Moving from Notion is easier when you stop thinking of it as one move. Most teams have two things in Notion: a wiki and some project databases. They rarely want to move both, and they should not try. This guide covers moving the project side to Kavanah, keeping Notion readable for the rest, and being clear in advance about what comes across and what does not.
1. Know What Notion's Export Gives You
Notion exports pages as Markdown, HTML or PDF, and a full-page database as a CSV file with a Markdown file for each subpage. Two limits matter for a migration. A database exports only its current view or its default view, because exporting all views at once is not supported. And pages the exporter cannot access, such as other users' private pages, are left out. Notion also says plainly that you cannot recreate a workspace by re-uploading an export, and a workspace export can take up to 30 hours to process with a download link that expires after 7 days. Run one early and keep it as your archive.
2. Connect Notion and Import Each Database
In Kavanah, a workspace admin connects Notion in Settings, Integrations, with OAuth or a pasted internal integration token. Create the Kavanah project a database should land in, then pick the database and the project on the Notion card. Each row becomes a task: its title, a status taken from the first status or select property and folded into open, in progress, review or done, a due date from the first date property, and every other property written into the description as text with a link back to Notion. Each run brings up to 200 rows, and running it again skips rows already imported, so repeat until nothing new arrives.
3. What the Import Leaves Behind
Be clear with your team about three gaps. Assignees are left unset, so invite everyone first and assign after. The page body under each row, the blocks inside a Notion task page, is not imported. And only status and the first date become real task fields; everything else is text in the description, so recreate as Kavanah custom fields the properties your reports filter on.
4. Move Documents One at a Time
Kavanah has no Markdown or HTML import into Knowledge. For a Notion page you want beside the project, ask the agent to read it and save it as a Kavanah document in that project, then link related documents with double-bracket links so backlinks build up. This is deliberately a short list: the pages a project team opens every week, not the whole wiki.
5. Rebuild, Then Run One Cycle
Assign the imported tasks, with several assignees where work is genuinely shared. Set dependencies (blocked by / blocks) on the tasks, rebuild Notion database automations as Kavanah automations, and start logging time against tasks. Then run one full planning cycle in Kavanah before you change anyone's Notion plan. Notion's connector stays useful during the overlap: Kavanah's agent can still search and read Notion, and any write it makes there waits for your approval by default.
A Notion migration goes well when the scope is small and written down: which databases move, which pages follow, and where the rest stays. For a dated comparison of Kavanah, Notion, ClickUp and Asana for project work, see our Notion alternative page.
