Migrate from Highrise to Freshsales

Highrise People map to Freshsales Contact by default. For People with a status indicating an unqualified prospect (no active deal, no recent task), we evaluate mapping to Freshsales Lead instead. The split criteria are defined during scoping based on the customer's Highrise setup. We preserve the Highrise contact's email as the unique identifier, and any Highrise custom fields on People migrate as Freshsales custom contact fields. The flat People-Party relationship does not require an Account in Highrise; Freshsales requires Contact.AccountId, so we create the parent Account from the linked Highrise Company (or a placeholder Account named after the Person) before Contact insert.

Highrise Companies (Party type = Organization) map to Freshsales Account. The Company name becomes Account Name, domain becomes Website, and address fields map to Freshsales billing address fields. We use the Company-Person association from Highrise to establish Contact.AccountId during the Contact migration phase. If a Highrise Company has no associated People, it still migrates as a standalone Account.

Highrise Deals map to Freshsales Deal. Highrise exports Deals as .txt only (not CSV), so we parse the plain text output to extract deal name, stage, monetary value, responsible owner, and linked Party. Stage names from Highrise (e.g., New, Contacted, Qualified, Won, Lost) map to Freshsales Deal Stage values. The deal owner email resolves to a Freshsales User during the Owner reconciliation phase. If Highrise Deals include any custom fields, those map to Freshsales custom Deal fields created before migration.

Highrise Cases export as .txt only. We parse case title, status, linked Party, and any text body. If the destination Freshsales instance has Service Cloud enabled (Cases module available), Cases migrate as native Freshsales Cases with the Highrise Case status mapped to a Freshsales Case status field. If Service Cloud is not present, Cases migrate as Tasks with the subject prefixed [Case] and a custom multi-select picklist field capturing the original Highrise Case status for audit.

Highrise Tasks map directly to Freshsales Task. Completed and open tasks both migrate with due date, assignee (resolved by owner email), priority, and related Party preserved. The task subject and description fields transfer as plain text. Any task linked to a Highrise Party that has not yet been created in Freshsales is held in a dependency queue until the parent record exists in the destination.

Highrise stores Notes, Emails, and Comments as Recordings linked to People or Companies. The export is TXT only, stripping HTML formatting and inline images from emails. We capture the full text content, the recording date, the author name, and the linked Party. Recordings migrate as Freshsales Notes attached to the corresponding Contact or Account. We flag any email body exceeding 5,000 characters for manual review because plain-text parsing of long-form email exports can truncate or mis-format message content.

Highrise custom fields on People, Companies, and Deals are detected via the custom_field_subjects API endpoints. We create matching Freshsales custom fields (on Contact, Account, and Deal objects respectively) before migration begins. Field types map as follows: text fields to Freshsales text, number fields to number, date fields to date, dropdown fields to single-select picklist, and multi-checkbox fields to multi-select picklist. If a Highrise custom field has a large enumerated value set, we validate that the Freshsales picklist can accommodate all values before creation.

Highrise Tags are a flat many-to-many label system applied across People, Companies, Deals, and Cases. Freshsales does not have a native tag object. We create a multi-select picklist custom field on the relevant Freshsales objects (Contacts, Accounts, Deals) and populate the field values with the original tag names. If a record has multiple tags, all tags migrate as comma-separated values in the multi-select field. We flag any tag count exceeding 20 unique values for a customer-admin review to prevent unwieldy picklist maintenance.