Migrate from Highrise to Zoho CRM

Highrise People map directly to Zoho CRM Contacts. All standard fields (name, email, phone, address, social links) transfer cleanly via CSV export. The Highrise party-contact association (which Companies a Person belongs to) migrates as a Contact-Account lookup in Zoho. Any Tags applied to the Person transfer as Zoho Tags linked to the Contact record.

Highrise Companies map to Zoho CRM Accounts. Both are accessible via the parties.xml API endpoint or CSV export. We use Company name as the dedupe key during Zoho import. Account is created before any Contact import so the Account-Contact lookup relationship is satisfied at insert time.

Highrise Deals export as plain-text (.txt) only, not structured CSV. We parse the TXT output to extract deal name, stage name, monetary value, responsible user, and linked contact or company. These reconstruct as Zoho CRM Deal records. The Highrise deal stage (e.g., New, Contacted, Qualified, Won, Lost) maps to a Zoho Stage field we configure before migration.

Highrise Cases export as plain-text TXT, similar to Deals. We parse to extract case title, status, linked contact or company, and any plain-text notes. Zoho CRM's Cases module is available on Professional and above. If the destination is on Standard, we map Cases to Zoho Tasks with a custom Case Type field so the data is not lost, and flag the Cases module as requiring a Professional upgrade for full feature parity.

Highrise Tasks are standard API-accessible objects. We export completed and open tasks with due dates, assignees (mapped via Owner email), and related party references. Tasks map cleanly to Zoho Tasks with Status, Priority, and Activity Date preserved. Tasks without an assignee migrate to a migration-admin owner for customer resolution.

Highrise Notes are a Recording type linked to People or Companies. They export as TXT with content stripped of any rich-text formatting. We capture the full text content and date metadata and recreate them as Zoho Notes linked via the parent record (Contact or Account). Embedded image references in Highrise Notes do not transfer.

Highrise Emails stored as Recordings export as plain text, stripping HTML formatting. We capture the full email body text, timestamp, sender, and recipient. These migrate to Zoho CRM as Activity records (Tasks with an Email subtype or Notes depending on the customer's Zoho configuration). Email thread threading does not transfer because Highrise does not preserve thread ID in its TXT export.

Highrise call Recordings store the call summary text and metadata. We extract the call date, duration note, and linked contact. Call metadata migrates as a Zoho Task with a Call Duration field and Call Status. The call recording audio file itself does not transfer because Highrise stores recordings in a separate feed endpoint and the URL reference is not preserved in the TXT export.

Highrise Tags are a flat label system applied across People, Companies, Deals, and Cases. We export all unique tag values and re-apply them as Zoho Tags linked to the relevant Contacts, Accounts, Deals, or Cases. Zoho Tags are shared across modules, matching Highrise's cross-object tagging behavior.

Highrise custom fields on People, Companies, and Deals are accessible via custom_field_subjects API endpoints. We detect all custom field definitions in the account and recreate them as Zoho CRM custom fields on the corresponding modules (Contacts, Accounts, Deals). Field types map to Zoho equivalents: text fields, numeric fields, date fields, and picklist fields each get appropriate Zoho field types. Required-field settings are preserved as field validation rules.

Highrise Users are the team members who own records and are assigned to Deals and Cases. We export the full user roster (name, email, role) and map them to Zoho CRM Users by email match. Any Highrise Owner without a matching Zoho User is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes.

Highrise Deals use a simple pipeline with named stages (New, Contacted, Qualified, Won, Lost). We extract the stage configuration and deal-stage assignments during scoping. Each Highrise stage maps to a Zoho CRM Deal Stage value that we pre-configure in the destination Zoho account before migration. Stage probability weights transfer as Zoho Stage Probability percentages.