Migrating from Productboard to Cycle: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

Heads‑up 🚀 — The Cycle team can handle this migration as part of your onboarding. However, if you prefer a DIY approach, this guide walks you through the entire process using Cycle’s API and some basic CSV transformations.

Many teams come to Cycle after hitting a wall with Productboard. Adoption is low, not because the team doesn’t care about feedback, but because processing it manually is time-consuming and disconnected.

Cycle changes that with AI that speaks your taxonomy, integrates natively with tools like HubSpot and Linear, and supports call recordings from Gong, Modjo, our built-in call recorder and more.

On top of that, teams love our flexible data model, custom dashboards to analyze feedback at scale, and the smoother collaboration that comes with it.

If you’re feeling stuck or just looking for a fresh start, this guide shows how easy it is to migrate your Productboard data into Cycle.

Step 1: Export Your Productboard Data

Begin by exporting your data from Productboard:

1. Go to Productboard ⚙️ Settings › Export.
2. Retrieve the essential files (replace your_workspace with your actual workspace name):
   • Notes + linked features: https://[your_workspace].productboard.com/api/notes/export?export_type=with_features
   • Features (HTML): https://[your_workspace].productboard.com/api/features/export

Intercom conversations aren't included by default. You'll need to request this additional CSV from Productboard support if you use Intercom.

Step 2: Reconcile Intercom Conversations

This step is optional for users that integrated Intercom with Productboard

If applicable, merge the separate Intercom conversation file back into your notes export using the intercom_conversation_id.

Step 3: Make Your Taxonomy Fit Your Product, Not the Other Way Around

Current Productboard Structure

Productboard structures data linearly:

Product › Component › Feature › Sub‑feature

Cycle’s Flexible Structure

Cycle organizes taxonomy into two complementary layers:

• Product Area Categories and Nested Product Areas: Typically, the product area category represents a team or squad, while nested product areas represent specific parts of your product.

• Request Types: Items with lifecycle states (Features, Epics, Initiatives, OKRs). Each request type belongs to a single product area.

Mapping Guide

Step 4: Stage Your Data for Import

Clearly prepare your feedback data:

• Productboard Notes → Cycle Feedback (raw, unstructured feedback)

• Productboard Insights → Cycle Quotes (feedback snippets)

• Cut-off date: Limit unprocessed feedback to the past 6–12 months to maintain relevance and manage AI credit usage effectively. Fully import already processed feedback.

• Retain original timestamps for accurate trend analysis.

Import Order

This order must be followed:

1. Define your Cycle taxonomy clearly within your workspace.
2. ‍Import backlog of request types (features, initiatives, etc.).‍
3. Import initial companies and people via CSV: This sets your customer properties, enabling immediate Voice-of-Customer dashboards.
4. Set up automated customer sync from your CRM or data warehouse. Cycle provides detailed documentation and guidance; you’ll host and maintain this sync for full control.‍
5. Import already processed feedback to retain existing feature-linkages and calibrate Cycle’s AI.‍
6. Import remaining unprocessed feedback and let the AI cluster and organize it.

Step 5: Bring It All Into Cycle

Currently, the Cycle CSV Importer supports only feedback imports. An updated importer supporting customers and requests is underway. In the meantime, you can use the Cycle GraphQL mutation importFromCSV for pushing feedback in bulk to Cycle.

Want to learn more about our GraphQL API? Check out our API documentation.

Step 6: Validate & Calibrate

• Quickly review a sample of imported feedback for accuracy.

• Use Cycle Ask to ensure AI accurately understands and processes your data, making adjustments if necessary.

What You Won’t Find (and Why That’s OK)

Cycle intentionally doesn't have these Productboard features:

• Public roadmap voting: Users care more about being informed when requested features are shipped, rather than browsing upvote lists. See our philosophy in this article Stop counting upvotes.

• Complex Gantt chart planning: Cycle excels at feedback and discovery, while detailed sprint and timeline planning is better handled in dedicated tools like Linear, Shortcut or Jira. Cycle’s Kanban-style views allow for grouping by custom properties as you would in any Notion/Airtable table.

Conclusion

Cycle significantly reduces the overhead and workload of manually processing feedback in Productboard.

It comes with a flexible data model capable of growing with your organization.

It promotes genuine cross-team collaboration and puts customer centricity at the heart of your product development process.

Cycle integrates smoothly with your existing tools and is API-first, enabling easy customization and automation on top of it.

Book a demo today to see the difference