Migrate from Help Scout to Salesforce Service Cloud

Help Scout Customers (the contact record storing email, name, phone, address, and company) map to Salesforce Contact and Account. We extract the company name from the Help Scout Customer's company field and either match it to an existing Salesforce Account or create a new one before inserting the Contact. The Salesforce Contact is created with the AccountId reference satisfied at insert time. Help Scout Customer Properties (custom fields at the customer level) map to Salesforce custom fields on Contact, provided the destination Salesforce edition supports custom fields and the Help Scout account is on Plus plan.

Help Scout Conversations (the core ticket equivalent) map to Salesforce Case. The conversation subject becomes Case Subject; the most recent public message becomes Case Description. Conversation status (Active, Pending, Snoozed, resolved) maps to Salesforce Case Status values that we configure during schema setup. Thread history including public replies, customer messages, and agent responses migrates as Salesforce EmailMessage records linked to the Case, preserving the original timestamp and sender.

Help Scout internal notes within a conversation (visible only to agents) have no direct Salesforce standard object equivalent because Case Comments are typically visible to customers. We create internal Case Comments with IsPublished=false, which hides them from the customer-facing portal. If the customer uses Salesforce Experience Cloud for customer self-service, internal notes remain agent-only. This is configured at scoping to ensure the Case Page Layout reflects the internal note visibility requirement.

Help Scout Mailboxes (the shared inbox containers routing conversations to teams) map to Salesforce Case Queues or Omni-Channel routing configurations. For simple migrations, Mailbox becomes a Case Queue with the Mailbox's agent assignments translated to Queue Members. For advanced migrations using Omni-Channel, we configure Routing Configurations, Presence Configurations, and Capacity Rules that map to the Help Scout Mailbox's routing logic. Routing rules are a configuration rebuild, not a data migration; we document the source routing logic for the admin's rebuild.

Help Scout Custom Fields (available only on Plus and Pro plans) map to typed Salesforce custom fields. Dropdown maps to Salesforce Picklist (or Multi-Select Picklist depending on whether multi-select is used); Single line maps to Text; Multi line maps to Text Area (Long); Number maps to Number; Date maps to Date. If the Help Scout account is on Standard or Free (where Custom Fields do not exist), we skip this mapping and either rely on Tags as a fallback or flag the upgrade requirement before migration. We detect the account's plan tier during scoping.

Help Scout Tags applied across Conversations, Customers, and Docs are preserved as Salesforce Labels (CaseLabels on Case object, available from Enterprise edition) or as a custom multi-select picklist field on Case and Contact if Labels are not available in the destination edition. The tag preservation strategy is chosen during scoping based on the customer's reporting and routing needs. Tags used for conversation categorization map to Case Origin or Case Type if a 1:1 equivalent exists.

Help Scout Docs articles (organized in Collections) map to Salesforce Knowledge articles. Article title becomes Article Title; article body (HTML content from the Docs editor) becomes Article Body; article status (Draft, Published) maps to Salesforce Knowledge ArticleStatus values. We preserve category hierarchy by mapping Help Scout Collections to Salesforce Data Categories or topic assignments on articles. Note that Salesforce Knowledge requires a separate configuration step post-migration: article visibility (internal vs. external), language packs, and Experience Cloud site embedding require manual setup. The Docs Beacon widget does not migrate to Salesforce; we recommend Experience Cloud or a separate knowledge base embed as the replacement.

Help Scout Users (agents and team members) map to Salesforce Users. We match by email address. Any Help Scout User without a matching Salesforce User is placed in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision. Help Scout role and team assignments map to Salesforce Role hierarchy and Permission Sets. Note that Help Scout's unlimited-user pricing means the number of agents often exceeds the number of Salesforce User licenses planned; we flag this during scoping so the customer can right-size Salesforce licensing before migration.

Help Scout Teams and Departments (grouping agents for routing and permissions) map to Salesforce Groups or Queues depending on use case. If the team is used for case routing, we configure a Queue. If the team is used for permissions and visibility, we configure a Salesforce Group and link it to the Role hierarchy. Advanced team permissions are gated to Help Scout Plus; we check the source tier during scoping and either map directly or note the permission gap.

Attachments embedded in Help Scout conversation threads (images, PDFs, files) export as binary blobs via the Help Scout Inbox API and re-attach in Salesforce as ContentVersion records linked to the parent Case or Contact via ContentDocumentLink. Large attachment batches (over 5,000 files or files exceeding Salesforce's 25 MB per ContentVersion limit) require extended migration time and may need the customer to provision Salesforce Content Workspace configuration in advance. We flag large attachment volume during scoping.

Help Scout historical report data including CSAT scores, response time metrics, happiness ratings, and channel performance reports is not accessible via the Help Scout API. We do not migrate reporting metrics programmatically. The customer exports Reports data manually as CSV/XLSX from the Help Scout Reports UI before migration. We provide a written checklist of which reports to export and recommend a post-migration BI tool (Salesforce Reports, Tableau, or a data warehouse) for rebuilding historical dashboards in Salesforce.