Migrate from Kayako to Freshdesk

Kayako Conversations map 1:1 to Freshdesk Tickets. Standard fields (status, priority, assignee, channel, timestamps) map to Freshdesk equivalents (status_name, priority, agent_id, source, created_at). Message threads migrate as ConversationDetails with agent and customer messages preserved in chronological order. We extract conversations via the Kayako Conversations API and insert via the Freshdesk Tickets API, batching in groups of 50 to avoid rate limit saturation.

Kayako Users split into Freshdesk Contacts (customers and requesters) and Agents (support staff). We determine the split by examining Kayako's user role assignments and permissions. Contacts get email, name, phone, and custom field values. Agents get name, email, and group assignment. Active/inactive status maps from Kayako's user status field.

Kayako Organizations map directly to Freshdesk Companies. Organization name becomes the company name, and domain maps to the website field. The organization-to-user linkage is preserved via Freshdesk's customer_id field on Contact records. If Kayako Organizations have custom properties, we pre-create matching Freshdesk company fields before migration.

Kayako custom fields have system-generated API field keys that differ from display names, and these keys are required for API writes. We discover all field keys during scoping and map them to Freshdesk custom fields that we pre-create with matching types (text, dropdown, number, date, checkbox). If Kayako custom fields were added after initial setup, we re-verify their keys before migration. Freshdesk Sprout tier does not support custom fields; Blossom or above is required.

Kayako KB Articles map to Freshdesk Solution Articles with category and section hierarchy preserved. Article content, status (draft/published), and view counts migrate. Freshdesk community posts document a known duplication risk where migration tools have re-imported articles multiple times, creating 4x article counts. We implement a pre-migration article ID audit and post-migration deduplication check to prevent this. Article attachments require separate per-article API calls.

Kayako KB Categories and Sections map to Freshdesk Solution Categories with hierarchical structure preserved. Category names and descriptions migrate directly. If Freshdesk already has categories with conflicting names, we resolve naming collisions during scoping and document the resolution for customer sign-off.

Tags applied to Kayako Conversations migrate as Freshdesk Tags. Tag strings are preserved verbatim. Freshdesk's tag model supports tag-based filtering on tickets. If Freshdesk's tag limit (5,000 per account) is a concern for high-volume tagging, we can map tags to Freshdesk's internal notes or a custom multi-select field as an alternative.

File attachments in Kayako Conversations require separate API calls per conversation and may have size restrictions. We export attachments from Kayako and upload them to Freshdesk via the Freshdesk API attachment endpoint, linking each file to the corresponding ticket conversation detail. Large attachment files (>20MB) may require chunked upload or alternative handling.