Last updated: 2026-01-27
Workspace Organizer \| Usage Playbook
Here is a detailed guide on how to clone configurations and move existing tickets and tasks to a new workspace using the Workspace Organizer.
``` NOTE: The Workspace Organizer would be enabled only in accounts with business teams working out of the primary workspace. In case it's not enabled in your account and you want to leverage this utlity, please reach out to your success manager to get it enabled. ```
Workspaces allow you to easily bifurcate service management operations between different functions such as IT, HR, Facilities, Finance, etc. This can provide the desired level of administrative autonomy and data segregation for different teams in your organization, yet offer a unified support experience to your employees through a one-stop service management portal.
However, if workspaces were enabled in your account AFTER you had started using Freshservice, there could be a scenario where all the data and configurations pertaining to different functions might be residing in a single workspace.
Here is a self-serve guide on how you can achieve data segregation and admin autonomy by moving different business functions to dedicated workspaces of their own. This can be done using the Workspace Organizer, a utility tool built to make this process easier.
``` Before we begin, here’s what you should know:
Please contact our support team at support@freshservice.com if your tickets need to be unarchived in bulk so that they can be moved using the 'workspace organizer' tool. Depending on the complexity and volume of tickets, its feasibility will be evaluated and may take ~3 months or more to be facilitiated, if the request is accepted.
To understand the implications of moving Open and Unresolved tickets, please continue reading the guide. ```
Let’s get started with an example scenario:
IT and HR currently operate out of the primary workspace. HR wants its own workspace and needs to move its data and configurations to the same. (If there are multiple teams that need to be moved out of the primary workspace, the process remains the same)
Let's examine each step in detail, starting with the prerequisite of creating a new workspace if you don't have one already created.
Creating a new workspace
As blank workspaces do not have any sample data/settings, create a new workspace using the ‘Blank’ template and choose the relevant primary business function during workspace creation. In our scenario, this would be ‘HR’.


Choosing any business function other than IT will create a ‘business workspace’. If the second team is IT-affiliated and will not require the business agent license, you can select ‘IT’ as the primary business function. This would create an ‘IT workspace’. Creating the right type of workspace is important as it will determine the functionalities IT and Business agents will be able to access.
Here is an article to understand the difference between IT workspaces and Business workspaces.
``` NOTE:
```
Here are some important points to note at this stage:
- ‘Create’ and 'Filter' dropdowns - By default, in-setup workspace members will be able to create tickets/tasks in the in-setup workspace. For all the other modules (i.e problem, change, release, asset, contract, software, purchase order, etc), relevant permission to create them needs to be given in the target workspace. - ‘Move’ dropdown.
- If the in-setup workspace is of type business, it will be visible in the move dropdown of ticket, task, and other business workspace modules.
- If the in-setup workspace is of type IT, it will be visible in the move dropdown of ticket, problem, change, release, task, and other IT workspace modules.
``` NOTE: Please read the agent, requester, and admin sections of this article to clearly understand what happens in a multi-workspace setup. ```
STEP-1.1:Cloning configurations to the target workspace
a. Navigate to the tool
1. Go to Account Settings > Manage workspaces.

2. Click on the Organizer workspaces button at the top right part of the screen.

3. In the next panel, you will see a two-step process that lets you
1. Clone configurations from the primary workspace to a target workspace.
2. Move tickets and tasks from the primary workspace to a target workspace.
For step(a), click on the Clone Configurations button.

b. Create a config set
As the next step, you will be prompted to create a config set. A config set enables admins to group together configurations that have to be copied over to the target workspace.
1. Click on the Create Config Set button on the top right.

2. Provide a name to the config set and select the target workspace to copy the configurations.

c. Add configurations to the config set

As the next step, you would have to add the configurations that need to be cloned to the target workspace.
