Migrate from Data Team DDS to Zoho CRM

Data Team DDS contacts with a lifecycle property value of 'customer' or 'closed-won' land as Zoho Contacts. All others route to Zoho Leads. This split is based on the source lifecycle field value. Contacts without a company link create as standalone records; those with a company link attach to the mapped Account.

Direct map. Zoho Accounts store company name, domain, industry pick-list value, employee count, and annual revenue. Parent-company relationships in Data Team DDS map to the Account.Parent_Account lookup in Zoho. Multi-company contacts collapse to one primary AccountId plus Account Contact Relation records.

Direct map. Data Team DDS deals map to Zoho Deals with stage, amount, close date, and owner. Zoho's Deals module uses stage pick-list values that are scoped per pipeline layout — the migration maps each DDS pipeline to a Zoho pipeline layout, and each stage name to the corresponding Zoho stage value.

Data Team DDS pipelines become Zoho Pipeline Layouts. Each pipeline requires a named layout in Zoho CRM with its own stage definitions. Stage probability and forecast category are set per stage in Zoho — the migration pulls these from DDS if available or applies Zoho defaults before the full run.

Stage names map value-by-value from Data Team DDS to Zoho stage pick-list values. Each stage in DDS is mapped to a named stage in the corresponding Zoho pipeline layout. If a stage name does not exist in Zoho, it is created as part of the layout setup before the migration runs.

Zoho CRM has no native lifecycle_stage equivalent. FlitStack creates a custom pick-list field (Stage_Source__c or similar) on both the Contact and Lead modules. The pick-list values match the DDS lifecycle values exactly. Stage-changed timestamps are stored as a separate custom datetime field for reporting continuity.

Data Team DDS email history migrates as Zoho Tasks with Subject, Description, and Status populated from the source. Original send date is preserved as a custom datetime field since Zoho's CreatedDate reflects the import time. Owner assignment maps via email match to Zoho users.

Call records from Data Team DDS become Zoho Calls with duration, subject, and outcome. Meeting records become Zoho Events with start time, end time, and attendee information from the source. Original activity timestamps are preserved in custom datetime fields in Zoho.

Notes from Data Team DDS migrate as Zoho Notes attached to the parent Contact, Lead, Account, or Deal record. Rich-text formatting in DDS notes is converted to Zoho's note format. If notes contain inline images, those are downloaded and re-uploaded as Zoho file attachments.

Data Team DDS product or item records map to Zoho Products, populating Product Name, Unit Price, Product Code, and Description fields. Product category or stock status are stored in custom fields on the Zoho Product module. When a product is linked to a deal, the migration creates Zoho Quote or Sales Order line items referencing the product, linking them to the migrated Deal record.

Data Team DDS custom objects with typed fields map 1:1 to Zoho custom modules. The migration creates the Zoho custom module, defines the field types matching DDS, and imports the records with the original creation timestamps. Custom object relationships that are many-to-many in DDS require Zoho lookup fields or a junction module.

File attachments from Data Team DDS are downloaded, and re-uploaded as Zoho Attachments linked to the parent record in Zoho CRM. Zoho's file size limits apply: 20 MB per file on most plans. Files larger than this are flagged for splitting before the migration run.

Data Team DDS owner records are matched to Zoho Users by email address. Active owners with a matching email in Zoho receive their assigned records automatically. Owners without a match are flagged before migration — the team either creates a Zoho User for them or assigns records to a designated fallback owner.

The original Data Team DDS record ID is stored as a custom field on each migrated record in Zoho. This serves as the foreign key for delta-run de-duplication and as the audit trail connecting source records to their Zoho counterparts.