Migrate data between teams

Team migration is required when you merge one or more Postman teams into a single (typically company-authorized) account. There are several reasons for having a company-authorized Postman account (or team) including security, the ability for a company to better oversee its intellectual property, and to give users the benefit of a robust paid plan.

Team migration can occur in different ways depending on your needs and preferred outcomes.

Who can perform team migration

• All plan types (Free and paid)
• Team members with the Admin or Developer role
• Information Technology or System Administrator for single sign-on provisioning (available to Enterprise plans)

Before you start migrating

• Make sure you understand role-based access control at a team, workspace, and collection level.
• Decide what type of export option is right for your company.
• Understand what data is and isn't exported in a data-dump.
• Read the migration FAQs.

Migrating your data

You can choose either centralized or distributed migration to export your team data.

As a precautionary measure prior to migrating data, Admins are strongly encouraged to perform a JSON data dump backup through a bulk export.

Choosing centralized migration

Centralized migration must be performed by a Team Admin.

With centralized migration, you will export a large JSON file of collections, environments, globals, and header presets.

You can bulk export your personal workspaces and the workspaces of any teams you have joined.

Choose centralized migration if the following conditions apply:

• Your organization prefers to have one person perform the migration.

Don't choose centralized migration if your organization relies on the following:

• Postman-published documentation–URLs would need to be republished from your new team instance.
• Mocks and monitors—you would need to recreate these.
• Team members have a lot of important content in their personal workspaces that must be transferred.

See performing centralized migration to choose this option.

Choosing distributed migration

You can carry out distributed migration with any type of Postman account.

Team Admins and Super Admins can bulk export data. See Export data from Postman for more information.

If you have an account and aren't part of a team yet, but want to keep an independent workspace after joining one, see Join a team. When migrating company data to an authorized team, you can export specific data or export a dump of all data.

If you have an account and want to deactivate it and join an authorized team, you can accept the team invite and choose to transfer your personal Postman data to your new team.

Choose distributed migration if the following conditions apply:

• Your organization has workspaces that have dedicated Workspace Admins with many collections.
  • Workspace Admins can export any relevant collections and environments into the new team workspace.
• You are a single user and want to deactivate your existing account or move company data from your account to the authorized team.

Recreating mocks, monitors, and documentation on the new team may be carried out by those who are responsible for maintaining it.

Don't choose distributed migration if your organization is unable to do the following:

• Confirm ownership of workspaces, collections, and other data that may be important and would otherwise be lost if no one takes responsibility for migrating it.
• Create the necessary communication channels so you know when everyone has migrated.

See performing distributed migration to choose this option.

Performing centralized migration

1. The appointed Admin on the original team will inherit ownership of all shared and unshared data.

   Data from team workspaces you haven't joined won't be present in the export.

   By default, the person who imports a collection or environment is automatically assigned the Editor role (learn more about roles). Everyone else on the team will be assigned as Viewer.

2. Export all data at once with a JSON data dump.
3. The appointed Admin can then re-import into the new team.

   All collections included in the data dump will be imported into your selected workspace.

4. When your new team is ready for users to join, the Admin on the new team can send invitations to all other team members. The invite link will prompt them to join the new team. Once they've joined the new team, you can remove them from the original team.
5. At this point, you can re-share and organize collections into team workspaces.
6. Once the last team member from your previous team has migrated to your new one, the original team will be deleted along with all of the data within it. You can then begin collaborating in your new team. To learn more about collaborating in Postman, watch Working with your team in Postman.

Performing distributed migration

1. Team members need to export their Postman data prior to moving to your new team. You can use this as an opportunity to clean up and reorganize your workspaces.
2. Team members can leave the previous team and join your new team. They can then re-import Postman data into their respective team workspaces, creating new workspaces where necessary.

   By default, the person who imports a collection or environment is automatically assigned the Editor role (learn more about roles). Everyone else on the team will be assigned as a Viewer.

3. Once the last team member from your previous team has migrated to your new one, the original team will be deleted along with all of the data within it. You can then begin collaborating in your new team. To learn more about collaborating in Postman, watch Working with your team in Postman.

   If you change your team email to a non-company domain email (for example, Gmail or Yahoo), your original team will continue indefinitely. You can keep an account with your current data and use a work email for a work account. Keeping both accounts in use can help when you migrate data.

   Keep in mind items that will need to be recreated (such as monitors and mocks).

Migration FAQs

• I'm on a free account, what happens to my personal collections when I join a team?

  If you're an individual Postman user and join a team, you can choose to transfer your personal workspaces and the data within them to the team or keep them separate. In the following cases, your personal workspaces and the data within them automatically transfer when you join a team, with caveats as noted:

  • If you request to join a team and are approved by a Team Admin. However, if you're joining a team no one else has joined, you'll be prompted to transfer your data.

  • If the team has SCIM provisioning enabled.

  • If the team has domain capture enabled.

  Notes:

  • If you already belong to a team and are switching to another team, your data won't be automatically transferred. Instead, you can export and import your data. An Admin can perform a bulk export. See Export data from Postman for more information.
  • If you leave a team on a non-Enterprise plan, you can move your work back to a personal workspace.

  For more information about data handling related to joining and leaving a team, see Join a team.

  If you experience any issues when joining a new team, contact Postman support.

• Can I be on two teams at once?

  Yes, each account can be on multiple Postman teams at a time.

• Will my monitors / mocks transfer over?

  No, you will need to recreate any monitors and mocks in your new team.

• What data is exported in a large JSON file data-dump?

  All collections in your personal workspace and any workspaces that you have joined, in addition to environments, globals, and header presets, are included when you export a data-dump.

• What data doesn't get exported?

  You will need to reassign roles (workspace, collection, and environment level), recreate workspaces, recreate monitors, recreate mocks, re-import API schemas, and republish documentation from your new team pages.

• What happens to published documentation from my previous team?

  Your documentation links will break since the previous team is no longer active. New documentation URLs will need to be generated when collections are republished from your new team pages. If you are publishing to a custom domain, unpublish and remove the domain from your previous team to add it to your new team and republish.

• What happens to the previous team once everyone leaves?

  If it's a free team, the team is deleted after the last team member leaves the team. Previous users of the deleted team will no longer have access to the team's workspaces, including personal workspaces, or any elements in them. Users can export their Postman data prior to leaving the team to ensure it stays with them.

  If it's a paid team, you must contact Postman support to cancel the plan subscription before you can leave the team.

Next steps

After learning how to migrate data between teams, you can learn how to manage team roles and set up SSO:

• To learn how to manage team members, roles, workspaces, and product access, visit the Team management overview.
• To learn how to set up single sign-on (SSO) for your Postman team, visit Configure SSO. (Enterprise plans only.)