Review the following table to see the list of configurations that are supported by the tool.
| CONFIGURATION NAME | SUPPORTED |
| Core Workspace Settings<br>These settings could be referred to in other configurations. Hence these settings need to be selected first. | |
| Form Fields (Tickets, Problems, Changes, Releases) | ✅ |
| Service Items | ✅ |
| Custom Objects | ✅ |
| Business Hours | ✅ |
| Agent Groups\* | ✅ |
| Advanced Workspace Settings | |
| Workflows | ✅ |
| Business Rules | ✅ |
| Closure Rules | ✅ |
| Document templates | ✅ |
| SLAs and OLAs | ✅ |
| Change Lifecycle | ✅ |
| Credentials | ✅ |
| Email Notifications | ✅ |
| Agent Roles and Permissions | ❌ |
| Supervisor rules | ❌ |
| Canned responses | ❌ |
| Leaderboard | ❌ |
| Tags | ❌ |
| Schedulers | ❌ |
| Scenario automation | ❌ |
| Form Templates | ❌ |
| Satisfaction Survey | ❌ |

``` NOTE: Up to 250 configurations can be cloned using each config set. In case you plan to clone more than 250 configurations, please split them into multiple config sets. ```
``` Key points regarding cloning agent groups and other configurations that contain agent references:
```
``` NOTE:
```

- 'Add' indicates that this configuration is not present in the target workspace and will be added to the target workspace. - As mentioned earlier, only in the case of 'agent groups', the value is always shown as "Add". However, if the agent group has been cloned earlier, we will not "Add" it but overwrite the old group. - 'Update' indicates that this configuration is already present in the target workspace and will be updated with the latest version in the primary workspace. - Make changes to your selection if required, or proceed further by clicking on the Clone Configurations button.

``` Important points to note
Ticket Field placeholders will work as expected and point to ticket fields in the new workspace.
```
STEP-1.2 :Setting up the channels for incoming tickets
Once the settings have been added, we have to set up the channels via which incoming tickets will flow into this workspace. There are three primary channels for the same:
1. ## Service Items
We have already created the same via cloning in STEP-1.1. These are in the draft state currently and can be published only after the workspace is published.
2. ## Emails
A particular support email ID can only be added to one workspace and cannot be present in two workspaces at the same time. If you have the HR team’s email ID added to the primary workspace, tickets will continue to flow in via emails to the primary workspace. Deleting that email id and adding it to the second workspace will disrupt the incoming ticket flow when the second workspace is not completely set up.
The recommended time to do this is right before or right after publishing the second workspace. This ensures that the right SLAs and workflows are applied to them and agents are ready to act in the second workspace. Any support email received up to 24 hours before re-adding the email will be created as a ticket in the second workspace.
3\. Support portal “Report an issue form”
Please evaluate the following scenarios and take the necessary steps accordingly:
Scenario 1: You have a generic ticket form that only has default fields and you haven’t added any custom fields of your own.
Goal:You want to continue with the current setup.
Action to be taken:
The form that is required to be exposed to requesters in this case is the primary workspace’s form (the global form cannot be exposed on its own). Since the primary workspace’s form is ready, there is no re-configuration required here.
However, via this form, all the tickets will be sent to the primary workspace because the form belongs to the primary workspace. As such, you will have to create a global workflow to direct tickets to the HR workspace on the basis of conditions such as ‘Subject contains X, Y, Z keyword’. The workflow should ideally be in the deactivated state until the second workspace is published. If you want to test it out, you can activate it temporarily and submit sample tickets to see if the workflow is working as expected.
``` NOTE: Since tickets are created in the first workspace in this case, email notifications (such as ticket create notification, etc) present in the first workspace will be triggered from the primary email. ```
Once the second workspace is published later, the workspace selection field will be automatically shown to requesters in the ticket form. Since you plan to expose only the primary workspace's form and therefore, not expose workspace selection to requesters, you will have to go to Global Settings >Field Manager > Workspace and uncheck ‘Display to requesters’. This will hide the workspace dropdown from the requester form and requestors will only see the primary workspace’s form.
Please note that agents will still see the workspace selection field in their agent portal ticket form. Agents can select a workspace and raise tickets directly to the respective teams.
Situation 2: Your current form has both default and custom fields. The form isn’t customized for individual teams using business rules and the custom fields are applicable to all teams in the primary workspace.
Goal:You want to continue with this setup but want to have teams across workspaces.
Action to be taken:
Let’s first understand the pros and cons of continuing with the current setup:
Pros:
1. No-reconfiguration required.
2. Since the current form will be used, if any fields are referred to in apps/workflows, they will not be impacted.
3. Historical tickets will not be impacted as the fields remain as is.
Cons:
As the form is created in the primary workspace, future tickets will first be created there and when they are moved to the second workspace during regular operations via workflows/manually, custom field values will be lost as those custom fields are present in the primary workspace.
