Migrate from HelpDesk 3 to Salesforce Service Cloud

HelpDesk 3 Tickets map 1:1 to Salesforce Cases. Ticket status (open, pending, resolved, closed) maps to Salesforce Case Status values which we configure as a Status field with closed-case final states. Priority and assignee migrate directly. CreatedAt and ClosedAt timestamps require Salesforce's Set Audit Fields upon Record Creation permission enabled in the destination org before migration; without this setting, Salesforce ignores server-provided created dates during insert.

HelpDesk 3 Customer records carry contact details, company association, and billing profile. We map each Customer to a Salesforce Contact (primary) and resolve or create a parent Account using the company name. Email address is the dedupe key. Customers without a company name create Contacts without an Account, which we flag in the reconciliation report for the admin to merge or convert manually post-migration.

HelpDesk 3 Agents with name, email, role, and availability map to Salesforce User records. We resolve Agents by email match against the destination org's User table. Any HelpDesk 3 Agent without a matching Salesforce User goes to a provisioning queue; the customer's admin creates the User before Agent assignment records migrate. Agent role (admin, agent) maps to Salesforce Profile and a custom Agent_Role__c field for SLA-rule continuity.

HelpDesk 3 email-thread conversation records attach to the parent Ticket. We migrate them as Salesforce EmailMessage records (the message content and headers) linked to the parent Case via the WhatId, with a paired Task record populating the Case activity timeline. Message timestamps preserve ordering; the original sender email and recipient map to FromName and ToAddress on EmailMessage.

HelpDesk 3 live-chat transcripts are separate conversation records linked to the same Ticket. We migrate them as Salesforce LiveChatTranscript records linked to the Case via a custom lookup field or through the standard Case.LatestChatId relationship. Each transcript preserves the agent name, visitor name, start time, and message body. LiveChatTranscript requires the Chat Sources feature to be enabled in the destination org.

HelpDesk 3 stores email and chat as distinct conversation objects under the same Ticket. Salesforce consolidates these into a single Case thread. We merge both conversation types chronologically at migration time and tag each message with a channel field (Email or Chat) so agents can filter the timeline. Failing to merge produces duplicate or out-of-order entries that agents report as confusing during reconciliation.

HelpDesk 3 FAQ Articles with title, body HTML, category, and visibility migrate to Salesforce Knowledge Base Articles. We export articles as structured HTML and remap HelpDesk 3 categories to Salesforce Data Category Groups or Article Type custom fields depending on the destination org's knowledge-base configuration. Article visibility (internal vs. customer-facing) maps to Salesforce Article visibility settings. Articles with broken image links or external resource references require URL-rewriting during import.

HelpDesk 3 file attachments linked to Tickets and FAQ Articles export to Salesforce as ContentVersion records attached via ContentDocumentLink to the parent Case or Article. We handle the three-step ContentVersion insert process (base64 body, file type, and title) and resolve the parent record's ID before attachment. Attachments stored as linked external URLs rather than uploaded files are documented as reference links for manual re-attachment post-migration.

HelpDesk 3 tags on Tickets and Articles migrate to Salesforce Case Tags (via TopicAssignment) or to a custom multi-select picklist field on Case depending on the destination org's tagging preference. Tag namespaces can differ between platforms and are normalized at migration time. We recommend multi-select picklist over Tags if the customer plans to use tags in reports and filters, since Salesforce Topics have different filtering behavior than standard picklist fields.

HelpDesk 3 custom fields on Tickets and Customers require field-level extraction during the audit phase and mapping to equivalent Salesforce custom fields. We pre-create the destination schema in the Salesforce org (sandbox first) with matching API names and field types before importing data. Custom field dependencies (validation rules, formula fields, lookup relationships) are documented in the schema design phase so they do not block import.

HelpDesk 3 ticket status workflows (open, pending, resolved, closed) map to Salesforce Case Status values. Custom status values that lack a direct Salesforce equivalent are flagged during scoping and mapped to the nearest available status with a note in the migration report. If HelpDesk 3 has multiple pipelines with distinct status sets, each pipeline becomes a Salesforce Case Record Type with its own Status field values restricted to that Record Type.