Import and export documentation

You can move documentation into Outpost from IT Glue, Hudu, or any system that exports CSV, and you can take all of it out again. An import reads your file and shows you where every row will land before it writes anything. An export produces a complete archive, including permissions and relations, in a documented format. This page shows both.

Before you begin

• Import and export need docs:manage. Including passwords in an export also needs vault:reveal.
• Making and downloading an export always ask for your authenticator code, so your account needs two-factor authentication. See Secure your console account.
• The pages are Documentation > Import and Documentation > Export. On the MSP plan they are at practice level, with no client selected.
• An import file can be up to 256 MB.

Caution

Committing an import writes into every client the file names, and it cannot be undone. Review the match report before you commit.

Import documentation

The import has four steps: Source, Upload, Check, and Import. Nothing is written until the last one.

Choose the source

Under Source, select Use this on one of:

Source	What to upload
IT Glue	The account export .zip, as downloaded.
Hudu	A .zip of the CSV templates, or the JSON the API pull produced.
Anything else, as CSV	One .csv, or a .zip of several.

Upload the file

1. Under Upload the bundle, choose The file.
2. For a CSV, choose What is in this file: Passwords, Assets, Articles, Domains, Licenses, or Vendors. One kind per file. Then map each Column in your file to the field it Becomes, or to Do not import this column. Dates must be YYYY-MM-DD and the file UTF-8.
3. Optionally, in Where rows with no organization go, choose a client for rows that do not name one.
4. For IT Glue passwords, IT Glue exports vaulted passwords in a separate file. Import the account export first, then upload the vault password export and select This is the IT Glue vault password export. Its values merge onto the credentials already imported instead of creating a second copy.
5. Select Check this bundle. This is the dry run. It reads the file and writes nothing.

Check the match report

What the bundle says summarizes the file. Every row, and where it lands lists each row with a verdict:

Verdict	Means	What to do
Will be created	A new record will be made.	Nothing, unless you want to skip it.
Matches a record	The row matches a record already in Outpost.	Nothing.
Matches more than one	The row matches several records, such as two clients with the same name.	Choose the right one in Which client is this?. The import cannot start while one remains.
Nothing to match	Outpost has nothing this row refers to.	Choose where it goes, or skip it.
Skipped	The row will not be imported.	Nothing.

Select Skip this row for anything you do not want. A row you skip stays skipped if you check the file again. Select Import these when you are ready, or Check again after a change.

Commit the import

1. Under Import, enter your practice name in Your practice name, and again in Type the practice name to import.
2. Select Import.

Progress shows as the rows land. If the import stops, run it again. Rows that already landed are recognized by where they came from, so a re-run resumes rather than duplicating.

What the importer does with awkward data

Data	What happens
A password field inside an asset	Becomes a real credential, and the asset field points at it. A password with no value in the export becomes a credential with no secret, flagged Not linked to anything, and counted as needing a value.
HTML documents	Imported as HTML, readable in the console. Links between imported documents are rewritten to the new articles, and images become attachments.
Nested password folders	Flattened, because collections are flat, with the full path as the name, such as Acme / Firewalls / Edge. The report says how many levels were flattened.
Duplicate field names	Suffixed, such as notes and notes_2, and reported.
One-time code seeds	Kept only when they are valid. One that does not parse is dropped with a report line.
Tags	Become labels.
Share links	Not migrated. A live link to a secret is never recreated automatically.

Export documentation

1. Go to Documentation > Export. The page is titled Export everything.
2. In What to include, choose Everything or One client. For one client, choose it in Which client.
3. To include secrets, select Include stored passwords in plain text. The archive then becomes as sensitive as the vault. Outpost writes an audit entry for each included secret before reading it, and the export fails if an entry cannot be written. Without this option, each secret is left out and the manifest says how many and why.
4. Select or clear Include attachments and photos. Clearing it makes a much smaller archive of the records alone.
5. Select Make the archive, and confirm your authenticator code when asked.
6. Under Archives, select Download when the archive shows Ready. Downloading asks for your authenticator code again.

An archive can be downloaded for 48 hours. After that it shows No longer available and its file is deleted.

What the archive contains

The archive has a folder for each kind of record with one JSON file per record, an attachments/ folder, grants.json for permissions, links.json for relations, and manifest.json with the schema version, the counts, and anything left out and why.

Verify

After an import, open a client’s Documentation and check a few records against the source. Imported records say where they came from, such as Imported from IT Glue. After an export, open manifest.json in the archive and confirm the counts.

If something goes wrong

Symptom	Cause	Fix
No column names could be read from the first line of this file.	The CSV has no header row.	Add a header row naming each column.
The import does not start.	A row still reads Matches more than one.	Choose the right record for it.
An import file may be at most 256 MB.	The file is too large.	Split it, such as by client or by kind.

Next steps

• Documentation and credentials
• Cancel and export your account