Migrating HubSpot to SurveySparrow means flattening a relational CRM into a simpler ticket system. Use API extraction — CSV exports lose engagement history.
There is no native migration path from HubSpot Service Hub to SurveySparrow Ticket Management; the existing HubSpot-SurveySparrow integration handles survey triggers and response mapping, not historical ticket migration. The fundamental challenge is flattening HubSpot's relational CRM data model—where tickets associate with contacts, companies, deals, engagements, and custom objects—into SurveySparrow's flat ticket-to-contact structure, which lacks native companies, custom objects, and multi-object associations. Custom API-based extraction is required to preserve engagement thread history (emails, calls, notes), as HubSpot's CSV exports only include ticket properties, demanding 3–5 API calls per ticket and careful handling of rate limits, attachment format restrictions, and data transformation.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
TL;DR — HubSpot Service Hub to SurveySparrow Ticket Management Migration
This migration moves your support operation from a full CRM-integrated helpdesk to a feedback-first ticket management system. HubSpot's relational data model (Tickets → Contacts → Companies → Engagements → Custom Objects) must be flattened significantly because SurveySparrow Ticket Management has no native Companies object, no custom objects, and no multi-object association graph. The realistic timeline is 1–3 weeks for under 50K tickets without heavy customization, 3–6 weeks for larger datasets with complex engagement histories. The single biggest risk is losing engagement thread history: HubSpot CSV exports include ticket properties but not full engagement bodies (emails, calls, notes), so API extraction is required — typically 3–5 API calls per ticket. SurveySparrow's V3 Tickets API supports batch creation, but attachments are limited to 15MB per file and only pdf, png, jpeg, mp3, csv, wav formats. Teams with fewer than 5,000 tickets and no custom objects can self-serve with scripts. Anything above that benefits from a managed migration.
Critical limitation
SurveySparrow's Ticket Create API does not accept a created_at override. Tickets will be stamped with the import timestamp, not the original HubSpot creation date. To preserve historical dates, store the original createdate in a custom field (e.g., custom_fields.original_created) and accept the API-set timestamp. This is a known constraint with most feedback-first platforms. If chronological ordering matters for reporting, query against the custom field, not the system timestamp.
Know before you commit
SurveySparrow Ticket Management is not a 1:1 replacement for HubSpot Service Hub. It is a lighter, feedback-oriented system. If your team relies heavily on HubSpot's CRM capabilities, pipeline automation, or custom objects, SurveySparrow will feel like a downgrade in those areas. Refer to the decision framework above.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
- Helpdesk Evaluator Sanity-check that Surveysparrow Ticket Management is the right target before you commit
- COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off
- Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated HubSpot Service Hub → Surveysparrow Ticket Management timeline
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Pull the real numbers out of HubSpot Service Hub
Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Decide what history actually moves
Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.
A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off -
Confirm Surveysparrow Ticket Management can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through Surveysparrow Ticket Management: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.
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Build the business case
Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated HubSpot Service Hub → Surveysparrow Ticket Management timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.
HubSpot Service Hub → Surveysparrow Ticket Management specifics
- Feedback-loop integration
- SurveySparrow's core strength is connecting survey responses directly to tickets. Case management capabilities convert feedback into trackable tickets, and workflows automatically create tickets based on survey responses meeting specific criteria, such as low NPS scores.
- Cost reduction
- HubSpot Service Hub Professional starts at $100/seat/month (as of 2024), with Enterprise at $150/seat/month. For a 15-agent team, that's $18,000–$27,000/year before add-ons. SurveySparrow's Business tier with Ticket Management starts significantly lower per seat, especially for teams that primarily need feedback-driven ticket workflows rather than a full CRM.
- Simplicity
- Teams that don't use HubSpot's CRM capabilities (deals, pipelines, sequences) are paying for complexity they don't need. SurveySparrow has grown from a feedback tool into a complete ticketing solution with omnichannel support, AI-powered ticket categorization, and custom workflows.
- Stack unbundling
- Some organizations keep HubSpot for CRM and marketing automation while moving daily support to a lighter service layer.
- Time window
- How many years of ticket history do you need? Migrating 5+ years of closed tickets adds cost without value for most teams.
