Migrate from BoldDesk to Zendesk

BoldDesk Tickets map directly to Zendesk Tickets. BoldDesk status (Open, Pending, Resolved, Closed) maps to Zendesk ticket status; priority maps to Zendesk priority (Low, Normal, High, Urgent). Channel origin (email, chat, social, web form) maps to the Zendesk via attribute. All ticket comments migrate as Ticket Comments with the IsPublic flag preserved so internal notes stay internal. BoldDesk's SLA policy assignment migrates as a Zendesk SLA Policy reference note; the actual SLA policy must be recreated in Zendesk admin post-migration.

BoldDesk Contact records map to Zendesk End Users. Standard fields (name, email, phone, organization) map to Zendesk User equivalents. Any BoldDesk custom Contact fields migrate as Zendesk custom_fields on the User record. We resolve the BoldDesk contact-to-Contact Group membership as a Zendesk Organization membership if the customer selects Organization-based grouping, or preserve the group membership as a tag if they prefer standalone users.

BoldDesk Contact Groups are a standalone object with membership records and group-level custom fields. Zendesk Organizations are top-level entities that Users belong to. We extract every BoldDesk Contact Group, create a corresponding Zendesk Organization, and reassign Contact Group members as Organization members. Group-level custom fields are not natively supported on Zendesk Organizations—these migrate as custom_fields on the Organization record. The customer chooses the grouping strategy during scoping: Organization-based, tag-based, or a hybrid where key groups become Organizations and the rest become tags.

BoldDesk Agent records (user accounts with role assignments) map to Zendesk Users with Agent or Admin roles. BoldDesk role names (Agent, Team Lead, Admin) map to Zendesk equivalents (Agent, Light Agent, Admin). We preserve role permissions as a mapping note for the customer's Zendesk admin to configure in Access control. Agents without a matching email in the destination are held in a reconciliation queue; the admin provisions the Zendesk user before record import resumes.

BoldDesk custom fields on Tickets, Contacts, and Contact Groups (text, dropdown, date, number, boolean) map to Zendesk custom_fields with equivalent types. BoldDesk dropdown option labels map to Zendesk custom_field_options with the name and tag values preserved. Date fields in BoldDesk format (YYYY-MM-DD) migrate as Zendesk date values without transformation. Zendesk's new custom objects experience cannot mark fields as required at the schema level—a limitation we document and flag for the customer's admin to handle through Zendesk's validation rules post-migration.

BoldDesk KB articles (stored as HTML content with title, body, category assignment, and attachment metadata) migrate to Zendesk Guide Articles under the corresponding Section. We export the raw HTML body and preserve the original title and section assignment. Embedded images and media references are re-uploaded to Zendesk Guide's attachment storage and the HTML is updated with new media URLs. A post-migration content review pass is standard because BoldDesk HTML may include embedded elements that render differently in Zendesk Guide's editor. Draft articles migrate as draft Zendesk articles.

BoldDesk KB Categories form a hierarchical tree (category with sub-categories). Zendesk Guide uses a three-tier structure: Category > Section > Article. We map the BoldDesk top-level category to a Zendesk Guide Category, BoldDesk sub-categories to Zendesk Guide Sections within that Category, and link migrated articles to the correct Section. The Zendesk Guide product must be activated in the destination account before section and article migration begins. Section ordering is preserved by the sort order attribute.

BoldDesk Canned Responses (reusable message templates with optional subject and folder structure) map to Zendesk Macros. The template body text migrates as the Macro actions value; folder organization maps to Zendesk Macro grouping in the admin interface. BoldDesk canned responses scoped to specific Contact Groups require a Zendesk admin to reconfigure Macro visibility to agents and groups post-migration since Zendesk scopes Macros via visibility settings rather than Contact Group assignment.

BoldDesk tags on Tickets and Contacts migrate as Zendesk Tags. Tags are stored as a flat list in Zendesk and associated via the tags array on Ticket and User records. BoldDesk tag names carry over exactly; no transformation is applied. If the customer used a naming convention to encode metadata (for example, product_line:widget), those compound tags are preserved as single strings and the customer's Zendesk admin decides whether to split them into separate tags for reporting purposes.

BoldDesk file attachments on Tickets and KB Articles are downloaded as binary blobs and re-uploaded to Zendesk via the attachments API endpoint. The original filename and content type are preserved. Zendesk attachments on tickets are linked to comments; attachments on Guide articles are linked to the article. Large file attachments (over 20 MB per Zendesk's limit) are flagged and handled per the customer's preference: split across comments or archived with a link reference.