Switching 311 systems is a lot like moving house. The new place is better, but nobody wants to leave the filing cabinets behind. Years of requests tell you which streets flood, which parks get tagged and how long things have taken. Losing that history means starting your reports from zero.
Sentra 311 includes an importer for bringing past requests over from your old system. It's built for the realities of old data: inconsistent type names, missing locations and columns nobody remembers adding.
Why now is a common time to switch
Several older platforms are changing under their customers. One example from public documents: Cityworks' on-premise asset management product reaches end of life on July 1, 2027, which means cities on it need to migrate and rebuild their integrations (Durham, NC RFP). Changes like this are a natural moment to look at the 311 side too.
Step 1: Export from the old system
Most systems can export requests to a CSV or Excel file. You want, at minimum:
- The request number or ID from the old system.
- The type or category.
- The date it was filed, and the date it was closed if it was.
- The status.
- The address, or latitude and longitude.
- The description.
Department, priority, resolution notes and contact details are useful if you have them.
Step 2: Upload and match columns
In the portal, Admin › Import walks through the steps. Upload the file and Sentra 311 shows the columns it found. You match each one to a Sentra 311 field: "Problem Type" to request type, "Date Opened" to filed date, and so on. Columns you don't need can be skipped.
Step 3: Match the values
Old systems rarely use the same names as your new request types. The importer lists each distinct value in a column, such as every old category name, and suggests a match from your new types. "POTHOLE," "Pot hole" and "Street - Pothole" can all map to Pothole.
When the importer can't tell between two possible matches, it leaves the value unmatched for a person to decide rather than guessing. You can match statuses, priorities and departments the same way.
Step 4: Preview, import and check
Before you run it, you can review every mapping. Then the import runs in the background.
Imported requests keep their old ID as an external reference. They're marked as imported, and their timeline shows when they were filed and closed.
Imported records are history, so they skip the rules meant for new work, such as proof to close. Residents aren't emailed about imported requests.
Step 5: Undo if needed
If something looks wrong, for example a date column read as month-day instead of day-month, you can undo the whole import. Every request from that import is removed, and you can fix the mapping and run it again. Nothing else in the system is touched.
What about open requests?
A common approach is to import closed requests as history and handle open ones separately, because open requests need an owner, a due date and a crew in the new system. Two approaches work well:
- Finish them in the old system. Stop new reports in the old system on switch-over day, and let crews close what's left there over a few weeks.
- Import them and re-assign. Import open requests with their status, then have dispatchers go through them in the new queue and assign them.
Either way, pick a switch-over day, tell residents where to report from that day on, and put the new report button on the city website the same morning.
Telling residents
A short notice on the city website and social media is enough: where to report now, that past requests are still being worked, and a phone number for anyone who'd rather call.
Practical advice
- Do a test import first with a few hundred rows.
- Import closed requests from the last two or three years. Older data is rarely used and makes reports harder to read.
- Clean up types before importing, not after. It's easier to map 40 messy type names once than to recategorize 10,000 requests later.
- Check locations. Requests without coordinates can still be imported, and their district can be set later.
- Run a report after importing and compare the totals to the old system's.
We help with the mapping during setup, and the undo button means a mistake costs minutes, not a weekend.