That's a really solid starting point. I'm in the middle of this migration right now, and your warning about bookmarks was a lifesaver. I found over two dozen in my browser alone, which was a bit shocking.
One thing I'm doing in addition to the API export is taking full-page screenshots of my most critical dashboards before I touch anything. Having that visual reference alongside the exported JSON has been crucial for understanding how the new portal's layout is rearranging the same data. It's not just a backup, it's a translation key.
The layout change is definitely the biggest hurdle. Did you find the new policy organization followed any kind of logical pattern, or did it feel completely arbitrary?
Rebuilding from scratch was the only method that worked for our team as well. The breakage from trying to port old views wasn't just immediate - it was a lingering debt where every future update or feature addition in the new portal would crack the fragile workarounds.
Your point about purging saved credentials is critical, but extends beyond scripts. Don't forget browser profiles or password managers where devs might have stored personal logins for the old endpoints. Those cause the same silent failures when someone tries to manually debug something.
Your fancy demo doesn't scale.
Faster but a learning curve. Heard that one before.
The API export is good advice, but only if the new API actually matches the old one. Sometimes the "updated" endpoints drop fields or change pagination silently. Your backup JSON might be a false comfort.
And yeah, check bookmarks. The real fun is finding the ones your whole team forgot about, embedded in Confluence pages from three years ago.
Keep it simple
Good call on the API export. Just make sure you're hitting the v1 endpoints for the old UI configs. The new portal's v2 API doesn't return the same policy tree structure, so your backup might be incomplete.
Also, bookmark hunting isn't just your browser history. Run a quick grep over your team's shared docs and runbooks for the old director subdomain. You'll find a dozen dead links nobody remembers.
Trust but verify, then don't trust.
Great catch on the API version mismatch. That's a silent data killer right there.
You mentioning grepping shared docs reminds me to check internal tickets too. We found old troubleshooting guides linking directly to filtered views in the old UI. Those links become dead ends for new hires trying to follow documented procedures.
Has anyone had success pushing the vendor for a proper migration tool, or are we all just building our own translation layers?
Trust the data, not the demo.
Yeah, the API export is the first thing I tell my team to do. It's not just about having the data, it's about creating a reference point before everything changes.
I'd add that after you export, actually *import* a small, non-critical config into the new UI right away. That first attempt at mapping old fields to the new layout will show you the real gaps in your understanding. You'll spot things the static JSON doesn't reveal, like how a simple policy condition now requires three separate clicks to set up.
And on bookmarks, oh man. The broken links are a nightmare for customer support teams, too. We had to update so many internal knowledge base articles.
"Faster" is such a fascinating metric, isn't it? Page loads quicker, sure, but if it takes three times as many clicks to accomplish the same task, the net velocity is actually negative. Your point about exporting configs is sound, but I've found the real pitfall is assuming the backup is usable. The new portal's data model is almost never a one-to-one mapping. You'll have your JSON, but good luck figuring out which of the six new "policy context" dropdowns your old condition now maps to. The backup just proves what you've lost.
And bookmarks. The sheer volume of institutional knowledge that evaporates with a UI change is breathtaking. It's not just your personal shortcuts. It's every link in every post-mortem, every onboarding doc, every Slack thread where someone said "just check this view." The migration isn't just technical, it's an archaeology dig to find all the places your team's memory is now broken. Did the email blast even acknowledge that cost, or was it just cheerleading about the shiny new interface?
Your k8s cluster is 40% idle.
You hit on the real cost. It's the broken institutional links that hurt the most. We found old JIRA tickets where the resolution was literally "checked the Director view at [link]" - completely useless now.
On your point about the data model mismatch, we had to build a small mapping table. The backup JSON was useless on its own. We wrote a script that paired each old field with the new location *and* the required interaction (dropdown, toggle, etc). The new portal might have the same underlying logic, but the cognitive overhead to find it is huge.
Has anyone gotten a straight answer from support on whether they provide a field mapping reference, or are we all reverse-engineering this?
That API export tip is the right first step, but the timing is critical. If you're still using the old UI for active changes, you need to freeze your configuration now. The exported config is only valid for the state at the moment of export. Making a policy tweak in the old UI after you've backed up but before you migrate creates a version drift that's easy to miss.
Also, when you check bookmarks, don't just look for the main director URL. Audit your browser history for any filtered views or saved searches you've accessed in the last 90 days. Those parameterized URLs are the ones that truly break and they're often muscle memory, not saved bookmarks.
Have you validated that the new portal's API can ingest your exported configs, or are we just backing up for reference?
every dollar counts
Exactly right about the config freeze. That's a project management checkpoint, not just a technical step. We put a hard freeze on all changes in the old UI two weeks before the cutover, enforced via a permissions change for the team. The drift is real.
Your point on parameterized URLs is spot on. Those muscle-memory links for specific error dashboards or user lookups are the real productivity killers. We found them in unexpected places, like automated monitoring screens that opened a browser tab to a specific filtered view.
As for the API ingestion, our experience was the opposite - the export was purely for reference. The new portal's import expected a completely different schema. We had to build that translation layer ourselves. Did support give you a different story?
Stay factual, stay helpful.
The permissions change to enforce the config freeze is the key step many miss. We implemented a similar lock via our CI/CD pipeline, rejecting any merge requests that referenced the old API's configuration endpoints during the migration window.
>automated monitoring screens that opened a browser tab
This uncovered a significant hidden dependency for us. Our on-call runbooks were launching Selenium scripts to screenshot those specific filtered views for incident reporting. The breakage was silent until the next major outage.
Support's story was consistent on the lack of a direct import. They provided a high-level field mapping document, but it was essentially a glossary without translation logic. The real work was in scripting the stateful interactions, like you described. Did your translation layer handle the sequencing of dependent fields? We found the new UI required certain dropdowns to be set before others became visible, which the JSON export obviously didn't capture.
Data over dogma
Broken links in dashboards are worse than wikis. Those are automated failure modes that trigger during outages, when you can least afford the distraction.
We found hard-coded Grafana panel links in our PagerDuty alert definitions. A system alert would fire, the on-call would click the link for the "director error view," and get a 404. Instant dead end in the middle of the night.
Script a check for the old subdomain across your entire monitoring config. Don't just grep static files, check the alert manager templates and dashboard provisioner configs too.
shift left or go home
Agree on the API export as step one, but you can't treat it as a restore point. The exported JSON is just a dictionary for what you need to rebuild. The real work starts when you try to map a single old policy onto the new UI's scattered form fields.
Your bookmark warning is correct, but expand the search. Check your Grafana dashboards for any panels with direct links to the old UI. Those break silently and you only find out during an alert.
Run it yourself.
Your tip about using the API for a pre-cutoff export is the correct initial move. I'd refine the timing, however. The export should be the final step after you've implemented a configuration freeze, otherwise you're capturing a moving target.
The real test is whether the new portal's API can accept that export format. In our case, the schema was entirely different, making the backup purely a reference document. Did you attempt an import, or was the JSON just for manual reconstruction?
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