Migrate from Novo Customer Support to Zoho Desk

Novo Tickets map 1:1 to Zoho Desk Tickets. Each ticket carries status, priority, assignee, tags, and linked customer or company. We preserve all standard ticket fields and map custom ticket fields to Zoho Desk custom fields, subject to the destination edition's field limit (Enterprise 230, Professional 150, Standard 50, Free 0). We flag any custom field type mismatches during scoping, particularly dropdown or multi-select fields that require Zoho picklist configuration before import.

Novo Customer records map to Zoho Desk Contacts. We preserve full name, email, phone, role-based permissions (AD field mapping in enterprise configurations requires translation to Zoho's Contact roles), and any custom contact fields. The email address serves as the dedupe key. If the customer has a separate Company record, the Contact is linked to a corresponding Zoho Account after Account migration.

Novo Company records map to Zoho Desk Accounts. Company hierarchies and linked contact counts transfer as Zoho Account hierarchies with primary contact assignment. We create Account records before Contact import to satisfy the AccountId lookup requirement on the Contact object.

Novo Agents map to Zoho Desk Agents. Migration requires mapping Agent IDs to Owner IDs in Zoho Desk and preserving team membership. Role-based permissions from Novo must be translated to Zoho's Agent, Light Agent, or Support Administrator roles, and assigned to the appropriate Department. We audit permission levels pre-migration and flag any role definitions lacking a direct Zoho equivalent.

Novo Teams map to Zoho Departments, which are the top-level organizational unit in Zoho Desk. We preserve team structure and map agents into corresponding destination departments. Note that Zoho Desk's Migration Wizard cannot transfer Teams directly; agents must be added to Departments manually or through API post-migration. We handle this by creating Department records during migration and linking Agents via the Zoho Desk Agents API.

Novo conversation threads (agent and customer replies within a ticket) map to Zoho Desk Comments and Threads in chronological order. We preserve timestamps, author attribution, and internal/external visibility flags. Conversation attachments migrate as binary blobs with file metadata. Large attachment batches may require chunked transfer; we flag any size restrictions during scoping and apply Zoho's 10GB cumulative upload limit for the migration session.

File attachments on tickets and conversations migrate as binary blobs with file metadata. Zoho Desk's Zwitch migration tool caps file uploads at 10GB per session; for migrations with attachments exceeding this, we request a new migration session or handle overflow via Zoho Desk API direct upload with chunked transfer. We flag attachment size distribution during scoping.

Novo KB Articles and their category hierarchy map to Zoho Desk Knowledge Base Articles organized within Sections and Categories. We preserve article content, internal/external visibility flags (mapped to Zoho's Article status: Draft, Published, Internal), and category assignment. Note that Zoho Desk does not migrate KB attachments; these must be re-linked or re-uploaded post-migration.

Novo KB Category hierarchy maps to Zoho Desk Section and Category hierarchy. We preserve the full taxonomy structure and apply Zoho's visibility rules per article. Category assignments are resolved at migration time based on the original Novo category links.

Tags applied across tickets, customers, and articles transfer as a flat taxonomy vocabulary. We preserve all tag assignments and recreate the tag vocabulary in Zoho Desk. Tags are mapped by name match. We flag any tags that exceed Zoho Desk's character limits during scoping.

Novo custom fields on tickets introduce field-level mapping requirements. We audit the custom field schema pre-migration, generate a field map, and handle type conversions (dropdown to text, date format normalization). Destination field creation is subject to Zoho Desk edition limits: Enterprise 230 fields, Professional 150, Standard 50, Free 0. Custom field labels in Zoho Desk are limited to 50 characters and may only contain A-Z, 0-9, and specific special characters; we apply character replacement during mapping.

Novo Agents (owner references on tickets, customers, and companies) map to Zoho Desk Agents. We resolve by email match against the Zoho Desk user table. Any Novo Agent without a matching Zoho User is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. Deactivated agents in Novo cannot migrate to Zoho Desk.