How to move your data from Kaiten to Taska
In Taska, you can bring over spaces, boards, cards and documents from Kaiten, along with comments, files and history. The team's owner or an admin runs the import with a Kaiten API key.
What gets transferred
Each Kaiten space turns into a team project, and its boards and cards become the boards and tasks of that project.
| In Kaiten | In Taska |
|---|---|
| Space | Project. A space with one board becomes a board project, with several boards an extended project. A nested space becomes a separate project with the path in its name, for example “Development / Mobile app” |
| Board | Project board |
| Column | Board status. A subcolumn becomes a separate status named “Column / Subcolumn” |
| Card | Task with its title, description, deadline and tags. An ASAP card gets the “Highest” priority, and a finished card becomes a completed task |
| Responsible | Assignee, if the person is already on the team. Taska matches people by email address. Other responsible people and card members are listed in the description |
| Checklists | The task's checklist. The item's responsible person and due date are added in parentheses |
| Child cards | Checklist items, roadmap epics or a line in the description, your choice |
| Comments | Messages in the task chat with the date from Kaiten. Comment files are attached to the message |
| Card files and images from the description | Task files |
| Time logs | Messages in the task chat with the time spent |
| Card move history | Task history |
| Blocks | Blockers |
| Planned links between cards | Related tasks |
| Card type, size, lanes, custom properties | Custom task fields |
| External links and planned dates | Lines at the end of the description |
| Archived cards | Completed tasks with a Kaiten archive tag, or nothing, your choice |
| Documents and their folders | Knowledge base articles and folders. A space's documents go to its project's knowledge base, and documents outside spaces go to a separate project |
Creation dates of tasks, comments and articles come from Kaiten. A task description in Taska is plain text, so bold text and headings in card descriptions lose their formatting, while the text itself stays. A link turns into its text with the address in parentheses, and line breaks are kept.
What isn't transferred
- draw.io diagrams in documents. The article gets a callout in place of each diagram, and you need to move the diagram by hand.
- Card collections embedded in documents.
- Archived Kaiten spaces and spaces the key owner hasn't been invited to.
- Released blocks.
- Your colleagues' accounts. Taska doesn't create them or send invitations, and after the import it shows who's missing.
- Kaiten access rights. The whole team sees the imported projects, like the team's other projects.
- Kaiten hosted on a company's own server. The import works only with addresses like company.kaiten.ru.
How to transfer your data
Connect Kaiten
- Click the team's name in the sidebar.
- On the page that opens, click “⋮” in the top right corner and choose “Space settings”.
- Open the “Import” tab.
- In the “Company domain” field, enter the address you open Kaiten at, for example acme.kaiten.ru. The company name alone or a link from the address bar works too.
- Once the domain is filled in, an “Open the key page” link appears under the “API key” field. Follow it: the Kaiten key page opens in a new tab. Create a key there, copy it and paste it into the “API key” field.
- Click “Check”.
Taska shows the company name, whose key it is, the list of Kaiten spaces and how many people from Kaiten are already on the team. The import covers what the key owner can see. If they aren't a Kaiten company administrator, a warning says that spaces they aren't invited to will be skipped. To move everything, use a company administrator's key.
Choose what to transfer
- Under “What to transfer”, keep the spaces you need selected. All of them are selected at first, and “Clear all” clears them in one click. Each space shows how many boards and documents it has.
- Under “Archived cards”, choose “Transfer as completed tasks with the ‘Kaiten archive’ tag” or “Do not transfer”.
- Under “Child cards”, choose what happens to the link between parent and child cards. The options are described below the image.
- Under “Also transfer”, turn off what you don't need: “Comments”, “Files”, “Documents to the knowledge base”, “Time tracking” or “History of card moves”. Everything is on at first.
- Click “Start import”.
The link between parent and child cards can be transferred in one of three ways.
- “Checklist in the parent task”. The parent task gets a checklist item for each child card, checked if the child card is finished.
- “Roadmap epics”. The parent card becomes an epic on a roadmap in its project, and the card's planned dates become the epic's dates. The parent and its child tasks from the same project are linked to the epic.
