Notion CRM works fine until it doesn't. You hit 500 records and search slows. Your sales team stops updating it because there's no mobile app. You realize you're storing contact relationships in text fields and praying someone reads them. By the time you commit to switching, the data is either incomplete or stored in a way that doesn't map to a real CRM structure. The good news: Notion exports to CSV faster than most people expect, and structured contact fields (name, email, phone) port cleanly. The hard part is everything else—linked records, rollups, custom relations, and the cascade of manual work that follows. This is not a fast migration. But if you run it right, you won't lose deals or context, and you'll cut over without sales disruption. Here's the process. What exports cleanly and what doesn't Start by opening your Notion workspace and exporting your CRM database as CSV. Most fields will convert: Text, numbers, dates, email: Export as-is. No cleanup needed. Single/multi-select fields: Convert to plain text. You'll need to remap them to your Orin taxonomy after import. Checkboxes: Export as TRUE/FALSE. Easy to map. URLs: Export as full links. Paste them into a single field or distribute across multiple fields as needed. Everything else breaks or gets orphaned: Linked records: Export as record IDs or record names, not actual links. You lose the relationship logic. Rollups and formulas: Export as computed values, not formulas. If a rollup counted your deal pipeline value, it's a static number after export. If it changes, it won't update. Relations: Export as delimited text (usually pipes or commas). Orin will import them as text, not as linked records. Rich text and embeds: Strip to plain text or URLs. Formatting vanishes. This is where most migrations fail. Teams assume linked records will auto-reconnect. They don't. You have to manually rebuild them or accept that they won't exist in Orin until you do. Audit your data before you touch it Before you export, do a data inventory. Open a spreadsheet and map every Notion field to where it will live in Orin: Notion Field Field Type Maps to Orin Cleanup Needed Company Name Text Company / Account None Deal Status Select Pipeline Stage Remap values to Orin stages Contact → Company Relation Contact lookup Rebuild after import For each field marked "rebuild", decide: Is it critical to have day one, or can you restore it after cutover? If it's critical (like your active deals), you rebuild it before you go live. If it's historical context (like closed deals from last year), you can rebuild it in parallel. Key rule: Never migrate data you don't use. Historical records, archived contacts, and orphaned leads make the cutover slower and the database messier. If you haven't touched it in 90 days, leave it in Notion and reference it by link if you need it. The three-phase parallel-run strategy The best way to move without breaking your pipeline is to run Notion and Orin side-by-side for 2–3 weeks. Phase 1: Clean and export (Week 1) Duplicate your Notion CRM database (do not work on the live one yet). Delete records older than 90 days or mark them as archived. You're not losing data—you're creating a working dataset. Scan for duplicate contacts. Notion's search is weak; use Find and Replace to catch variations ("John Smith" vs "john.smith" vs "JS"). Merge or flag them. Fill in empty critical fields. If Email is blank and you have a company name, look it up and fill it in. If you can't, mark the record as incomplete and decide whether to migrate it. Export as CSV. Open the CSV in a spreadsheet and do a final scan: Are there any cells with line breaks, special characters, or encoding issues? Fix them now before import. Phase 2: Import to Orin and validate (Week 1-2) Go to Orin's CRM and start a new import. Upload your CSV. Map fields carefully—get the email field right first, because duplicates will block import. Orin will flag duplicate emails and offer to skip or merge. Review each one. If two rows are truly the same contact, merge them. If they're different people, keep both. After import, run a data validation sweep: Open 10 random records. Do they look right? Are email addresses intact? Are dates parsed correctly? Are select fields showing their values or blank? Check your linked records. If you had a Contact → Company relation in Notion, it came in as text. Create a view in Orin that shows these text fields alongside the actual company field. You'll rebuild the relations from this. Phase 3: Rebuild relations and run parallel (Week 2-3) For every linked record that matters to your workflow (Contact → Company, Deal → Contact, etc.), rebuild it in Orin. This is manual, but it's fast if you do it systematically. Use Orin's CRM bulk edit to link 10–20 records at a time. Set your sales team loose on the Orin database. Tell them: "Try it. Don't delete anything from Notion yet. If something feels wrong, tell us." For the next 2 weeks, your team logs all new deals, contact