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
The switch
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Keep replying in your old helpdesk until you're ready to cut over.
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Re-run the migration tool one last time to pull in anything that arrived since your first 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. All conversation history will be ready 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.
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 you can't run both at once
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? Send a message to karri@commslayer.com