Migrate from Khoros Service to Zendesk

Khoros Customer records map to Zendesk End-User records. We export the standard Customer fields (id, screen_name, email, location) and all discovered custom Customer fields via the meta/object endpoint before mapping. The Khoros email address is the primary dedupe key in Zendesk; records with matching emails update rather than duplicate. Custom profile fields on Customer (interests, influence score, tags) migrate to Zendesk user fields, which Zendesk exposes as free-form fields on the user profile.

Khoros Author represents the social identity linked to a Customer profile. We export Author screen_name and brandOwned flag as metadata on the parent Customer record, since Zendesk has no separate Author object. The Author's social channel identity is preserved as a tag (channel:twitter, channel:facebook) on the migrated User record so agents can identify the originating channel without a separate lookup.

Khoros Case maps to Zendesk Ticket as the primary migration object. We map Case title to Ticket subject, Case status to Ticket status (New/Open/Pending/Solved/Closed mapped from Khoros status values), customId to Ticket external_id for cross-reference, and priority to Ticket priority. The full Interaction array within each Case migrates as Zendesk Comments ordered by the Khoros interaction timestamp to preserve conversation threading.

Khoros Interactions (individual messages, notes, and status changes within a Case) map to Zendesk Ticket Comments. Each Interaction's type (message, note, status_change) maps to Zendesk Comment's public/private attribute: agent replies become public comments; internal notes become private comments; status changes become Audit records. The interaction sequence number preserves chronological ordering in the Zendesk conversation timeline.

Khoros Agent records (email, name, role assignment) map to Zendesk Agent accounts. We resolve agents by email match against the destination Zendesk instance. Khoros initiative-based role scoping has no direct Zendesk equivalent; we map Khoros role names (agent, supervisor, admin) to Zendesk's agent role configuration and flag any agent with Khoros-specific initiative assignments for manual role configuration in Zendesk Admin.

Khoros Brands define multi-tenant scoping for enterprise deployments. Zendesk does not have a native multi-brand isolation layer at the Suite Team and Suite Growth tiers; multi-brand requires separate Zendesk instances or the Enterprise add-on. We export Brand membership as tags on both Customer and Case records (brand:brandname). The customer decides during scoping whether to use separate Zendesk instances or tag-based segmentation for multi-brand deployments.

Khoros Initiatives group Case workflows and Campaigns under a business objective. Zendesk has no native Initiative object. We export Initiative membership on Case records as tags (initiative:campaignname, initiative:workflowname) and present these to the customer's Zendesk admin as a tag inventory for organizing into Zendesk Views or using with Zendesk's Explore reporting on tagged tickets.

Khoros Campaign tracks marketing and social care attribution on Cases and Conversations. We export Campaign association as tags on the Case record (campaign:summer2025). Where the destination Zendesk account uses a CRM or marketing integration (Salesforce, HubSpot), campaign attribution can be carried as a custom field or as tag metadata for cross-platform reporting.

Knowledge base articles in Khoros (title, body, category hierarchy, visibility settings) export to Zendesk Help Center articles. We download article body content and embedded images from Khoros CDN, re-upload images to Zendesk's article asset store, and rebuild internal links. Article categories map to Zendesk Section hierarchy. Articles set to restricted visibility in Khoros require manual reconfiguration of Zendesk Help Center permissions post-migration.

Khoros Conversation records (real-time messaging) map to Zendesk Tickets with a channel indicator tag (channel:messaging, channel:dm) to preserve the originating channel context. Conversation participants link to the Zendesk User records we created from Khoros Customer exports. We export conversation metadata and message history in timestamp order, preserving the real-time sequence as the comment timeline.

Both Khoros Customer and Case objects support custom field declarations discovered via GET /meta/object/{type}. We query this endpoint for both object types before migration scoping, validate discovered fields against a sample of records, then pre-create the equivalent Zendesk custom field definitions (text, integer, checkbox, dropdown, date) via the Zendesk Field API. Custom field values migrate as field references on the corresponding Zendesk User or Ticket record during data import.