Migrate from osTicket to Zoho Desk

osTicket Tickets migrate to Zoho Desk Tickets 1:1. Ticket number becomes Ticket # in Zoho Desk; subject maps to Subject; status (Open, Closed, etc.) maps to Status; priority maps to Priority; and created timestamp is preserved as the Zoho Desk createdAt value via API import. Custom Fields on osTicket tickets are mapped to Zoho Desk custom fields (customField cf_<name>) based on field type (text, boolean, date, picklist). SLA plan assignments from osTicket are stored as a custom field value in Zoho Desk since Zoho Desk's SLA is scoped to the Department, not the ticket directly.

osTicket stores the entire ticket conversation history — user replies, agent responses, and internal notes — as one merged Thread record per ticket, not as normalised message rows. We split this thread blob at migration time into discrete Comment records in Zoho Desk's Conversation tab. The splitting logic parses osTicket's rendered-thread HTML structure and is version-sensitive to osTicket release. We preserve author email, timestamp, and the internal vs public flag for each segment. Internal notes from osTicket become private Comments in Zoho Desk; public replies become public Comments. This transform is the most technically involved part of the migration and is validated during the test migration phase.

osTicket Users migrate to Zoho Desk Contacts. Name, email, phone, and mobile fields map directly. The challenge is that osTicket allows Users to exist without an Organisation — these orphaned records cannot be linked to a Zoho Desk Account during migration without a manual decision. We flag all orphaned Users during scoping and offer three paths: create synthetic Accounts for them, link them to a catch-all Account, or exclude them from the migration with a written inventory for manual review. Email address is the dedupe key for Contact import.

osTicket Organisations map to Zoho Desk Accounts. Organisation name becomes Account Name; phone, website, and address fields map directly. We create the Account in Zoho Desk before any Contact import so that the Account lookup relationship is satisfied at the moment of Contact insert. osTicket's loose Organisation-to-User linkage means we must resolve this relationship at migration time: Users with a linked Organisation get AccountId populated; Users without a linked Organisation follow the orphan resolution path agreed upon during scoping.

osTicket Agents migrate to Zoho Desk Agents. We map email address as the dedupe key, first and last name fields, and the agent's primary department assignment. osTicket's per-department permission model (agents with granular permissions per department) must be translated to Zoho Desk's role-based access control scoped to Departments. We create the Zoho Desk Agents in the agent import phase and assign them to Departments matching the osTicket department structure before ticket import begins so that OwnerId references are satisfied.

osTicket Departments map to Zoho Desk Departments. Department name, email routing address, and SLA plan association migrate directly. osTicket allows one SLA plan per Department; Zoho Desk allows SLAs to be assigned at the Department level and optionally overridden at the ticket level. We configure Zoho Desk Departments before agent and ticket import so that ticket routing by department is preserved. If osTicket has departments that Zoho Desk does not need (e.g., archive-only departments), we document the exclusion.

osTicket SLA Plans (response time, resolution time, and business-hour calendar) do not have a native equivalent in Zoho Desk at the Free or Standard tiers; SLA configuration is available from Professional tier onward. We map osTicket SLA plan names and time windows to a custom field in Zoho Desk (e.g., cf_sla_plan__c) for audit purposes, and we document which Zoho Desk SLA policies the customer's admin should create to match the original osTicket SLA behaviour. This is a configuration rebuild, not a data migration.

osTicket Help Topics are first-class ticket categories that drive routing and SLA assignment. Zoho Desk does not have a native Help Topic object — tickets are categorised by Department, Subcategory, and Tags. We map osTicket Help Topic names to Zoho Desk Tags at the ticket level and document the routing logic that Help Topics provided in osTicket so that the customer's admin can rebuild equivalent routing via Zoho Desk's Blueprint and workflow rules post-migration.

osTicket stores attachments separately from the ticket thread record and links them by attachment ID. We extract attachment records alongside the ticket thread, download files to a staging area preserving filename and MIME type, and re-attach them to the corresponding Zoho Desk ticket comment via the Zoho Desk API. Files are associated with the correct Comment record by matching the thread position they occupied in osTicket. Zoho Desk's 10GB file upload limit via Zwitch applies to native import; our API-led approach handles larger volumes in chunks with retry logic.

osTicket custom fields on ticket forms (text, boolean, date, list, and URL field types) map to Zoho Desk custom fields on the Ticket object. We create the destination custom fields via Zoho Desk's Layouts and Fields module before migration, matching field type to Zoho Desk's equivalent (osTicket list fields map to Zoho Desk Picklist, boolean maps to Checkbox, date maps to Date/Time). Fields marked as required in osTicket that are also required in Zoho Desk must be temporarily made optional during migration to avoid blocking ticket creation on sparse data; we restore required enforcement post-migration.

osTicket custom fields on user forms (e.g., client type, account tier, billing ID) migrate to Zoho Desk custom fields on the Contact object. We map field types analogously and create the destination fields before Contact import. Note that Zoho Desk's contact custom fields are scoped to the Contacts module and may have different visibility rules from osTicket's agent vs user visibility model; we document any visibility gaps for the admin to resolve post-migration.

osTicket Teams (groups of agents assigned to tickets) map to Zoho Desk Teams. We preserve team name and membership during migration. Team assignment on tickets in osTicket is converted to Zoho Desk's ticket assignment model, where a ticket can be assigned to an individual Agent or a Team. If osTicket ticket assignments are to Teams rather than individual agents, we replicate this by assigning the Zoho Desk Team during ticket import.