Migrate from Atera to Zendesk

Atera Tickets map directly to Zendesk Tickets. Subject, status (New/Open/Pending/Resolved/Closed), priority (Low/Medium/High/Urgent), customer association, assignee, and timestamps migrate 1:1. Atera's internal ticket ID is stored in a custom field atera_ticket_id__c for cross-reference. Ticket comments migrate as Zendesk Comments. We disable Zendesk triggers and SLA timers before migration to prevent notifications firing on historical tickets and re-enable them post-import with migrated tickets tagged migrated_from_atera.

Atera Customer records represent the MSP client or internal IT organization. We map company name, domain, billing address, and any custom fields to Zendesk Organization. The Atera Customer ID is stored in a custom field atera_customer_id__c. Organization is created before any Contact or Ticket import so that the Zendesk Organization lookup is satisfied at the moment of insert.

Atera Contact records (name, email, phone, role tied to a Customer) map to Zendesk End-User records. We preserve the Contact-to-Customer association by setting the Zendesk User's organization via the Organization mapping created in the prior step. Role and department fields map to Zendesk custom user fields. If a Contact has no email, we assign a placeholder email domain provided by the customer admin and flag the record for cleanup post-migration.

Atera Technicians map to Zendesk Agents. We match by email address against the Zendesk agent list. During scoping, we check whether the CSV row count for Technicians exceeds the customer's current Atera seat count. If it does, Atera's documented workaround requires temporarily disabling an existing technician to free a license slot. We pre-schedule the disable/enable sequence with the customer's admin before the migration batch runs so no ticket assignments are orphaned at cutover.

Atera SLA definitions with response time and resolution time thresholds per priority level map to Zendesk SLA Policies. Priority-to-SLA assignment is preserved by mapping Atera priority (Low/Medium/High/Urgent) to Zendesk's built-in priority field and attaching the corresponding SLA Policy. If Atera SLA policies are named or tiered (Gold/Silver/Bronze), we create equivalent Zendesk SLA policies with matching first reply and next reply time targets.

Atera allows custom fields on Tickets, Customers, Contacts, Contracts, SLA, and Agents. We detect every custom field schema during discovery, generate the equivalent Zendesk custom field (text, dropdown, checkbox, numeric, or date type as appropriate), and apply the mapping during the entity import. If Atera uses dependent fields (conditional visibility), we map them to Zendesk's conditional field format. Custom fields are deployed to Zendesk via the Custom Fields API before entity import begins.

Atera KB articles with title, body text, category assignment, and attachment links map to Zendesk Guide Articles. We preserve the category hierarchy as Zendesk Sections and Sections as Zendesk Categories. HTML content in Atera KB bodies is sanitized during import to ensure compatibility with Zendesk's article renderer. If the customer does not have Zendesk Guide enabled, we flag this during scoping and recommend activation before article migration to avoid post-migration content restructuring.

Tags on Atera Tickets and Customers are simple string values. We carry them through as-is and apply them to the corresponding Zendesk Ticket and Organization records. No value transformation is required. Zendesk preserves tags in its standard tag index and makes them available for filtering in Views and Reports.

Atera Contracts (hourly, fixed-term, retainer, project-based with custom rates per customer) do not have a direct Zendesk native object. We assess whether the customer requires contract data in Zendesk. If yes, we create a Zendesk Custom Object (available on Suite Growth and above) to hold contract type, rate, billing period, and SLA tier. If Zendesk Guide or a lower Suite tier is in use without custom object access, we map contract rate and tier to Organization custom fields and deliver a written note that contract types requiring separate lookup are best managed in the customer's billing system post-migration.

Atera's RMM layer tracks devices with hardware specs, software inventory, and health status. Zendesk does not include native asset management; it is available as Zendesk Explore asset tracking or as an AppExchange add-on (such as Solarwinds Web Help Desk or Cherwell-connected asset tools). We do not migrate device inventory as a standard scope item. We deliver a written inventory of Atera device records for the customer's admin to evaluate AppExchange asset management solutions post-migration.

Billable time logged against Atera tickets feeds Atera's PSA billing. Zendesk does not include native time tracking or billing record objects. Billable hours, rates, and totals from Atera do not migrate into Zendesk. We deliver a written inventory of Atera billing entries and recommend reimporting billable time into the customer's accounting platform (QuickBooks, Xero) or a dedicated time-tracking AppExchange add-on post-migration. Flat-rate retainer entries require mapping against the customer's Zendesk Custom Object for contracts if that scope is selected.