Importing data

The HipChat API provides everything needed to build an add-on that can import users, rooms, messages, and files from other chat services into a HipChat group. These add-ons require, at least, the following scopes:

• admin_group - Used to create users and rooms
• import_data - Used to import back-dated messages and files

Because importing back-dated messages and files is a sensitive operation, import integrations must be submitted for review and approval to 

. Once approved, your integration's descriptor is added to a whitelist of installable importers and is made available for general use.

Developing an importer integration

Until the integration descriptor has been whitelisted, it can't request the import_data scope. You'll need to develop the integration as a service within a HipChat Server instance in order to directly test the APIs.

Creating imported rooms and users

When importing message and file history, you may find that you need to add users or rooms to the target group for the import to be possible. When doing so, it's important to set thecreated field of the user or room being created to true -- failing to do so may prevent some or all of the imported history from being accessible.

Imported message history will also not immediately show up in HipChat client applications as we do not broadcast backdated messages. Imported history will load normally in clients after restarts or when scrolling back to load previous history pages.