Migrate from House-on-the-Hill Service Desk to HubSpot Service Hub

House-on-the-Hill stores Contacts in a separate database table exported via CSV from the Settings Cog interface. We import Contacts first in the migration sequence, using the email address as the dedupe key against HubSpot's existing contact records. First name, last name, phone, and any custom contact fields defined in the Hoth form designer map to HubSpot CRM properties. Any HubSpot contacts that already exist in the destination (e.g., from a prior CRM integration) are reconciled by email match before insert.

House-on-the-Hill Companies (organisations) map directly to HubSpot Companies. The company name and domain fields export as separate CSV columns. We map domain to the HubSpot Company domain field and use company name as the dedupe key. If the destination HubSpot instance uses a flat contact model without a required company association, we create the Company record first and attach it via the contact's associated company lookup.

Tickets are the primary record type in House-on-the-Hill and migrate cleanly via CSV. We export the ticket database from Settings Cog > More Tools and map source columns (ticket number, subject, description, status, priority, created date, modified date) to HubSpot Ticket properties. The ticket owner field resolves against the HubSpot User table by email match during import. Hoth custom ticket fields defined in the form designer map to HubSpot CRM custom properties, which we pre-create in HubSpot before the ticket import pass.

Hoth ticket records link to the contact database via an internal contact reference field. During the ticket import, we resolve this reference to the migrated HubSpot Contact ID using a lookup table built during the Contact import pass. If a ticket references a contact email that was not migrated (e.g., a suppressed or duplicate contact), we assign the ticket to a default HubSpot contact or flag it for admin resolution.

Ticket conversation threads (public replies and internal notes) are stored as a related table in House-on-the-Hill. We export the conversation table linked to each ticket by the ticket reference number, then import conversations in a second pass after the ticket IDs have been established in HubSpot. Each conversation record maps to a HubSpot conversation message with the author resolved to the corresponding HubSpot User or Contact. Conversation timestamps preserve the original Hoth created-at date to maintain thread ordering.

Hoth Agent accounts are stored in a distinct database but are not accessible via the HTTPS Report API. We export agent data from the UI CSV export where available (or from the agent table export in the Settings Cog database view) and map source agent email, name, and role to HubSpot User records. HubSpot Seat type (Full, Growth, or Limited) is assigned based on the agent's Hoth role and the HubSpot Service Hub tier in use. Agents without a matching HubSpot user are held in a reconciliation queue for admin provisioning before the ticket import pass begins.

KB articles in House-on-the-Hill are stored separately from tickets and export as structured records including article title, body content, category assignments, and any custom article fields. We map these to HubSpot knowledge base articles using the HubSpot pre-built importer or the knowledge base API endpoints, preserving article body as HTML and category as the HubSpot knowledge base category. Article-to-ticket linkage is not preserved as a native HubSpot field and is documented separately for the customer's admin to configure if needed.

File attachments in House-on-the-Hill are stored in the document management area and linked to tickets by internal document ID. The ticket CSV does not embed attachment binary data. We export all attachment records as a separate pass and use the migrated HubSpot ticket ID map returned by our import engine to re-establish the ticket-to-document linkage. This two-phase approach is required to avoid broken attachment references; attachments are linked after both the ticket ID map and the attachment file list are confirmed complete.

Custom ticket and contact fields defined in the Hoth form designer are inspected from the CSV export template before migration. Each custom field name and data type is mapped to the equivalent HubSpot CRM property, with picklist values mapped to HubSpot option sets and date fields mapped to HubSpot date properties. We pre-create all custom properties in HubSpot via the property API before the first data import pass.

SLA policies and their association with tickets are not independently exportable from the ticket record in House-on-the-Hill. We extract SLA name and breach time from the ticket export where present and document the SLA definitions for the customer's HubSpot admin to recreate using Service Hub Professional's SLA configuration. SLA assignments per ticket are recorded in a custom field during import rather than as native HubSpot SLA policy associations.

Tags in House-on-the-Hill are a flat label system applied to tickets as comma-separated strings per record. We split the tag string into individual values at import time and insert them as HubSpot ticket tags. Where the destination uses a separate tag management approach, tags are mapped to HubSpot topic associations on the ticket.

Hoth ticket engagements including call logs, internal notes, and tasks are exported from the conversation and activity tables and mapped to HubSpot's conversation and activity model. Calls import as conversation messages with a call type indicator; tasks import as HubSpot tasks with status and due date preserved; internal notes import as private conversation notes attached to the ticket.