Migrate from ITCO to Zendesk

ITCO support tickets map directly to Zendesk tickets. We extract ticket records (ID, Subject, Description, Status, Priority, Requester, Assignee, Created date, Updated date, Resolution notes) manually from the ITCO interface using a guided extraction template. Zendesk receives tickets via the tickets API endpoint with batch chunking at 100 records per request to respect rate limits. We preserve original ticket IDs as a custom field itco_original_id__c for audit reference.

ITCO customer records (name, email, phone, company association, address fields) map to Zendesk end-user records. The customer-to-ticket relationship is resolved by matching the customer identifier from ITCO to the Zendesk user created from the same extraction. Zendesk requires a unique email per user; we flag any duplicate email addresses in ITCO during scoping and the customer decides on a merge or split strategy before import.

ITCO company records map to Zendesk organizations. If ITCO holds account-level or company-level data tied to support tickets, we create Zendesk organizations first and then link the customer users to the organization via the organization_id field. Organization domains map to Zendesk's organization domain matching feature for automatic user-to-org assignment post-migration.

ITCO agent records (agent ID, name, email, role, status) map to Zendesk user accounts with agent role. We extract agents separately from customers to ensure the agent users exist in Zendesk before ticket import begins, because Zendesk requires assignee references to resolve to valid users. Agents without a resolvable email in ITCO receive a placeholder email constructed from the agent ID for migration purposes.

ITCO team structures map to Zendesk groups. We extract team names, team membership, and team hierarchy (where present) and create Zendesk groups with matching names. Agent-to-group assignments migrate as the initial group membership for each agent. If ITCO has a flat team structure with no hierarchy, Zendesk groups are created as a flat list.

ITCO ticket conversation threads (messages between customers and agents) map to Zendesk ticket comments. We preserve message ordering by setting the created_at timestamp to the original ITCO message timestamp. Public messages from customers become Zendesk comments with author set to the end-user; agent replies become comments with author set to the agent user. Internal notes map to Zendesk internal comments with the is_public=false flag.

ITCO custom ticket fields have no published schema, so we conduct a discovery call to enumerate every custom field name, data type, and validation rule present in the customer's ITCO configuration before mapping begins. Zendesk custom fields are created in Admin Center prior to data load using the field types documented in the Zendesk field API (dropdown, checkbox, text, numeric, date). Dropdown fields from ITCO become Zendesk dropdowns with options mapped by label; checkbox fields become Zendesk checkboxes; text fields become Zendesk text fields.

File attachments on ITCO tickets cannot be exported programmatically. We flag every ticket with attachments during scoping, provide a manual download checklist organized by ticket ID, and instruct the customer to download attachments to a shared storage location. Once the customer uploads attachments to Zendesk (via Admin Center or programmatically after creating the ticket record), we map the attachment file names to the Zendesk attachment URLs and update the ticket comments to reference the uploaded files. This is a hybrid automated-manual step.

ITCO does not expose a documented tag taxonomy. We do not migrate tags automatically. We recommend that the customer audit ITCO for any informal tagging practices during the discovery call and recreate relevant tags manually in Zendesk post-migration using Zendesk's tag management.

ITCO does not support documented knowledge base article export. If the customer has informal knowledge content stored in ITCO (for example, in ticket descriptions or internal notes), we do not extract or migrate it as part of standard scope. We recommend that the customer reviews this content during the discovery phase and recreates it manually in Zendesk Guide post-migration.