It is important to take a regular back up of all the ticket and knowledge base data contained within Freshdesk.  This enables the data to be searched independently of Freshdesk and also can potentially be imported into a different system/application if required.


Freshdesk provides the facility to have all data emailed to you.

  • Admin > Account Settings > Account
  • on the right hand side of the screen, click on the Export now > button

  • when you press the button, a message will appear at the top of the screen telling you the data will be emailed to your shortly


The email may take up to 10 minutes to be sent to you depending on the volume of data there is that needs to be exported.  If you do not see it after an extended time, check your junk email folder.

The email will include a link to the data export that you can download.  It will be a zip file (a compressed file format that contains separate files with the ticket, knowledge base and customer information).  Click on this link.  Choose the option to 'Save' the file.


Save a copy of the zip file to \\0797taulewsf01.central.det.win\corp-data\PRC\PRC 2015 (update the year based on the calendar year).


Name the file using the format DataExtract_yyyymmdd.zip

eg an export done on the 1st December 2015 would be named DataExtract_20151201.zip


The zip file contains a number of xml files, which in turn contain all the data from the PRC Support site.  The xml files are

  • Companies.xml - all the companies data in PRC Support
  • Forums.xml - all the forums data in PRC Support (note that we do not use this functionality at this time)
  • Groups.xml - all the groups data in PRC Support (which support agents are members of which groups)
  • Solutions.xml - all the knowledge base article content
  • Tickets0.xml, Tickets1.xml, Tickets2.xml etc - a number of files that contain the ticket data from PRC Support
  • Users.xml - all the user data (customers, agents etc) in PRC Support

To be able to open these files or search their contents, you need to extract them using 7-zip or Windows Explorer.  Please note, there is currently a bug with the files that Freshdesk creates (as at 15 December 2015).  I have an open support request with Freshdesk where they have confirmed that this bug will be fixed.  The ticket number is [#433318] and was logged by rory.johnson3@det.nsw.edu.au