Migrate from House-on-the-Hill Service Desk to Gorgias

House-on-the-Hill stores contacts as a separate database and exports them via CSV. We import them first into Gorgias as Customer records so that the customer_id reference is satisfied before ticket import. The source email address is the dedupe key; first_name, last_name, and phone map directly. Any Hoth contact custom fields map to Gorgias customer attributes. If Hoth stores organisation in a separate company field, we resolve it against the imported Company records before inserting the customer.

House-on-the-Hill companies (organisations) are a separate database export. We import them into Gorgias as Organization records before customers, so that the customer-to-organization linkage is established via the customer.organization_id field. The Hoth company name and domain fields map to Gorgias Organization name and website. Where Hoth stores a flat contact model without explicit company linking, we derive the organisation relationship from the customer's email domain.

Agent accounts in House-on-the-Hill are stored in a distinct database but the HTTPS Report API does not expose agent records for automated export. We export agent data from the UI CSV export where available, then map source agent email, name, and role to Gorgias User records. Any Hoth role or permission set that has no direct Gorgias equivalent is noted as a configuration step for the customer's admin post-migration.

House-on-the-Hill tickets are the primary record type and export cleanly from Settings Cog > More Tools. We map source ticket ID (preserved as external_id for reconciliation), subject, status (Open/Closed/Pending mapped to Gorgias channel states), priority, assignee (resolved to the imported Agent User ID), created_at timestamp, and updated_at timestamp. Custom ticket fields defined in the Hoth form designer map to Gorgias ticket attributes and are created as custom ticket fields in the destination before migration.

Ticket conversations (public replies and internal notes) in House-on-the-Hill are stored as a related database table. We export the conversation thread linked to each ticket by ticket reference number and import them after tickets are inserted, using the source ticket external_id to resolve the destination ticket_id. Public customer replies and agent responses map to Gorgias channel-specific message types (email_message, chat_message, etc.) ordered by the source created_at timestamp.

File attachments in House-on-the-Hill are stored in the document management system and linked to tickets by an internal document ID. The ticket CSV does not embed attachment binary data. We export all attachment records as a separate pass, download the binary files, upload them to Gorgias as attachments via the REST API, then use the migrated ticket ID map returned by our import engine to set the ticket_id reference on each uploaded attachment. This two-phase approach avoids broken attachment references in the final dataset.

Tags in House-on-the-Hill are a flat label system applied to tickets as a comma-separated string per record. We export tags as a delimited string and split them into the destination tag array at import time. Duplicate tag values are deduplicated before insert. If Gorgias uses a separate tag management schema, we configure the tag array on the ticket during import and note any tag merge or rename requirements for the customer's admin.

SLA policies and their ticket associations in House-on-the-Hill are not independently exportable; SLA name and breach time are embedded in the ticket record. We extract SLA metadata from the ticket export, then recreate SLA rules in Gorgias as SLA Policies with matching first-response and next-response time targets. The SLA assignment per ticket is re-applied at import time using the imported SLA Policy IDs. SLA policy configuration is validated in a pre-migration test pass before the full import.

KB articles in House-on-the-Hill are stored separately from tickets in the knowledge base module. We export them as structured records including article title, body content (mapped as HTML or rich text), category assignments, and any custom article fields. Article-body HTML is preserved and imported into Gorgias Help Center with the original category hierarchy mapped to Gorgias Help Center categories. Article-to-ticket linkage (if any Hoth articles are linked to specific ticket resolutions) is noted for manual re-linking or macro reconstruction.

Custom ticket and contact fields defined in the House-on-the-Hill form designer are exported as part of the respective CSV template. We inspect the field schema from the export template, create equivalent custom attributes in Gorgias (ticket attributes for ticket fields, customer attributes for contact fields) before migration begins, and map each source custom field name and value to the destination field. Dropdown, checkbox, and multi-select field values are mapped to the equivalent Gorgias attribute type.

House-on-the-Hill supports automatic email processing rules that create tickets from mailbox interrogations and send emails at specific lifecycle points. These rules are platform-specific configurations that do not have a Gorgias equivalent as a migrated artifact. We document every active email processing rule in the House-on-the-Hill configuration (triggers, conditions, mailbox assignments) and deliver it as a written spec for the customer's admin to implement using Gorgias Rules and macros post-migration.

House-on-the-Hill workflow definitions (automated actions triggered by ticket state changes, assignment rules, or SLA breach events) do not migrate. We inspect the Hoth configuration for any active automated rules and deliver a written inventory specifying each rule's trigger, conditions, actions, and a recommended Gorgias Rule equivalent. The customer's admin rebuilds automations in Gorgias using the Gorgias Rules engine post-migration.