Feedback boards
Move a Canny board to Formspring Feedback
Bring your ideas, votes, tags and comments across from a Canny export, check the counts with a dry run, then import. Running the same file again changes nothing.
Feedback is included from Pro.
What carries over
- Ideas, with title, details, status, created date and the author name and email
- Tags
- Vote counts and, when the export lists voters, each voter as one vote
- Public comments
- Internal comments, as team-only notes that are never shown publicly
What does not carry over
- Images and file attachments
- Changelog entries and roadmap layout
- Customer accounts and revenue values: add those on the Customers page
- Anything the export file does not contain
What you need
- Export your Canny data yourself, as JSON or CSV. Formspring never signs in to your Canny account.
- A Formspring workspace on Pro or above, and permission to edit the board.
- A board with the statuses you want to keep. Statuses are matched by name.
How it maps
| In your file or old tool | In Formspring | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Idea title | Idea title | Kept up to 200 characters |
| Details | Idea details | Kept up to 10,000 characters |
| Status | Status | Matched by name. A status the board does not have goes to the first status and is listed in the report |
| Tags | Tags | Created on the board when missing |
| Votes and voters | Votes | One vote per voter ID or email, so a second run does not double-count |
| Comments | Comments or team notes | Internal comments become team-only notes |
| Author | Submitter name and email | Only what the file contains |
Addresses and domains
- The public pages of your Canny board stop working when you cancel Canny. Your Formspring board has its own address.
- Redirecting an old address is up to you: add the redirect in your own DNS or website. Formspring cannot redirect a domain it does not control.
- Links to the old board inside your product or emails are not rewritten by the import.
Check before you commit
Run a dry run first. It executes the whole import and rolls it back, so its counts are exactly what a real import would do.
- File size
- Up to 10 MB
- Ideas per file
- Up to 5,000; split larger exports
Steps
- Export your board from Canny as JSON or CSV.
- In Formspring open the board, then Customers, then Import from Canny.
- Choose the file and run the dry run. Read the counts and the list of unmatched statuses.
- Add or rename statuses on the board if you want an unmatched status to carry over, then run the dry run again.
- Import. Running the same file again adds nothing twice.
Reconcile the result
- Compare "posts total" in the report with the number of ideas in your export.
- Check that "posts created" plus "posts existing" equals "posts total".
- Open the board and compare the vote totals of your five most voted ideas with Canny.
- Read the errors list: a row without a title is skipped and named there.
A worked example
A sample export with three ideas: one with voters and comments, one with a vote count only, and one with a status the new board does not have.
Sample data
- Ideas in the file
- 3
- Ideas to create
- 3
- Public comments
- 2
- Team notes
- 1
- Votes from voters
- 3
- Tags to create
- 2
The status "Done" does not exist on a new board, so that idea lands on the first status and the report lists "Done" as unmatched. Importing the same file a second time creates nothing: all three ideas are reported as existing.
Switching over
Import, check, then point the feedback link in your product at the new board. Keep Canny read-only until you are satisfied, and export again before you cancel.
Other guides
- Another link shortener - Import a CSV, row by row
- Hosted form endpoints - Swap the form action, no data import