Migrate from Novo Customer Support to Zendesk

Novo Tickets (central object with status, priority, assignee, custom fields, tags, and linked customer or company) map 1:1 to Zendesk Tickets. The ticket ID from Novo becomes a custom field novo_ticket_id__c for cross-reference. Status, priority, and assignee map to Zendesk status, priority, and assignee_id. Any custom ticket fields from Novo require field-level type mapping before insertion via Zendesk /tickets endpoint.

Novo Customers (end-user contacts in the support relationship) map to Zendesk End Users. We use email as the dedupe key and preserve the full contact record including role-based permissions and AD field mapping from enterprise configurations. The customer record must exist before tickets referencing that customer are inserted.

Novo Companies (organizational records grouping multiple customers and tickets) map to Zendesk Organizations. We preserve company hierarchies and linked contact counts. The Organization must be created before any End User with a company association is inserted, because Zendesk requires the organization_id reference to be satisfied at insert time.

Novo Agents (support staff users) map to Zendesk Agents. Migration requires mapping Novo Agent IDs to Zendesk User IDs and preserving team membership. Role-based permissions in enterprise Novo configurations must be translated to Zendesk's permission model (Light Agent, Agent, Admin roles, or custom roles). We audit permission levels pre-migration and flag any role definitions without a direct Zendesk equivalent.

Novo Teams (agent groupings for routing and reporting) map to Zendesk Groups. We preserve team structure and assign agents to corresponding Zendesk Groups. Where the destination Zendesk instance uses SLA policies or business hours scoped to Groups, we map those during configuration. If Zendesk uses agents without Group membership (flat agent pool), agents are assigned individually.

Novo Conversations (threaded replies including agent and customer contributions) migrate to Zendesk Ticket Comments in chronological order. We preserve timestamps, author attribution (mapped to the Zendesk End User or Agent), and internal/public visibility flags. Conversation attachments migrate with file metadata preserved.

File attachments on tickets and conversations migrate as binary blobs with file metadata into Zendesk. Zendesk enforces a 20 MB per file limit. Large attachment batches require chunked transfer; we flag any files exceeding the limit during scoping and document the handling approach (external storage link, chunked upload, or exclusion with a written inventory of excluded files).

Novo KB Articles and their category hierarchy migrate to Zendesk Help Center Articles and Sections. Internal/external visibility flags from Novo map to Zendesk's permission-based article visibility (public, authenticated end users, agents only). We preserve article body content, but any embedded media requires URL remapping if the source URLs are not publicly accessible.

Novo Tags (applied across tickets, customers, and articles as a flat taxonomy) migrate to Zendesk Tags. We preserve all tag assignments during migration and recreate the tag vocabulary in the destination. Zendesk tags are scoped to tickets, users, and organizations; we map accordingly based on the source object's tag context.

Novo custom fields on tickets introduce field-level mapping requirements. We audit the custom field schema before migration, generate a field map, and handle type conversions (dropdown to single select, date format normalization, checkbox to boolean). Zendesk custom fields use a custom_fields array per ticket with typed entries. We create equivalent Zendesk custom fields via the Admin API before record import begins.