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

Hoth Contacts are exported as a separate CSV from Settings Cog and map directly to Zoho Desk Contacts. The Hoth contact external ID becomes ContactExtId; Last Name and Email map as required fields. When Hoth stores a Company association on a contact, we resolve the Hoth Company record to its Zoho Desk Account and populate AccountExtId on the Contact import so that the contact-account link is established at insert time. Mobile, phone, and address fields map to their Zoho Desk equivalents; social profile fields (Facebook, Twitter) migrate if present in the Hoth export.

Hoth Companies (organisations) map to Zoho Desk Accounts. The company name becomes Account Name and domain becomes Website. We export Companies before Contacts so that Account records are present and active before the Contact-to-Account Lookup is resolved. Annual Revenue, Industry, Phone, and Description migrate as optional fields per Zoho Desk's Accounts CSV schema.

Hoth Agent records are exported from the UI CSV export (the HTTPS Report API does not expose agent records). We map agent email to the Zoho Desk Email field, agent name to First Name and Last Name, and generate an agentExtId from the Hoth agent identifier. Agents will be associated with Zoho Desk departments based on their Hoth team assignment during the department configuration phase. If an imported agent email already exists as a Zoho Desk user, the system maps them to the existing user record.

Hoth Tickets are the primary migration object. We export the ticket database from Settings Cog > More Tools, map source columns (ticket reference number, subject, status, priority, requester name and email, assignee, created date, modified date) to Zoho Desk's ticket CSV format, and import via Zoho's CSV import in the sequence (Agents, Accounts, Contacts, Tickets) required to satisfy all lookup dependencies. Status and priority map as picklist values accepted by Zoho Desk. The Hoth ticket reference number is preserved as a custom field or in a migration note field for audit continuity.

Hoth conversation threads (public replies and internal notes) are stored as a related table in Hoth. We export conversation records linked to each ticket by ticket reference number and import them as Zoho Desk Ticket Threads with Comments. Thread order is preserved by sorting on the Hoth conversation timestamp before import. The direction (incoming/outgoing) of each comment is inferred from the Hoth author type (requester vs agent) and mapped to the Zoho Desk comment direction field. Internal notes from Hoth map to Zoho Desk internal comments.

Hoth KB articles are stored separately from tickets and map to Zoho Desk Knowledge Base Sections and Articles. We export article title, body content, category assignment, and any custom article fields. Sections map to Zoho Desk Sections with sub-sections preserved as nested hierarchy. A known Zoho Desk constraint applies: the original article created_at timestamp is replaced with the migration date; there is no mechanism in Zoho Desk CSV import to backdate KB article creation. We flag this in the migration inventory and advise the customer to document original KB article dates if historical accuracy is required for compliance.

Hoth file attachments are stored in Hoth's 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, then re-associate them in Zoho Desk using the migrated ticket ID map returned by our import engine. This two-phase approach (ticket load first, then attachment re-link using Zoho Desk's attachment API) avoids broken attachment references. Note: Zoho Desk Zwitch explicitly excludes KB article attachments; we handle KB article attachments as a manual re-upload step with a per-article file inventory delivered to the customer.

Hoth custom ticket and contact fields defined in the form designer are inspected via the CSV export template and mapped to Zoho Desk custom fields created in the relevant department layout. Zoho Desk custom fields are scoped to the department in which they are created, so we create destination custom fields within the department that corresponds to the Hoth team or form. Dropdown and multi-select custom fields in Hoth become picklist and multi-select picklist fields in Zoho Desk with value mappings applied at transform time.

Hoth SLA policies and their ticket-level associations are not independently exportable from the ticket record. We extract SLA name and breach time from the ticket export where present, and recreate SLA rules in Zoho Desk's SLA Configuration module per department. The SLA-to-ticket assignment migrates as a field mapping where the Hoth SLA name becomes the Zoho Desk SLA name within the target department. SLA metrics (first response time, next response time, resolution time) are configured as new Zoho Desk SLA policies by the customer's admin post-migration based on the delivered inventory.

Hoth Tags are a flat label system applied to tickets, exported as comma-separated strings per ticket. We split them into individual tag values and import them to Zoho Desk's tag system. In Zoho Desk, tags are associated with tickets via the tag name. Where Hoth uses a hierarchical or taxonomy-based tag structure, we flatten it to Zoho Desk's flat tag model and deliver a mapping document noting the original taxonomy for the customer's reference.

If Hoth includes a product or asset catalog linked to tickets, we export product records and map them to Zoho Desk Products. Product name, SKU, unit price, and description map to their Zoho Desk equivalents. Products are imported before ticket load if ticket-to-product linking is required.

Hoth task records (standalone tasks not linked to ticket resolution) are exported and mapped to Zoho Desk Tasks with Subject, Description, Status, Priority, Due Date, and assignee mapping. Task assignments are resolved via the agent email-to-User mapping established during the Agent import phase.