Migrate from Grasp to Zendesk

Grasp Conversations map directly to Zendesk Tickets. The conversation subject or first message becomes Ticket subject, all messages map to Ticket Comments (public replies), and internal notes map to internal Ticket Comments with the author preserved. Thread state (open, resolved, archived) maps to Zendesk Ticket status (Open, Pending, Solved, Closed). We resolve the requester (Contact) and assignee (Team Member) by email lookup before insert to satisfy Zendesk's required requester_id and assignee_id references.

Grasp Contacts migrate to Zendesk End Users. Name, email, phone, and any standard metadata map directly. Email serves as the dedupe key. Grasp's channel-specific contact properties (WhatsApp number, Instagram handle) are preserved in custom fields on the Zendesk User record because Zendesk does not have native multi-channel contact metadata. Suspended contacts in Grasp become unsuspended in Zendesk and require admin review post-migration.

Grasp Team Members migrate to Zendesk Agents. Role metadata (admin vs agent) maps to Zendesk's agent role model. We resolve by email match against the destination Zendesk User table. If a Grasp Team Member has no matching Zendesk User, we hold them in a reconciliation queue for the customer's Zendesk admin to provision the account before the agent migration phase runs. Agents must be provisioned before tickets can be assigned.

Grasp Channels (WhatsApp, email, live chat, Instagram Direct) do not have a native Zendesk equivalent. We transform Channel type and thread properties into Zendesk Tags (e.g., channel_whatsapp, channel_instagram) applied to the Ticket. Any channel-specific metadata such as WhatsApp Business Account ID or Instagram Direct thread ID migrates as a custom field on the Ticket so that the source channel context is preserved for audit and reporting.

Grasp does not have a dedicated Organization object. Company or organization data on a Grasp Contact (stored in a custom field or contact property) migrates to a Zendesk Organization record. If no company data exists in Grasp, we create a placeholder Organization for each Contact or skip Organization creation based on the customer's scoping choice. Zendesk requires at least one active Agent before Organizations can be created, so this phase runs after agent provisioning.

Grasp conversation Tags migrate directly to Zendesk Ticket Tags. Tag names are preserved as-is. Note that Zendesk auto-generates additional tags based on custom field options; we document these during the mapping phase and coordinate with the customer to avoid tag collision. Grasp tags used for lightweight workflow categorisation may need to be recreated as Zendesk Views or routing rules, which is outside the data migration scope.

Grasp Help Center Articles migrate to Zendesk Guide Articles. Article title, body, status (draft, published), and category map to Zendesk Guide Article title, body, draft/published status, and Section. Internal navigation links and article-to-article cross-references require reconstruction in Zendesk Guide. Zendesk Guide must be activated by the account owner before article import; we include this as a pre-migration step in our runbook. Default language migrates only; multilingual articles require separate import passes.

Grasp custom fields on Contacts map to Zendesk User custom_fields. We create the custom field in Zendesk Admin with the matching type (text, dropdown, checkbox, date) before migration. Zendesk custom_fields are stored as an array keyed by field ID; we reference field IDs rather than display names during import to avoid collisions when multiple fields share similar names. Field values migrate as strings or typed values depending on the destination field type.

Grasp custom fields on Conversations map to Zendesk Ticket custom_fields with equivalent type mapping (text to text, multi-select to tag generation, checkbox to boolean). Zendesk stores custom field values in a custom_fields array with id-value pairs. We create the destination custom field in Zendesk Admin first, then map values during the Ticket migration pass. Numeric fields transfer without length restriction; date fields are formatted as YYYY-MM-DD per Zendesk requirements.

Grasp's Team Inbox configuration — shared team views and routing assignments — maps conceptually to Zendesk Views and routing settings. We document the Grasp inbox structure as a written View configuration guide for the customer's Zendesk admin to recreate. Views are configuration objects not stored as data records and cannot be migrated programmatically between platforms.

File attachments on Grasp Conversations (messages, internal notes) migrate to Zendesk Ticket Comment attachments. We use URL reference preservation where attachments are cloud-hosted, or direct file transfer for inline files. Large attachment volumes may require a separate file transfer pass after the primary record migration to avoid exceeding the initial migration window. Attachment metadata (filename, size, uploader) is preserved.