Migrate from Chatwoot to Zendesk

Chatwoot Conversations map to Zendesk Tickets. Each Conversation's status (open/resolved/pending), priority, assignee, and created_at timestamp transfer to Ticket fields. The full message array (agent messages, customer messages, private notes) migrates as individual Ticket Comments preserving created_at order and message type. We tag migrated tickets with a system tag (migrated_from_chatwoot) to allow the customer's admin to exclude them from Zendesk Triggers and SLA calculations during initial setup.

Chatwoot Contacts (name, email, phone, custom_attributes) map to Zendesk End Users. Email address is the dedupe key for import. We preserve any Chatwoot Contact custom_attributes as Zendesk user fields, which requires pre-creating the schema in Zendesk Admin before migration. Contacts without an email address are imported as Users with a placeholder domain to satisfy Zendesk's required email format.

Chatwoot Agents (name, email, role, availability_status) map to Zendesk Users. Role mapping: Chatwoot administrator maps to Zendesk admin; agent maps to agent. We resolve agents by email match against the Zendesk destination. Any Chatwoot Agent without a matching Zendesk User goes to a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes.

Chatwoot Messages belong to Conversations and carry content, sender_type (agent/customer), attachments, and created_at. We map agent messages to public Zendesk Ticket Comments and customer messages to public Ticket Comments. Chatwoot private notes map to Zendesk internal Ticket Comments. We preserve message order by created_at timestamp and migrate attachment URLs as references; actual attachment files require separate handling if the Chatwoot storage endpoint is accessible.

Chatwoot Labels are string tags applied to Conversations. We export the full label taxonomy and map to Zendesk Tags. Note that Zendesk Tags are case-sensitive and have a 2,000-tag-per-account limit; we flag if the source label count approaches this boundary during scoping.

Chatwoot Custom Attributes attach to Conversations or Contacts and support text, number, dropdown, and checkbox types. We pre-create the equivalent Zendesk custom ticket fields (for conversation-attached attributes) and custom user fields (for contact-attached attributes) in Zendesk Admin before migration. Dropdown attributes in Chatwoot require a corresponding Zendesk custom field with matching picklist values. Checkbox attributes map to Zendesk boolean fields.

Chatwoot Inboxes represent channels (Website Live Chat, Email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, API). Channel credentials (webhook URLs, page tokens, WhatsApp templates, API keys) are credentials-bound and do not transfer. We document the inbox taxonomy (channel type, agent assignment, team assignment) and map to Zendesk Channels and Views. The customer's admin configures channel credentials in Zendesk Admin post-migration.

Chatwoot Teams are available only on Business and Enterprise tiers and group agents for conversation routing. We map Chatwoot Teams to Zendesk Groups. If the source account is on Hacker or Startups, no Teams exist to migrate; we create matching Group structures in Zendesk Admin during migration.

Chatwoot Canned Responses are pre-written reply templates with shortcut codes. We export the full set including content and shortcut triggers and map to Zendesk Macros. Chatwoot's shortcut code model maps to the Macro title field in Zendesk.

Chatwoot Help Center Articles (available on Startups tier or higher) contain title, body (Markdown), category, and locale. Zendesk Guide is a separate product that must be manually activated and configured in the Zendesk admin before article migration. We export the full article tree and import into Zendesk Guide via the Guide API. Note that Help Center is not available on Chatwoot Hacker plan; if the source account is on Hacker, no articles exist to migrate. We do not activate Zendesk Guide as part of migration scope; this is a customer-admin action before or during migration.