Migrate from Desk365 to Zoho Desk

Desk365 Tickets map directly to Zoho Desk Tickets. Status (Open, Pending, Resolved, Closed), Priority (Low, Medium, High, Urgent), Assignee, Requester, Created/Updated timestamps, and resolution notes transfer cleanly. Desk365 Custom Field values map to equivalent custom fields in Zoho Desk that must be pre-created before migration. We flag any Ticket referencing a Custom Field not present in the destination so the customer's admin can reconcile the schema gap before the import phase.

Desk365 Customer records map to Zoho Desk Contact records with name, email, phone, company association, and portal access status preserved. If the customer maintains separate Account records in Desk365 or uses the company field for organization-level tracking, we create a corresponding Account in Zoho Desk and link Contacts to it via the AccountId lookup. Customer IDs from Desk365 are stored as contactExtId in Zoho Desk for future cross-system reference.

Desk365 Agent records (display name, email, department membership, role: Admin/Agent, active/inactive status) map to Zoho Desk Agents. We resolve Agents by email match against the Zoho Desk user list. Any Desk365 Agent without a matching Zoho Desk user is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before the Tickets phase begins, since ticket Assignee references require a valid Zoho Desk Agent.

Desk365 Departments with their access control settings (global, department-only, agent-only) map to Zoho Desk Departments. Zoho Desk Professional and above support multi-department ticketing with per-department SLA policies, which is a richer structure than Desk365's department model. We replicate the full department hierarchy and attach each Agent to their department so that Zoho Desk's team-based routing rules apply correctly after migration.

Desk365 Knowledge Base Articles carry publish status (Draft/Published) and visibility flags (Agent-only vs. public Support Portal). We migrate all articles and preserve their content and publish status. However, Zoho Desk does not have an Agent-only visibility tier for KB articles, only Draft and Published. Articles flagged as Agent-only in Desk365 land as Draft in Zoho Desk, and we notify the customer so their admin can review and publish internal training content separately from customer-facing articles. Folder and category structure migrates to Zoho Desk article categories.

Desk365 SLA Policies define First Response and Resolution time targets by Priority level with Business Hours schedules. We map these to Zoho Desk SLA Policies with matching first response and resolution time thresholds. Zoho Desk's SLA escalation rules (notify agent, escalate to manager, change priority) are a separate configuration step we document and hand off. Business Hours definitions must be recreated in Zoho Desk's time-zone-aware schedule builder. SLA policy assignments at the department or channel level are documented as a configuration step.

Desk365 macros trigger on ticket create/update events using conditions (field values, customer events) and fire actions (reply templates, field updates, assignments). Zoho Desk has Business Rules (filter-and-action), Workflow Rules (automated actions triggered by ticket events), and Macros (saved reply templates with optional field updates). We export Desk365 macro definitions as structured documentation and map each macro to its nearest Zoho Desk equivalent. Because macro conditions and actions do not have a programmatic 1:1 mapping between platforms, we deliver a written macro inventory with Zoho Desk implementation notes for the customer's admin to rebuild. This is not an automated migration; it is a documented handoff.

Desk365 Tags are flat string labels applied to Tickets for categorization. We preserve all Tag values and reapply them as Tags on the Zoho Desk Ticket records. No hierarchical structure, color metadata, or tag grouping carries over since Desk365 uses a flat tag model with no parent-child relationships. Tags are applied after ticket import so that tag assignment does not block the main ticket flow.

Desk365 Ticket conversations include public replies, internal notes, and system-generated status-change entries. We export all conversation entries in chronological order and reinsert them as Zoho Desk Thread records linked to the migrated Ticket. Internal notes in Desk365 map to Zoho Desk's private Comments on the ticket, preserving the internal-only visibility flag. System events (status changes, assignment changes) are logged as Thread entries with a system-generated attribution.

File attachments on Desk365 Tickets and inline in conversation threads are stored as URLs pointing to Desk365's blob storage. We download each attachment and re-upload it to Zoho Desk's document management, associating it with the corresponding ticket record. This requires active download and re-upload rather than a direct URL reference since Zoho Desk does not accept external blob URLs as attachments. Attachments over 20 MB are flagged for the customer's admin to handle manually or via a separate file transfer.

Desk365 supports custom text, number, dropdown, date, and boolean fields on Tickets. We extract field definitions and values, then map them to equivalent custom fields in Zoho Desk that the customer's admin pre-creates before the migration. If the destination custom field type differs from the source (for example, a Desk365 multi-select becomes a Zoho Desk picklist), we transform the values to match the destination type. Records referencing custom fields that do not exist in the destination are flagged in the pre-migration reconciliation report.

Desk365 Premium IT Asset Management links hardware/software assets to Tickets. We extract asset records (name, type, assigned user, linked tickets) and migrate them to Zoho Desk Assets module. Asset-to-asset relationships and dependency chains from Desk365 do not have a direct Zoho Desk equivalent and are documented as a separate asset relationship matrix for the customer's IT admin to re-establish manually. This module requires Zoho Desk Professional or Enterprise tier on the destination.