Migrate from Help Sumo to Zendesk

Help Sumo tickets map 1:1 to Zendesk tickets using ticket ID as a reference key. Status (open, pending, resolved, closed) maps directly to Zendesk ticket Status. Priority from Help Sumo maps to Zendesk Priority (low, normal, high, urgent). The original Help Sumo ticket ID is preserved in a custom Zendesk field hs_ticket_id__c for cross-system audit. We resolve assignee by matching Help Sumo agent email to Zendesk User email during import.

Help Sumo conversation messages map to Zendesk ticket comments. Public replies and internal notes are distinguished using a boolean flag; internal notes import as Zendesk internal comments with public=false. Author attribution resolves against the mapped Zendesk User. Message timestamps are preserved exactly as stored in the Help Sumo export. HTML message bodies are sanitized and rendered in Zendesk's comment body.

Help Sumo customer profiles (name, email, company) map to Zendesk User records with role=end-user. If Help Sumo stores company as a separate field, we map it to Zendesk Organization and link the User to the Organization via the organization_id field. Any customer records without a valid email address are flagged and placed in a quarantine sheet for the customer's admin to review before final import.

Help Sumo agent accounts map to Zendesk Agent or Admin user records. We extract agent name, email, and role (admin or agent) from the Help Sumo export and match by email against the Zendesk destination. If the Zendesk account is not yet provisioned, agents are held in a pre-flight queue until the customer's Zendesk admin creates the accounts. Permissions and group memberships are not inherited from Help Sumo and must be reconfigured in Zendesk post-migration.

Help Sumo ticket tags migrate as Zendesk tags directly. Tag names are mapped character-for-character. Zendesk applies a 3,000-tag per account limit; if the migration exceeds this, we flag overflow tags and discuss a tag consolidation strategy with the customer before proceeding.

Help Sumo articles map to Zendesk Guide articles under sections and categories that we create to mirror the Help Sumo structure. Article body migrates as HTML; Zendesk Guide requires activation and initial section setup before articles can be inserted. URL slugs are regenerated by Zendesk, so any public-facing KB links will change; we document the old and new URL pairs in a redirect inventory for the customer's admin to configure in Zendesk Help Center redirect settings.

Help Sumo custom field values migrate to Zendesk custom ticket fields. We validate source field types against Zendesk field type constraints before import: Help Sumo text values can map to Zendesk text or numeric fields; dropdown values map to Zendesk dropdown with options created to match source values. Any Help Sumo custom field with a data type that Zendesk does not support (such as nested objects or arrays) is flattened into a text field or flagged for exclusion.

Files attached to tickets or knowledge base articles migrate as Zendesk attachments. We fetch binary blobs from the Help Sumo export and upload them via the Zendesk API. Attachments exceeding Zendesk's 50 MB per-file limit are flagged individually. We note file types the Zendesk Help Center does not support (such as executable file types) and flag them for removal before import.

Help Sumo may have multiple inbox queues (email, chat) that map to Zendesk Views rather than a 1:1 inbox object. We extract each Help Sumo inbox name and create a corresponding Zendesk View with ticket filters matching the inbox scope. The customer's Zendesk admin configures routing rules to distribute incoming tickets to the correct view after migration.

Help Sumo basic reports (ticket volume, resolution time) have no direct Zendesk equivalent as pre-built reports. We do not migrate reports. We deliver a written inventory of all Help Sumo reports, their data sources, and recommended Zendesk Explore reporting equivalents so the customer's admin can rebuild them in Zendesk Explore or export to a BI tool.