Don't move on until
- Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
- Success criteria signed off by the support lead
- Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full HubSpot Service Hub export and profile it
Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.
Data Profiler Profile the HubSpot Service Hub export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.
A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.
CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export -
Inventory PII and set retention
Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.
Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in HubSpot Service Hub where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.
PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing
Don't move on until
- Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
- PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
- Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass HubSpot Service Hub → Surveysparrow Ticket Management field map
Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the HubSpot Service Hub → Surveysparrow Ticket Management field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.
Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where Surveysparrow Ticket Management has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.
Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.
Don't move on until
- Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
- Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
- Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice.
Objective A pilot load into a Surveysparrow Ticket Management sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a Surveysparrow Ticket Management sandbox that matches production config
Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.
PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under Surveysparrow Ticket Management's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.
Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.
Don't move on until
- Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
- Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
- Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window.
Objective All in-scope data live in Surveysparrow Ticket Management, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while HubSpot Service Hub stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from Surveysparrow Ticket Management's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.
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Freeze HubSpot Service Hub and take the final delta
Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.
Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.
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Load the delta and open tickets
Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.
Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep HubSpot Service Hub read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.
Don't move on until
- Full historical load complete and counts matched
- Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
- Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile HubSpot Service Hub and Surveysparrow Ticket Management record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.
SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in Surveysparrow Ticket Management, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep HubSpot Service Hub read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
- Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
- Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled
Field mapping reference
The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.
Object SurveySparrow Equivalent
SurveySparrow does not support custom objects, so any HubSpot Enterprise custom object data linked to tickets will be entirely lost unless flattened into standard fields.
| HubSpot Service Hub field | Surveysparrow Ticket Management field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | Tickets | Direct mapping. Subject ≤ 200 chars in SurveySparrow. |
| Contacts | Contacts | Map email, phone, mobile, custom properties. |
| Companies | ❌ No equivalent | Store company name as a custom contact property or ticket field. |
| Deals/Opportunities | ❌ No equivalent | Not migratable. Archive separately or keep in CRM. |
| Engagements (Emails) | Ticket Comments | Email bodies → comment text. Sender metadata stored in comment. CC/BCC recipients are lost. |
| Engagements (Notes) | Ticket Comments (internal) | Map as internal notes on the ticket. |
| Engagements (Calls) | Ticket Comments | Call summaries → comment text. Call recordings won't transfer. |
| Engagements (Tasks) | ❌ No equivalent | Document and archive. |
| Engagements (Meetings) | ❌ No equivalent | Archive as ticket comment text or drop. |
| Custom Objects | ❌ No equivalent | Flatten into custom ticket fields or archive. |
| Pipelines | Ticket statuses/templates | Map pipeline stages → SurveySparrow status values. |
| HubSpot Tags | Custom fields or description | SurveySparrow doesn't have a native tag system on tickets. |
HubSpot Ticket Property Type
| HubSpot Service Hub field | Surveysparrow Ticket Management field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| subject | String | Truncate to 200 chars |
| content | Text | Direct map |
| hs_pipeline | Enum | Lookup table |
| hs_pipeline_stage | Enum | Map stage IDs → SS status IDs |
| hs_ticket_priority | Enum | Map (LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH/URGENT → SS priority IDs) |
| hubspot_owner_id | Number | Owner → Agent map |
| hs_ticket_category | Enum | Depends on categorization approach |
| createdate | DateTime | See callout below |
| hs_lastmodifieddate | DateTime | ISO 8601 string |
| Associated Contact email | String | Used for requester matching |
| Custom properties | Varies | Type conversion required |
Risk matrix
Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.
