PagerDuty Migration: Move Tickets and Repos Without Losing Trust
Migrate into PagerDuty with an inventory, field map, pilot import, dual-run week, and validation — so history survives and operators trust the new system.
Quick answer
Migrate into PagerDuty with an inventory of schedules, escalation policies, services, and incident history, a field map, a pilot import, a dual-run week, and validation with the people who live in the data — so history survives and the team trusts the new system.
- Inventory source objects
- Map fields before bulk load
- Pilot one site / one role / one team
- Dual-run for a week
- Validate with sceptic users
PagerDuty migration rules
- Inventory first — Typical objects: schedules, escalation policies, services, and incident history.
- Pilot beats big-bang — Prove a small PagerDuty import before you move everything.
- Integrations after the pilot — Research names Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier on the PagerDuty side — confirm the connectors your IT loop depends on.
- Do not migrate the wrong job — PagerDuty is on-call and incident response. Do not import a git host or an observability suite and expect it to become on-call and incident response.
PagerDuty migration map
1. Inventory and map
List schedules, escalation policies, services, and incident history. Map required fields and owners. Never invent list prices here — confirm seats, hosts, ingest, and quote terms on /pricing/pagerduty/. Worked example: Harbor SRE (one critical service) discovers duplicate employee IDs in the spreadsheet before the first import — and fixes identity before volume.
2. Pilot import
Import one site, one role, or one team. Run page a responder from a real alert, acknowledge, and run an incident to resolve on the pilot set. Worked example: Harbor SRE (one critical service) will not schedule a cutover until the pilot can a responder gets paged and acknowledges without a PagerDuty admin.
3. Dual-run and cutover
Run old and new in parallel for a week. Spot-check records sceptic users care about, then freeze the legacy source. Worked example: Harbor SRE (one critical service) keeps the old export for tickets, repos, or monitors until PagerDuty matches for seven consecutive days.
PagerDuty checklist
Bring these questions to every demo
Ask vendors to show the workflow live, not just describe it.
- 1Inventory source objectsschedules, escalation policies, services, and incident history
- 2Run a pilot importOne segment first; fix mapping before bulk.
- 3Validate with operatorsSpot-check records they care about before cutover.
4. Inventory what must move into PagerDuty
List users, historical records, templates, and integrations that must survive migration. Mark nice-to-have exports you can leave behind.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging migrates active records only and archives the rest as read-only exports.
5. Run parallel cutover with a rollback path
Keep the old system read-only until PagerDuty passes non-admin proof. Name a rollback owner and maximum parallel window.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging caps parallel run at two weeks with daily checkpoint notes.
6. Verify counts and permissions after import
Reconcile user counts, role permissions, and a sample of migrated records. Research lists Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier for PagerDuty. Confirm which are native vs API before go-live.
7. Inventory what must move into PagerDuty
List users, historical records, templates, and integrations that must survive migration. Mark nice-to-have exports you can leave behind.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging migrates active records only and archives the rest as read-only exports.
8. Run parallel cutover with a rollback path
Keep the old system read-only until PagerDuty passes non-admin proof. Name a rollback owner and maximum parallel window.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging caps parallel run at two weeks with daily checkpoint notes.
9. Verify counts and permissions after import
Reconcile user counts, role permissions, and a sample of migrated records. Research lists Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier for PagerDuty. Confirm which are native vs API before go-live.
10. Inventory what must move into PagerDuty
List users, historical records, templates, and integrations that must survive migration. Mark nice-to-have exports you can leave behind.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging migrates active records only and archives the rest as read-only exports.
11. Run parallel cutover with a rollback path
Keep the old system read-only until PagerDuty passes non-admin proof. Name a rollback owner and maximum parallel window.
Worked example: SRE/IT teams that need on-call schedules and paging caps parallel run at two weeks with daily checkpoint notes.
12. Verify counts and permissions after import
Reconcile user counts, role permissions, and a sample of migrated records. Research lists Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier for PagerDuty. Confirm which are native vs API before go-live.
13. Before you sign with PagerDuty
Confirm the qualifying plan, non-admin proof, and integration owners in writing. Store quotes next to /pricing/pagerduty/ and the evaluation scorecard so finance can audit the same assumptions at renewal.
14. Write the decision memo
Name the job, the qualifying PagerDuty configuration, and what you are not buying yet. If stakeholders cannot explain why an alternative lost, the trial was not fair.
Frequently asked questions
Can we skip the dual-run?
Only if the dataset is tiny and reversible. Most SMB/mid teams regret skipping a week of parallel use.
What if history will not map cleanly?
Import active records first. Archive messy history as files rather than poisoning the new system of record.
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