Recommendation: Update the existing form by adding custom fields in global settings and hiding custom fields from the primary workspace. Global custom fields are shared by all the workspaces and therefore, their values are not lost when tickets are moved across workspaces.
Process:
Since you are performing changes on a live form, it is advisable to announce a downtime to users before you start this or you can perform it during out-of-office hours.
Requester Form Setup
- Impacts:
- Any workflow or business rule that was supposed to execute on the old custom fields in existing unresolved tickets will not work as expected when the source configurations are updated. Therefore, you can also choose to duplicate/recreate these configurations and then update them with the global custom fields. The old configurations can be archived once all the existing tickets that they are supposed to execute on are resolved.
- Guide for updating configurations: If the configurations are going to apply to all workspaces, you can choose to recreate them manually in global settings. If they apply only to one team or specific workspaces, you can duplicate them within primary workspace and clone them to the specific workspaces.
- Your ticket form has a copy of each custom field - one created in the primary workspace and the other created in global settings.
- The fields in the primary workspace will be hidden from requesters but your agents will still be able to see them.
- You have a duplicate version of configurations ready in the primary/global workspace that should act on the global fields.
- The fields in global settings are as yet hidden from requesters. You can expose them to requesters now so that all the new tickets capture values in global fields.
Agent Form Setup
Before publishing the workspace: Create a new global workflow that will move any future incoming ticket to its target workspace. This workflow can be activated right after publishing the workspace or if you want to test it, you can activate it before that, submit a ticket via email, and see if the tickets are getting routed correctly.
``` Important points to note:
```
Situation 3: You currently have a dynamic form to suit the needs of different teams in the first workspace.
It is set up with the help of business rules and the form shows different fields on the basis of any previous selections made in the form. For example, if the category is Hardware, it shows hardware-specific fields. If the category is Payroll, it shows different fields.
Goal:You want to continue with the current setup
Recommendation:
In this case, it is recommended to let requesters choose the workspace in the ticket form and raise the ticket directly to that team. IT and HR Admins can choose to further customize their workspace forms as per their needs. For example, let the requester choose IT or HR in the ‘Issue related to’ default field that is exposed when you publish the second workspace. Selecting either of the options will load that particular workspace’s local form.
If you go ahead with this, you should:
Note:
Do not delete the HR fields from the primary workspace just yet. This is because the move tickets tool will only let you move closed/resolved tickets and therefore, you will have some open/in-progress HR tickets in the primary workspace. Therefore, before you are ready to go live:
Post go-live:
On the other hand, if you are keen to go ahead with the current setup only where there’s one team controlling the setup, you should proceed with the solution mentioned in Situation 2 and the entire form will have to be recreated in global settings. However, dependent field relations/dynamic form relations between global field values and workspace field values, cannot be created.
STEP-2:Going live with the new workspace
The next step is to publish the new workspace. Ensure that you check off the below action items:
Before publishing
The workspace can now be published to requesters. Tickets will now start getting created in the new workspace.
After publishing
- Ticket Views: - In default views, agents will be able to see tickets from all the workspaces they have ticket access in. - In custom/saved views: - If the view is NOT based on custom field filters, agents can update the workspace filter to "All workspaces" and see tickets from all the workspaces they have access to (in this case, it's IT and HR since they have tickets in both of them). Later, when the tickets are moved to HR and the agents are removed from IT workspace, "All workspaces" will show tickets only from HR. - If the view is based on custom field filters, agents can: - If all the tickets have been resolved and moved> update the workspace to HR and select the correct filters again - If some of the tickets have not been moved (as unresolved ticket movement isn't supported via the tool) > Create a separate view. The old ticket view can be deleted when all the tickets have been moved. - Dashboards: - Dashboards are based on ticket views. When ticket views are updated, the dashboards will show the correct information. If new ticket views have been created, the dashboard will have to be updated. - Analytics Reports: - If the report is based on global fields, the workspace filter can be updated to "All workspaces" - If the report has metrics based on custom fields, the report can - If all the tickets have been resolved and moved> Update the workspace to HR and select the metrics again - If some of the tickets have not been moved (as unresolved ticket movement isn't supported via the tool) > Clone the report and set HR as the workspace.
