built to give folks a way to reactively manage the scenario where closed tickets are re-opened by new replies. We currently have a workflows-powered beta feature for ticket re-opening management available that allows folks to proactively manage this behavior, and we have plans to improve this further. 

All that said, we know that many customers use “split ticket” for reasons other than managing re-opened tickets! I’d be curious to hear more about how you and your team currently use it, and why personalization tokens are important for your process. Thanks!

[FPalmisano]

Thank you @smerrow ! 

Do you have more information about these beta features? I'd be curious to explore if it's something we could test to prevent the manual work of creating new tickets when this happens.

Another reason we use the split ticket is when our customer service needs to route the request to the technical support - both teams working in help desk but within different pipelines.

[smerrow]

Hi @FPalmisano of course- the beta is called “Ticket Re-Opening Management in Help Desk” if you search in the Product Updates section of your portal. It uses a couple new ticket properties and a new workflow action (which effectively splits the ticket in the same way the manual action does) to catch when a closed ticket has been re-opened by a new response. The workflow (which is available as a template, so you don’t have to manually create all these steps) then re-closes the original ticket so your reporting won’t be impacted. You also have the option to copy the new message that triggered the original ticket to be re-opened over to the new ticket. 

There are a couple limitations to this beta that we want to be transparent about- which is why we are still working on some improvements, and why the ideal end state of ticket re-opening management will probably look a little different! First: due to some limitations around email threading behavior, new replies won’t always thread to the new ticket- meaning if someone is cc’d on a closed ticket and they respond, that will still thread to the original ticket and re-open it. Second: associated contacts and email engagements are not copied to the new ticket record. The latter is on our roadmap for this workflows-powered solution. We hope folks will continue to share their feedback and questions about the current beta as we work towards the ideal long-term solution.

All that said, this beta could also be useful for your team given the other way you’re using ticket splitting. Workflows are super flexible, so there’s no reason you couldn’t use that workflow template, modify the enrollment criteria, and use the “copy ticket” action for your use case of routing requests to technical support.

[FPalmisano]

Thank you! It sounds really promising though - even if still to review!

I can't find it among the product updates, it might be restricted to enterprise?

On this topic, at the moment we still have a workflow which used to work fine before migrating to help desk. It's set to move tickets to a specific stage if a new customer reply comes in while the ticket is closed. This is not happening as the tickets are just jumping back to "new" status instead of what we have defined. 

[CJuliano]

Can you find it via this link? If not, go to your profile > Product Updates > Make sure you go to "All" and then search "Ticket Re-Opening Management in Help Desk"

For this specific case it would be useful to check in with our Support team for them to get a good look at what is going on with your ticket statuses!  

[FPalmisano]

How can we see emails or other activities which were logged with the ticket? The old interface shows all of the email threads in the center of the page, which is not possible in help desk as there's only visibility of the conversation.

There are instances where for example sales takes over the customer communication without including the connected channel email to prevent the ticket reopening multiple times - but it will be still relevant to the agent upon progressing with the ticket later on.