Enterprise App Migration to Tolinku: Planning Guide

Enterprise deep linking migrations are fundamentally different from startup or mid-market migrations. You are not migrating one app with a few hundred links. You may have multiple apps across business units, thousands of active campaign links, compliance requirements for data handling, change management processes that require weeks of lead time, and stakeholders across engineering, marketing, product, legal, and security teams.

This guide covers the enterprise-specific challenges and planning strategies that go beyond a standard migration. For the general migration timeline, see migration timeline planning. For risk mitigation, see migration risk mitigation.

Enterprise vs. Standard Migration

Factor	Standard	Enterprise
Apps	1-2	5-20+
Active links	Hundreds	Thousands to millions
Teams involved	Engineering	Engineering, Marketing, Legal, Security, Compliance
Decision timeline	Days	Weeks to months
Rollout strategy	All at once or staged by percentage	App-by-app, region-by-region
Compliance review	None	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, internal security review
Rollback complexity	Low (revert DNS)	High (multiple apps, multiple regions)
Budget approval	Engineering budget	Cross-departmental budget with procurement

Phase 0: Internal Approval (2-4 Weeks)

Before any technical work begins, enterprise migrations require internal alignment.

Stakeholder Map

Identify who needs to approve and who needs to be informed:

• Engineering leadership: Approves the technical approach and resource allocation.
• Marketing: Depends on deep links for campaigns. Needs timeline for link migration and potential downtime.
• Product management: Owns the user experience. Needs to understand impact on onboarding flows, referral programs, and in-app routing.
• Legal/Compliance: Reviews data processing agreements with the new platform. May require a Data Processing Agreement (DPA), security questionnaire, or SOC 2 report.
• Security: Reviews the new SDK for vulnerabilities, reviews the platform's security posture.
• Procurement: Handles contract negotiation, payment terms, and vendor management.
• IT/DevOps: May need to approve DNS changes, firewall rules, or CDN configuration.

Building the Business Case

Enterprise procurement requires justification beyond "the new platform is better." Document:

1. Current costs. Total annual spend on the existing platform (per-Appspace fees, usage charges, support costs).
2. New costs. Total annual spend on the new platform, including migration labor.
3. Risk of staying. Is the current platform increasing prices, deprecating features, or being acquired?
4. Benefits of switching. Specific features, performance improvements, or cost savings.
5. Migration risk. Honest assessment of what could go wrong and how you mitigate it.

Phase 1: Audit and Discovery (2-3 Weeks)

Multi-App Inventory

For each app in your organization, document:

App Name: [name]
Platform: iOS / Android / Both
Current SDK version: [version]
Deep link domain: [domain]
Number of active routes: [count]
Monthly deep link clicks: [count]
Monthly installs via deep links: [count]
Teams that create links: [list]
Integration points: [CRM, email platform, ad networks]
Compliance requirements: [GDPR, HIPAA, etc.]

Link Audit

Export all active links from the current platform. Categorize them:

• High-traffic campaign links (>1000 clicks/month): Must work on day one of migration.
• Evergreen content links (blog posts, documentation, help center): Need permanent redirects.
• Expired campaign links (old promotions): May not need migration.
• Partner/affiliate links (shared with external parties): Require coordination with partners.
• Print/QR code links (physical materials): Cannot be updated. Must redirect permanently.

Integration Map

Document every system that interacts with the deep linking platform:

• Email marketing platforms (templates with deep links).
• CRM systems (campaign tracking, attribution data).
• Ad networks (postback URLs, attribution callbacks).
• Analytics platforms (event forwarding, data pipelines).
• Internal tools (link generation APIs, admin dashboards).

Phase 2: Compliance and Security Review (2-4 Weeks)

Data Processing

Enterprise deep linking involves personal data: device identifiers, IP addresses, location data, and user behavior. Before migrating to a new platform, review:

• Data residency. Where does the new platform store data? Does this comply with your data residency requirements?
• Data processing agreement. Does the new platform offer a DPA that meets your GDPR obligations?
• Data retention. How long does the new platform retain click and attribution data? Can you configure retention periods?
• Sub-processors. What third parties does the new platform share data with?

Security Assessment

Request the new platform's:

• SOC 2 Type II report (or equivalent).
• Penetration test results.
• Security architecture documentation.
• Incident response plan.
• SDK source code review (if required by your security team).