- “Mention the parent in the description”. The child task's description gets a line with the parent's name.
With any option, the child cards themselves land on their boards as regular tasks.
Wait for the import to finish
The import runs in the background, so you can close the window. Meanwhile, the “Import” tab shows the current stage, a progress bar and counters of what's been transferred. Projects show up in the space as the import goes, and you don't need to reload the page.
How long it takes depends on the number of cards, files and documents, because Taska reads each card from Kaiten separately. There's no separate notification when the import ends, so check the “Import” tab.
To interrupt the import, click “Stop import”. What's already transferred stays, and you can continue or roll back the import later. While one import is running, you can't start another one in this space.
What to check after the import
- Open the “Import” tab in the space settings. Under “Import history”, the import should be marked “Done”, with counters below it: how many projects, boards, tasks, comments, files and articles were created.
- Read the notes under the counters. They say what wasn't transferred and why, for example “draw.io diagrams that need to be moved by hand: 3”.
- The “Not in this space yet” block lists people from Kaiten who aren't on the team yet. Invite them on the “Access” tab as described in “How to invite teammates by email”.
- When your colleagues accept the invitations, come back to the “Import” tab and click “Assign tasks”. In tasks where a person was responsible, Taska makes them the assignee if nobody has set an assignee there in the meantime.
It's also worth looking at a few places in the projects themselves.
- Board statuses. Compare them with the Kaiten columns. Subcolumns are now separate statuses.
- Task descriptions. A block at the end of the description holds what Taska has no field for: the author and responsible people who aren't on the team, card members, planned dates and links.
- Task chats. Comments by people who aren't on the team appear under the name of whoever ran the import and start with the author's name.
- Knowledge base articles. Find the callouts about draw.io diagrams and move the diagrams by hand, for example as images.
- Archived cards. They're completed tasks with the archive tag. Completed tasks are collapsed on the board. See “Closed tasks: where they go and how to show them” for how to show them.
Can I transfer only some of the spaces?
Yes. Clear the spaces you don't need under “What to transfer”. You can transfer the rest later with a new import by selecting only them.
The import stopped or was interrupted
Under “Import history”, it's marked “Stopped” or “Failed”. Click “Continue”. Taska skips what's already transferred and picks up where it left off, without duplicates.
How to undo the import
Click “Roll back” on the import under “Import history”, then “Roll back” in the confirmation window. Everything the import created goes to the space trash. Projects go there in full, including tasks you added to them after the import. You can restore a project from the trash: on the team's page, click “⋮” and choose “Space trash”.
Can I run the import again?
Yes, but a new import creates another copy of the projects and doesn't update what's already transferred. To start over, roll back the previous import first. To add spaces you skipped, select only those in the new import.
What gets transferred on the Free Team plan
The import works, but within the plan's limits.
- Files and time logs aren't transferred.
- Card fields, blocks and links are written into task descriptions.
- Projects and boards over the plan limits aren't created, and their cards aren't transferred.
- Columns beyond eight per board aren't created, and their cards go to the first column.
- Task cards in articles become links to the tasks.
The report under “Import history” shows how much was skipped. Plan limits are described in “Taska plans and feature comparison”. A new team runs on a 30-day Business trial, and an owner gets it once.
Why a task has no assignee
The responsible person from Kaiten becomes the assignee if they're already on the team with the same email as in Kaiten. Invite them and click “Assign tasks” as in step 4 above. Taska lists other responsible people in the task description.
Kaiten doesn't accept the key or domain
The reason is shown under the fields. Check that the domain has no typos and the key is copied in full. If your company uses Kaiten Lite, the API isn't available in that mode, and you can switch to the full version in the Kaiten settings. Data from Kaiten on a company's own server (not at a kaiten.ru address) can't be transferred.
What Taska does with the API key
The key is needed only for the import. Taska stores it encrypted and deletes it when the import is done or rolled back. If the import was stopped or interrupted, the key is kept so you can continue.