STEP-3:Moving tickets and tasks
Once the necessary configurations have been successfully cloned to the target workspace, we move to the last step of moving the tickets and tasks. You can
``` Here are some important things to keep in mind before you initiate this step:
```
``` Read this note to understand the logic followed for mapping ticket fields and service items between workspaces to ensure successful movement of tickets ```
NOTE: Impact of moving Open and In-progress tickets and tasks
``` Please be aware of the following implications while moving open or in-progress tickets.
To maintain the first response times and due dates of tickets: 1. Clone SLAs and policies: Before transferring tickets, ensure you have cloned the relevant SLAs and business hour policies from the source workspace to the target workspace. 2. Preserve Order: Make sure the SLAs and business hour policies are in the same order in the target workspace as they are in the primary workspace. 3. Verify Ticket Statuses: Confirm that all relevant ticket statuses are present in the target workspace.
If a workflow is in progress on a ticket during its transfer, the workflow may fail to complete because the ticket might have already moved to another workspace. For example, consider an approval workflow where an approval request is sent before the ticket is moved. If the approval is granted after the ticket has already been transferred, the approval action will succeed. However, subsequent workflow actions may fail if they rely on attributes that are available only in the source workspace. Examples of such attributes are assign the ticket to an agent group in the primary workspace, update custom fields in the primary workspace, etc.
To resume notifications after the tickets have moved, go to your channel/team and change the linked agent group to match the new agent group in the target workspace. Slack: You can do it by visiting servicebot settings, disconnecting the old agent group and connecting the new group. More details here. MSTeams: You can dissociate the current team from an agent group and associate it with another agent group, by using the “@ServiceBot Reassociate” command. More detais here.
Any subsequent updates to the ticket will be pushed to the channel as before. ```
Here are the steps in the process
a. Navigate to the Move Tickets and Tasks flow
Start with the second step by clicking on the MoveTickets and Tasksbutton.

b. Create agent group mapping
As the first step, you will be prompted to create a mapping between agent groups of the primary and target workspaces. This is because agent group names are unique in the entire account so without this, the target agent group of a ticket cannot be identified.The agent group assigned to the ticket in the primary workspace will be replaced with the mapped agent group when the ticket is moved to the target workspace.

This mapping will be saved for all the upcoming runs between the selected pair of workspaces. Please note that the agent assigned to the ticket should be present in the mapped agent group in the target workspace, otherwise, the transfer of the respective ticket will fail.
``` NOTE: If no mapping exists for a particular agent group in the primary workspace or the agent group is deleted after creating the mapping, that ticket will not be moved. The latest updated state of the mapping of agent groups will be considered at the time of any move activity. ```
c. Selecting tickets that need to be moved
As the next step, you need to filter the tickets you want to move from the primary workspace to the target workspace. You may choose a combination of filter criteria such that all the tickets that you want to move get covered. Please note that the ‘AND’ operator is used when multiple conditions are added and at a time, only 10,000 tickets can be moved. In case, more than 10,000 tickets get selected by the filter criteria, you would be asked to add stricter filter rules. You can use the ‘Ticket Created At’ date filter to reduce this count and move the remaining tickets in the next batch (by running the tool again).

d. Selecting tasks that need to be moved
Similar to the selection of tickets, you can select the set of tasks that you want to move by the filters available in the Move Tasks option.
``` NOTE: You can move all types of tasks, irrespective of their parent entity (i.e. tickets, problems, changes, releases) ```
e. Verify the configurations in the target workspace
As you click on ‘Proceed’, you will be able to see the list of all the ticket fields and the service item fields which are associated with the filtered tickets but are not present in the target workspace. Please review this list and clone the missing fields/items to the target workspace. If a particular ticket field is not relevant to the team that will work in the target workspace, you can skip creating that field.
Youwill not see this alert for tasks as task fields are global and shared by all workspaces.

The list will not show any value option that you have missed adding in the target workspace (for fields of the type Dropdown, Multidropdown, or Dependent). Please verify that separately before proceeding further. If they are not added and the tickets are moved, the tickets may show a read-only text of the old value for reference. However, since the value is not actually present in the drop-down, you will get an error message when you update the ticket properties.