Compliance Mapping

Map your compliance requirements to the new platform's capabilities:

Requirement	Current Platform	New Platform
GDPR consent management	Yes/No	Yes/No
Data deletion on request	Yes/No	Yes/No
Audit logging	Yes/No	Yes/No
SSO/SAML authentication	Yes/No	Yes/No
Role-based access control	Yes/No	Yes/No
IP allowlisting	Yes/No	Yes/No

Phase 3: Technical Planning (1-2 Weeks)

Migration Order

Do not migrate all apps simultaneously. Order by risk and complexity:

1. Start with the lowest-risk app. A smaller app with less traffic, fewer integrations, and a more flexible release schedule. This is your pilot.
2. Then migrate similar apps. Apply lessons from the pilot to apps with similar architecture.
3. Migrate the flagship app last. Your highest-traffic, most complex app migrates after you have confidence from the pilot apps.

Environment Strategy

Enterprise migrations benefit from a staging environment on the new platform:

Staging environment:
  - Separate Appspace with test domain (links-staging.yourapp.com)
  - All routes configured identically to production
  - SDK integrated in development builds
  - Full end-to-end testing before production migration

Production environment:
  - Production Appspace with real domain (links.yourapp.com)
  - Migrated only after staging validation passes

Release Coordination

Enterprise app releases often follow a fixed schedule (bi-weekly or monthly). Plan the SDK update to align with the next release window. If you need an out-of-cycle release, factor in the additional approval time.

For apps distributed through enterprise MDM (Mobile Device Management), the update rollout may take longer than app store distribution. Plan accordingly.

Phase 4: Pilot Migration (2-3 Weeks)

Pilot App Selection

Choose a pilot app that:

• Has moderate traffic (enough to validate, not so much that failure is catastrophic).
• Has a flexible release schedule.
• Has a dedicated engineering team that can respond quickly to issues.
• Represents a common architecture (so lessons apply to other apps).

Pilot Success Criteria

Define measurable criteria before starting:

• Deep link open rate matches baseline within 5%.
• Attribution accuracy matches baseline within 10%.
• No increase in crash rate.
• Verification files serve correctly.
• All high-traffic links work.
• SDK initialization time is within 200ms of the old SDK.

Pilot Retrospective

After the pilot, document:

• What went well.
• What went wrong and how it was fixed.
• How long each phase actually took (vs. planned).
• Updated time estimates for the remaining apps.

Phase 5: Phased Rollout (4-8 Weeks)

Rollout Schedule

Based on the pilot, create a schedule for the remaining apps:

Week 1-2: App B (similar to pilot app)
Week 3-4: App C, App D (medium complexity)
Week 5-6: App E (flagship app, highest traffic)
Week 7-8: Cleanup, old platform decommission

Cross-Team Coordination

For each app migration:

1. Engineering: SDK integration, testing, release.
2. Marketing: Freeze old link creation, create new links on new platform.
3. QA: Run the test plan developed during the pilot.
4. Support: Brief on potential issues and escalation paths.

Regional Considerations

If your apps serve multiple regions, consider:

• DNS propagation timing. Schedule DNS changes during low-traffic periods for each region.
• App Store review times. Different regions may have different review timelines.
• Data residency. Some regions may require data to stay within specific geographic boundaries.

Phase 6: Decommission (2-4 Weeks)

Shutdown Checklist

Before shutting down the old platform:

• All apps have been updated to use the new SDK.
• The old platform's attribution window has expired (7-30 days after the last old-SDK install).
• All high-traffic links are redirecting to the new platform.
• Analytics data has been exported.
• No integrations still depend on the old platform's API.

Contract Management

• Cancel the old platform subscription according to contract terms (often requires 30-day notice).
• Retain access to the old platform's dashboard for historical reference until data export is complete.
• Confirm data deletion policies with the old platform (important for GDPR compliance).

Tolinku Enterprise Migration

Tolinku supports multiple Appspaces per account, making it straightforward to manage multiple apps during migration. Each app gets its own Appspace with independent routes, domains, and analytics.

For the general migration timeline, see migration timeline planning. For the migration checklist, see deep linking migration checklist. For risk mitigation, see migration risk mitigation.