You've set Commslayer up and tested it. This is the day you stop using your old helpdesk and start handling every ticket here.
When to do it
Pick a quiet day. A few things make it easier:
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Mid-week, in the morning. Best to have lower volume so you don't miss any important tickets. We don't recommend switching on Friday afternoons before the weekend.
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Not during a sale or peak season. BFCM, a product launch, a big campaign.
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After your import has finished and all previous steps of the setup have been completed.
Before you switch
Run through this list. If anything's missing, fix it before you go further.
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Your migration has finished importing
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All agents are invited and have set up their signatures
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Automations are rebuilt and reviewed (auto-responders live here)
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Canned responses are formatted correctly
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Business hours are enabled (if you use them)
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Test messages sent and received across your connected channels
Setting up while your old helpdesk is still live
You can build and test Commslayer for as long as you need before the switch.
- The import only reads from your old helpdesk. It changes nothing there, and your old helpdesk keeps working.
- Most of the setup never touches your mailbox. Inviting agents, canned responses, automations, and the AI agent with its playground can all be finished before any customer email reaches Commslayer.
- Once email reaches both tools, both create a ticket for it. Commslayer treats it like any other ticket: automations run, and the AI agent replies if it is enabled for that inbox. Decide which tool answers before you turn forwarding on.
The switch
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Keep replying in your old helpdesk until you're ready to cut over.
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You don't need to run the import again. Your import is a copy of your old helpdesk from the moment you started it. A second import is not a top-up. It copies everything again into a second Imported inbox. Tickets that arrived in your old helpdesk after the import are finished there (see below). If you need them in Commslayer, contact support from the chat inside the app before you start a second import.
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Turn on email forwarding to Commslayer. Send a test email into Commslayer and reply to it from Commslayer, and confirm both land correctly before moving on.
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Disable email forwarding to your previous helpdesk.
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Enable your contact form.
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Enable the chat widget on your store.
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Handle all new tickets in Commslayer from this point on.
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Reply to and resolve your open tickets in the old helpdesk, then leave it read-only for a couple of weeks in case you need to look something up. Your history up to the moment you started the import is in Commslayer.
⚠️ If you're on Gmail, we don't recommend keeping it connected to Commslayer and your old helpdesk at the same time for more than 2-3 hours. Gmail throttles sending and you'll run into problems. Use forwarding instead.
Tickets still open in your old helpdesk
Imported conversations are read-only in Commslayer. They sit in a separate Imported inbox as your history, and you can't reply from them. That isn't a problem for the switch:
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New tickets come to Commslayer. Once your email forwarding points to Commslayer, every new email arrives here and you reply to it here.
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Finish the old open tickets in your old helpdesk. Reply to them and resolve them there. This is why it pays to close as many open tickets as you can before the switch.
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Customer replies to old tickets arrive in Commslayer. After the switch, a customer's reply to an old thread comes in as a conversation in your Commslayer email inbox. The email thread carries the earlier messages, and the imported conversation is in the customer's history, so the context isn't lost.
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No capacity to finish them in the old helpdesk? There is no way to reply from an imported ticket. Start a new email to the customer from Commslayer instead.
Replying to customers: the basics →
Replies sent from your old helpdesk during the switch
They'll still reach your customers. What happens next depends on your setup:
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If email threading carries the conversation back, you'll see the reply in Commslayer
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If your inbox is connected directly, the reply may land in the old helpdesk, but Commslayer picks up the thread
Why only one helpdesk should answer
If both helpdesks are handling new tickets, each one thinks it's in charge. You get duplicate replies and confused customers. Keep the overlap short: long enough to catch tickets in flight, not long enough to double-answer them.
After you've switched
Send test emails to and from Commslayer to confirm they're landing correctly.
Watch your inbox for the first few hours. Check that replies are sending with the right sender name, and that nothing is sitting unassigned.
Questions? Contact support from the chat inside the app. It's the chat bubble in the bottom right corner.