Migrate from Insightly Service to Zendesk

Insightly Organizations (called ORGANISATION_ID internally) map directly to Zendesk Organizations. Organization Name, domain name, industry, phone, and address fields translate 1:1. We use Organization Name as the dedupe key during import. Organizations must be created before Contacts so that the organization_id reference is satisfied at Contact insert time. If multiple Insightly Organizations share a domain, we resolve duplicates to a single Zendesk Organization and link all associated contacts.

Insightly Contacts map to Zendesk End Users. Standard fields (name, email, phone, address) translate directly. The CONTACT_ID is preserved in a custom field insighthly_contact_id__c for audit. Insightly Contacts without email addresses present a mapping challenge: Zendesk End Users require an email as the unique identifier. We flag these records during scoping and apply a default placeholder email ([email protected]) with a note to the customer to update post-migration. Contact custom fields migrate using the FIELD_NAME lookup pattern from Insightly's /CustomFields/Contacts endpoint, then converted to Zendesk custom_fields array format by ID.

Insightly Tickets map to Zendesk Tickets with status translation: Insightly Open maps to Zendesk Open, Pending to Pending, and Closed to Closed. The ticket priority (Low, Medium, High, Urgent) maps to Zendesk Priority. Requester is set from the linked Contact's email; Assignee is set from the linked Agent. We resolve all foreign-key lookups (Contact ID to Zendesk User ID, Organization ID, Agent ID) before inserting tickets. Ticket Conversations migrate as Ticket Comments with public/private visibility preserved from Insightly's VISIBLE_TO setting.

Insightly Ticket attachments require a separate export step from the ticket export. We export attachment metadata (filename, content_url, size, mime_type) and re-upload files to Zendesk using the Zendesk Attachments API. Files are associated with the correct ticket comment via the upload token returned by Zendesk. Large attachment sets (over 500 per ticket batch) are chunked to avoid hitting Zendesk's attachment upload rate limits. We do not migrate attachment versions beyond the current version.

Insightly SLA timers are defined per Ticket and carry First Reply Time and Next Reply Time thresholds. We translate these into Zendesk SLA Policies with corresponding business hours calendars. SLA Policy assignment migrates as Zendesk SLA Policy IDs applied to the correct Ticket types. If Insightly SLA policies vary by Ticket category or priority, we create multiple Zendesk SLA Policies to preserve the differentiated coverage. The customer must configure Zendesk business hours before SLA policy migration because SLA Policies reference a specific business hours schedule.

Insightly Agents are CRM users with helpdesk permissions. We map them to Zendesk Agents by email match against the Zendesk user directory. Agent role translation requires mapping Insightly's permission model (Admin, Manager, Agent) to Zendesk's role model (Admin, Staff, Light, Advisory). Advisory and Light roles are limited in Zendesk depending on the subscription plan. We flag any role mapping that exceeds the customer's Zendesk plan capacity and recommend an upgrade or role adjustment before migration.

Insightly Teams map to Zendesk Groups. Team member assignments migrate as Group Membership records linking each Zendesk Agent to the correct Group. Queue routing in Insightly (where tickets are assigned to Teams) translates to Zendesk Group-based routing. We preserve the team-to-agent membership mapping so that if Zendesk's routing assigns a ticket to a Group, the ticket surfaces in that group's queue.

Insightly KB Articles under categories migrate to Zendesk Guide Articles under Sections. Article title, body (HTML), publish status, and author migrate directly. The source Insightly category structure is recreated as Zendesk Guide Sections in the same hierarchy. The Zendesk Help Center must be activated before article import (only the account owner can activate Guide via Admin > Guide > Settings). Article attachments migrate via the same attachment pipeline as ticket attachments. HTML content may require reformatting if Insightly uses a different HTML sanitization model than Zendesk Guide's permitted HTML subset.

Insightly Ticket custom fields use the FIELD_NAME pattern from /CustomFields/Tickets. We enumerate all ticket custom fields during scoping, retrieve their FIELD_NAME and field type, then map to Zendesk custom field IDs created in Zendesk Admin. Type translation follows the pattern: Insightly drop-down maps to Zendesk dropdown (single-select), multi-select maps to Zendesk tagger, checkbox maps to Zendesk checkbox (boolean), and numeric maps to Zendesk integer. We rely on Zendesk field IDs (not display names) when writing custom field values during migration.

Insightly Notes linked to Tickets migrate as private Zendesk Ticket Comments (VISIBLE_TO set to internal). Note body and author migrate; the Note's association to the parent Ticket is preserved via the Ticket Comment's ticket_id reference. Notes linked to Organizations or Contacts without a Ticket association migrate as private comments on a placeholder ticket or are excluded per the customer's scoping decision. We flag this choice during discovery.

Insightly Leads (distinct from Contacts) carry LEAD_STATUS and LEAD_SOURCE fields. Since Zendesk has no separate Lead object, we merge Insightly Leads into Zendesk End Users and preserve LEAD_STATUS in a custom field original_lead_status__c. LEAD_SOURCE migrates to a Zendesk custom field original_lead_source__c. If the customer also uses a CRM alongside Zendesk (Salesforce, HubSpot), we recommend creating Leads in the CRM rather than in Zendesk to preserve the prospect-to-customer lifecycle.