Switching to Yaplet from another tool, or want your tickets somewhere else? Boards can be imported from Trello, from any spreadsheet, and from a Yaplet backup — and exported in four different formats depending on what you're doing with them.
Bringing a board into Yaplet
Everything to do with import and export lives in one place: open any board from Communications → Tickets, and click the two-arrow export, import and labels button in the board's toolbar. Choose Import into this board… and upload:
- A Trello export — in Trello, open the board menu and choose Share, print and export → Export as JSON.
- Any CSV — from Jira, Canny, Featurebase, Asana, GitHub, or one you made yourself.
- A Yaplet backup — a file you previously exported from Yaplet.
You don't have to tell Yaplet which kind it is. It works that out from the file. And despite the menu wording, you are not stuck with the board you started from — the dialog lets you send the import to A new board instead. There is no other way into the importer, so starting from an existing board is simply how you reach it. Sending it to a new board creates one, so that choice needs the Board management right — without it the option is still offered and the import fails.
Nothing is saved until you say so
Every import happens in two steps.
- Preview. Yaplet reads the file and shows you exactly how many columns, tickets, comments and labels it would create — plus a plain list of anything that can't come across. Nothing is written yet.
- Import. You pick whether it goes into a brand-new board or an existing one, then confirm. Only now is anything saved.
If the file is too big to import, the preview tells you before anything happens rather than importing half of it. The limits are 5 MB per file and 2,000 tickets per import, and a board's own column ceiling applies as well — split a bigger migration into several files. One limit the preview cannot see: an organisation can hold 50,000 tickets in total. An import that would cross that line stops part-way with a limit error, so check your ticket count before a large migration and ask us if you need headroom.
Matching spreadsheet columns
A CSV gets one extra step, because every tool names its columns differently. Yaplet guesses from the column names first — a Canny export's "Details" becomes the description, its "Score" becomes upvotes — and you only fix what it got wrong.
There are ready-made starting points for Jira, Linear, Trello CSV, Canny and Featurebase. Any column that doesn't match anything is listed in the preview, so you always know what's being left out.
What doesn't come across
The preview spells this out for your specific file, but in general:
- Votes are not recreated. Every upvote in Yaplet is a real person who left their email address with the vote, so we never invent them — and the incoming number is not copied onto the ticket either. Imported tickets start at zero votes.
- Due dates and custom fields have nowhere to go on a Yaplet ticket, so they're dropped.
- Checklists are kept, but as text inside the ticket description.
- Attachment links are kept in the description — the files themselves aren't copied over.
- Comments are attributed to whoever ran the import, with the original author's name kept at the start of each message. The people who wrote them don't have Yaplet accounts.
Imported tickets arrive marked as read, so bringing in a few hundred at once won't fill your unread badge. One more thing to plan for: a board created by an import is always of type Custom. If you've just imported a public roadmap, open the new board's Settings tab and change its type to Feature Request — until you do, it can't be shared publicly or voted on.
Getting your tickets out
You can export at three different sizes:
- One ticket — open it and use Export ticket… in the Actions panel.
- One column — use the column's three-dot menu.
- A whole board — Export this board… in the two-arrow menu.
Which format do you want?
| Format | Pick it when you want to… |
|---|---|
| Trello JSON | Move the board to another tool. Works in Linear, Planka, Wekan and Breeze. Offered only for a whole board — a Trello file is a board, so it can't hold a single ticket or one column. |
| CSV spreadsheet | Open it in Excel or Google Sheets, or feed it into Jira, Linear, Canny or Featurebase. One row per ticket. |
| Markdown | Paste it into ChatGPT or another AI assistant. One readable section per ticket. |
| Yaplet backup | Keep a copy you can restore later. Tick both boxes below (customer details and technical logs) or the backup leaves them out. |
One thing to know about Trello: Trello can export files but it cannot import them. A Trello JSON file from Yaplet opens fine in the other tools listed above, but you can't load it back into Trello itself.
The CSV carries the number of comments on each ticket rather than the comment text, because long multi-paragraph cells break most spreadsheets. If you need the comments themselves, use Trello JSON or Markdown.
Choosing what goes in the file
By default an export contains the title, description, status, priority, labels, dates, assignee, comments, vote count and the form answers. That's deliberately safe to share and small enough to paste into an AI assistant.
Two checkboxes add more:
- Customer details — the name, email and country of whoever reported each ticket. This turns the file into a personal data export, so treat it accordingly. Only organisation owners can tick this.
- Technical logs — the console, network and event logs captured with bug reports. These are roughly 16 times bigger than the ticket text, so the file gets much larger and much less useful for an AI assistant.
Every export is recorded in your audit log, including which of these options were used.
Copy for AI
Beside each export action sits a copy action: Copy for AI in a ticket's Actions list, Copy column for AI in a column's three-dot menu, Copy board for AI in the two-arrow menu. Instead of downloading a file it puts the same readable text straight on your clipboard, ready to paste into ChatGPT.
Copy for AI never includes customer details or technical logs, whatever the export checkboxes say — it's the "paste this somewhere else" option, so it always gives you the safe, compact version.
Reusing a board's setup
If you just want another board with the same columns and labels, don't export and re-import it. Use Duplicate this board in the same two-arrow menu — it copies the columns, labels and tickets in one step.
Duplicating creates a board, so it needs the Board management right. The menu entry stays visible without it, so a teammate with plain Tickets access will see the option, click it, and get an error rather than a copy.
For a refresher on how boards, columns and labels fit together, see Boards — the kanban primitive behind tickets, bugs, and feature requests.