| Object | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | medium | Ticket properties transfer reliably via API, but pipeline stage mappings and multi-pipeline configurations require manual re-mapping since SurveySparrow lacks equivalent multi-pipeline SLA structures. |
| Contacts | low | Contacts map relatively well between platforms, though HubSpot lifecycle stages, list memberships, and CRM-specific properties will not carry over natively. |
| Companies | high | SurveySparrow has no native Companies object, so all company-level data and ticket-to-company associations will be lost unless denormalized into contact or ticket custom fields. |
| Engagement History | high | Full email threads, call recordings, meeting logs, and note content require individual API extraction per ticket and must be converted into SurveySparrow's simpler comments and internal notes format, risking loss of threading context. |
| Custom Objects | high | SurveySparrow does not support custom objects, so any HubSpot Enterprise custom object data linked to tickets will be entirely lost unless flattened into standard fields. |
| Attachments | medium | Attachments are transferable but restricted to 15MB per file and limited to pdf, png, jpeg, mp3, csv, and wav formats, meaning files exceeding size limits or in unsupported formats will be excluded. |
| Custom Fields | medium | HubSpot custom ticket properties can be mapped to SurveySparrow custom fields, but field type mismatches and picklist value differences require manual mapping and validation. |
| Workflows and Automations | high | HubSpot's multi-branch cross-object workflows cannot be directly replicated in SurveySparrow's event-based system and must be entirely rebuilt with reduced logic capabilities. |
| Deal-to-Ticket Associations | high | SurveySparrow has no deals or opportunities object, so all sales-to-support visibility through deal-ticket associations will be completely lost. |
| Knowledge Base Articles | high | SurveySparrow does not offer a native knowledge base module, so HubSpot KB content must be migrated to a separate platform or abandoned entirely. |
The hard parts
What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.
Engagement History Extraction
HubSpot CSV exports exclude full engagement bodies (email threads, call logs, note content), requiring per-ticket API extraction at 3–5 calls per ticket with a shared 4-request-per-second rate limit across all CRM search endpoints.
Relational Data Model Flattening
HubSpot's multi-object association graph linking tickets to contacts, companies, deals, and custom objects must be compressed into SurveySparrow's flat ticket-to-contact structure, resulting in data loss for company associations and cross-object relationships.
Custom Objects Not Supported
HubSpot Enterprise custom objects used for ticket enrichment (e.g., product SKUs, subscription records) have no equivalent in SurveySparrow and must be either discarded or denormalized into custom ticket fields.
Attachment Format Restrictions
SurveySparrow's V3 Tickets API limits attachments to 15MB per file and only supports pdf, png, jpeg, mp3, csv, and wav formats, requiring conversion or exclusion of unsupported file types from HubSpot.
Workflow Logic Translation
HubSpot's multi-branch, cross-object conditional workflows with delays and enrollment triggers must be rebuilt as SurveySparrow's simpler event-based ticket workflows, which lack equivalent branching and cross-object logic.
API Rate Limit Coordination
Both platforms impose rate limits—HubSpot's CRM search API at 4 requests per second shared across all object types—making large-scale extraction a primary bottleneck that requires batching and retry logic.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
Can I migrate HubSpot Service Hub tickets to SurveySparrow using CSV only?
Not end-to-end. HubSpot can export records to CSV, and SurveySparrow can CSV-import contacts, but ticket creation requires the API. CSV exports also do not include full engagement bodies (email threads, call logs, note content) — only ticket properties. For anything beyond basic contact data, you need an API-based approach.
Does SurveySparrow support custom objects like HubSpot?
No. SurveySparrow Ticket Management has no custom objects equivalent. HubSpot Enterprise custom objects must be flattened into custom ticket fields, stored as contact properties, or archived separately as CSV exports. This is one of the biggest data model compromises in this migration.
What data is lost when migrating from HubSpot to SurveySparrow?
Companies (no equivalent object), custom objects, multi-pipeline structures, complex workflows, knowledge base articles, deal/opportunity data, original ticket creation timestamps (the API doesn't accept custom created_at), rich email formatting (inline images, CC/BCC headers), and call recordings. Engagement threads compress into flat text comments.
How long does a HubSpot to SurveySparrow migration take?
For under 50K tickets without heavy customization, expect 1–3 weeks. Larger datasets with full engagement history, custom fields, and attachments typically take 3–6 weeks. The biggest time variable is engagement extraction — each ticket requires 3–5 HubSpot API calls to get full email, note, and call history.
What are SurveySparrow's attachment limits for ticket migration?
SurveySparrow accepts attachments up to 15MB per file in these formats only: pdf, png, jpeg, mp3, csv, wav. HubSpot attachments in .doc, .xlsx, .zip, or other formats must be converted to PDF or skipped. Files over 15MB must be split or archived externally with a link back from the ticket.