Migrate from CRM and Deals for Zendesk to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Zendesk Contact records map directly to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Contact. Standard field transforms apply for email format (lowercase), phone number formatting, and date fields (UTC to local). We resolve the parent Organization reference and populate the Contact's parent AccountId by looking up the mapped Organization in the destination during import. Custom contact fields migrate to matching custom fields on the Dynamics Contact entity.

Zendesk Organizations map to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Account. Zendesk's flat org structure (no hierarchy) maps to Dynamics Accounts with a flat or hierarchical model depending on the customer's configuration. The Organization's domain field populates the Account Website. Account is created before any Contact import so the AccountId lookup is satisfied at Contact insert time. Any org-level custom fields migrate to custom Account fields.

Zendesk Deal records elevate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Opportunity during migration. The Deal's pipeline and stage assignment map to a Dynamics Opportunity Record Type and Sales Process that we configure before migration. The Deal amount, expected close date, and owner resolve to Opportunity Amount, CloseDate, and OwnerId. We flag any Deal without a linked Contact or Organization because Dynamics Opportunities require at minimum a Contact or Account association. Closed-Lost and Closed-Won states from Zendesk map to the corresponding Dynamics Opportunity StageName.

Each Zendesk Pipeline becomes a Dynamics Opportunity Record Type with its own Sales Process. Stage names, probabilities, and ordering migrate from Zendesk to the corresponding Dynamics stage configuration. If the customer uses multiple Zendesk pipelines with overlapping stage names, we create separate Record Types to prevent stage collision in Dynamics. Stage probability percentages round to the nearest integer allowed by Dynamics.

Zendesk Activities migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales records. Call logs become Task with TaskSubtype=Call and CallDurationInSeconds preserved. Meeting notes become Event with StartDateTime, EndDateTime, and Location. Emails land as EmailMessage linked to a Task activity record. Notes become Dynamics Note records attached via the Regarding field to the parent Contact, Account, or Opportunity. We de-normalize stage-change Activities into a synthetic stage-history array and write it to a custom Opportunity field because Dynamics does not surface stage history as a first-class timeline event.

Zendesk Tickets migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Case only if the destination org includes the Customer Service module. Ticket status, priority, requester, assignee, tags, and custom fields map to the corresponding Case fields. Conversations attached to the ticket migrate to the Case's EmailMessage records or internal Case Comments depending on visibility requirements. If the destination does not include Service Cloud, Tickets migrate as a custom entity with a separate object mapping.

Zendesk v2 Custom Object types and their fields migrate to Dynamics 365 custom entities. We create the destination schema (entity name, attributes, and lookup relationships) before importing any records. Plan-tier limits on Zendesk (3 on Suite Team, 5 on Suite Growth, 30 on Suite Professional, 50 on Suite Enterprise Plus) may constrain the number of custom object types migrated if the destination Sales tier does not support the equivalent count. We warn customers during scoping if object counts exceed the destination's expected tier.

Legacy Custom Objects cannot migrate records directly to any destination because the legacy API is deprecated and incompatible with the current v2 Custom Objects API. We run the five-step v2 migration (object type definition, schema creation, relationship type creation, record import, relationship record linkage) before writing any records to the destination. This step adds 3-5 days to the timeline and may reveal custom object counts that exceed the destination's plan-tier limits. We flag any exceeded limits before proceeding.

Zendesk User records (agents) map to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales User by email match. We resolve every distinct owner referenced on Deal, Contact, and Activity records during scoping. Users without a matching Dynamics User go to a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. Zendesk group memberships have no direct Dynamics equivalent and do not migrate.

File attachments on Deals, Contacts, and Activities are fetched from the Zendesk attachments API endpoint and re-uploaded to Dynamics 365 as Note or Email attachment records. Inline images in rich-text activity bodies migrate as separate file records and are re-embedded in the destination with updated content references. We preserve the original file name and MIME type metadata.