In addition to missing fields/items, you will also be informed of any association types (eg: change association, etc) that will be removed if you move tickets to a business workspace. If any field/service item has been renamed by an admin after it was cloned, it will also be shown for your information. When the tickets are transferred, the ticket/service item field values will appear under a different field label due to this because internally, cloned fields remain mapped to their source fields in the primary workspace.
``` NOTE: Workspace Organizer supports transferring data only from a local workspace field (primary) to a local workspace field (target). The custom field values will not be copied from the primary workspace to global custom fields. ```
``` NOTE: If you choose to proceed without creating the missing fields, these fields will be dropped from the transferred tickets, and they cannot be recovered. ```
f. Initiate Move
Please click on ‘Proceed’ to start the process. As it begins, you will receive a CSV export via email of the list of tickets that are going to be moved and their field values. This acts as a backup of the state of tickets before the move. No file will be sent for tasks because task fields are global and there is no risk of losing values from custom task fields.
Once the transfer begins, you can monitor the status on your screen.

``` NOTE: The status page will auto-refresh every few minutes and may appear static. You refresh it manually to see the latest status of the tickets. It will typically take ~10 minutes for a batch of 10,000 tickets to be moved. ```
f. Status check after moving tickets and tasks
The status of the ticket movement can be found under the Log page, where past ticket movement runs are also logged in. You may download the list of tickets that got moved (or failed to move) with their appropriate status. In case of any failures, the reason for failure will be logged as well. You can fix the gaps and run the ‘Move tickets’ step again. You will also receive an email with the ticket movement report.

``` NOTE: The ticket ID of every ticket will remain the same during the ticket movement process. However, the ticket type will change as per the target workspace. Eg: INC-123 will change to REQ-123. Here is an article to learn more about ticket types. ```
Once all the tickets (open, in-progress, unresolved, and closed) are moved, delete the service items, ticket fields, and workflows of the team that has been relocated to the new workspace.
Important points to note related to moving tickets
| Scenario | Impact | Reason |
| If the target workspace is of IT type | Entire ticket data can be transferred except on-call responder data. | Target workspace being of IT-type will support Incidents and Service Requests. |
| If the target workspace is of Business type | Incidents will be converted to ticket type ‘Case/Query/Request/Issue’ and will lose associations (if any) with Problems, Changes, Alerts, On-call responders, and Impacted Services. | Business-type workspaces only support ticket type ‘Case/Query/Request/Issue’ which does not support associations with Problems, Changes, Releases, Alerts, Oncall, and Services. |
| Service Requests will be converted to the ticket type Case/Query/Request/Issue’ and will lose associations (if any) with Changes. | Cases do not support associations with Changes. |
Please reach out to support@freshservice.com for queries, if any.
APPENDIX
Mapping ticket fields and service items between workspaces
``` NOTE: This mapping is only maintained when tickets are moved using the Workspace Organizer. It is not maintained when tickets are moved via Move or Bulk Move options on ticket details/list page. ```
- If you are using the Workspace Organizer's "Clone configuration" option to copy the fields, the mapping would be automatically created and would persist even if you update the field name in the destination workspace after cloning the field.
- If you are creating the fields manually, then to ensure successful mapping, each field name and value option in the target workspace should be an exact match of the original field name/value in the primary workspace. The name match for fields and value options would be case-sensitive (eg: 'location' will match with 'location' and not with 'Location'). Please note that the order in which fields/value options are created in the target workspace is not important.
- If you are using the Workspace Organizer's "Clone configuration" option to copy the service items, the mapping would be automatically created and would persist even if you update the service item name/fields in the destination workspace after cloning the service item.
- If you are creating the service items manually, then to ensure successful mapping, the names of the recreated service items and the service categories they belong to in the destination workspace should exactly match (case-sensitive) with the original settings in the primary workspace. For example: A ticket has a service item associated with it called “Oracle Access” and it is under the ‘Applications’ folder in the primary workspace. For this ticket to be able to map with the new service item in the target workspace (after it’s moved), there should be a service item called ‘Oracle Access’ under the ‘Applications’ folder in the target workspace too. If the category is not found or the item is not found under the category, the ticket will not be moved. Please note that the tool simply matches the names of service items and service categories to find a match. Other service item properties such as description, visibility rules, etc. need not match for the mapping to be successful.
