Migrate from Atera to Zoho Desk

Atera Tickets map to Zoho Desk Tickets. The CSV export carries Subject, Status, Priority, Customer, Assignee, Created Date, Updated Date, and Notes. Zoho Desk requires a department assignment on every ticket; we pre-create or map to an existing Zoho Desk Department during schema discovery. Thread comments from Atera's notes become Zoho Desk Ticket Comments. Ticket ID in Zoho Desk is auto-generated and unrelated to the Atera ticket ID; we preserve the original Atera ticket ID in a custom field atera_ticket_id__c for audit and cross-reference.

Atera Customer records map to Zoho Desk Accounts. The Company Name, Domain, Phone, Email, Billing Address, and any custom field values carry through. Zoho Desk Accounts support a primary contact and sub-accounts for multi-location customers; if the Atera customer has multiple sites represented as separate customer records, we discuss whether to consolidate into one Account with contacts or keep them separate during scoping.

Atera Contacts map to Zoho Desk Contacts with AccountExtId linking each contact to the parent Account record. Name, Email, Phone, Mobile, Role, and Street/City/State/Country/Zip migrate directly. Contacts without an associated Customer in Atera map to Zoho Desk Contacts with no AccountExtId (unlinked contacts are permitted in Zoho Desk). We validate email uniqueness against Zoho Desk's duplicate detection during import.

Atera Agents map to Zoho Desk Agents. Zoho Desk requires an email address as the unique identifier for agent lookup. We map by email match against the Zoho Desk agent table. Any Atera agent without a matching Zoho Desk agent is held in a reconciliation queue; the customer provisions the Zoho Desk agent account before the ticket import phase begins. The technician license gating issue from Atera — requiring a temporary disable/enable cycle when CSV row count exceeds available seats — is handled in coordination with the customer's Atera admin before the agent import phase starts.

Atera Contract records (hourly, fixed-term, retainer, project-based) do not have a direct Zoho Desk equivalent. We map contract type, rate, billing period, and SLA tier into custom fields on the Zoho Desk Account record (contract_type__c, hourly_rate__c, billing_period__c, sla_tier__c). If the customer uses Zoho CRM alongside Zoho Desk, contracts may map to Zoho CRM's Deals or a custom Contracts module; we confirm during scoping.

Atera SLA Policies define response time and resolution time thresholds tied to priority level. We map SLA name, first response threshold, and resolution threshold to Zoho Desk SLA policies configured under Setup > SLA Policies. The priority-to-SLA assignment in Atera (which SLA applies to which priority ticket) becomes Zoho Desk SLA rules with time-based conditions. SLA policy configuration is deployed in the target Zoho Desk portal before ticket import to ensure SLA assignment resolves correctly.

Atera custom fields on Tickets, Customers, Contacts, Contracts, and Agents are detected during discovery and pre-created in Zoho Desk under Setup > Customization > Layouts and Fields before any data import. Field type mapping: Atera text and number fields map to Zoho Desk Text and Number fields; date fields map to Date fields; dropdown fields map to Picklist fields with values preserved. We generate a custom field inventory CSV as part of the pre-flight package so the customer's Zoho Desk admin can review and approve field creation before migration begins.

Atera KB articles (title, body text, category, attachment links) migrate to Zoho Desk Knowledge Base articles under the selected department. HTML content in article bodies is sanitized to remove Atera-specific markup. Note: Zoho Desk's Zwitch and assisted migration both reset KB article Created Date to the migration date. We preserve the original Atera created date and updated date in custom fields kb_created_at__c and kb_modified_at__c on each article record.

Tags on Atera Tickets and Customers are simple string values carried through as-is to Zoho Desk Tags. Tag assignment is preserved at the record level during import. No value transformation is required.

Atera's RMM layer tracks devices (workstations, servers, network hardware) with hardware specs, software inventory, and health status. Zoho Desk does not have a native device/asset management module. Device-to-customer association in Atera cannot be represented in Zoho Desk's standard schema. We document the full asset inventory during discovery so it can be referenced in a separate RMM tool if the customer retains RMM functionality outside of Zoho Desk.

Billable time logged against Atera tickets maps to Zoho Desk Tasks with the Billable flag set and billable hours recorded in a custom numeric field. Flat-rate retainer entries require a separate mapping: we record the retainer amount and billing period as custom fields on the Account rather than as individual time entries. If the customer requires PSA billing features post-migration, Zoho Books integration is the recommended path; this is documented in the post-migration handoff package.

Atera integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, Office 365, and Google Calendar are platform-bound OAuth credentials and API tokens that cannot be transferred between systems. We document integration endpoints, configured webhook URLs, and OAuth scopes during discovery and include them in the post-migration integration reconfiguration checklist. The customer reconfigures each integration in Zoho Desk or the third-party platform post-migration.