Migrate from Polar Help Desk to Zoho Desk

Polar Help Desk Incidents map directly to Zoho Desk Tickets. We map Incident status, priority, assignee, created and updated timestamps, and description body to the corresponding Zoho Desk Ticket fields. Incident subject maps to Ticket Subject, and the Incident's internal notes map to internal Ticket comments. The parent Incident ID is preserved as a reference field for reconciliation. Polar's priority tiers (Low, Medium, High, Critical) map to Zoho Desk priority values; the customer confirms the mapping table during scoping.

Polar Help Desk Work Orders attach to Incidents as sub-records. We map each Work Order to a Zoho Desk Task linked to the parent Ticket via the WhatId field. Work Order status and technician assignment map to Task status and assignee respectively. The parent-child linkage between Incident and Work Order is preserved by resolving the Ticket ID at migration time before inserting child Tasks. If the source deployment has modified the Work Order schema, we require a schema diff against the stock v5 database before committing to field mapping.

Polar Help Desk Contact records — name, email, phone, organization linkage, and custom fields — map to Zoho Desk Contacts. We use email as the dedupe key during import. Any custom Contact fields in Polar Help Desk must be pre-created in Zoho Desk under the relevant department layout before the Contact import phase begins, per Zoho Desk's requirement that custom fields exist prior to data load.

Polar Help Desk Account records (organization name, domain, associated Contacts) map to Zoho Desk Accounts. We create Account records before Contact import so that the Account-Contact lookup relationship is satisfied at the moment of Contact insert. Custom Account fields follow the same pre-creation requirement as Contact custom fields.

Polar Help Desk Teams with roles and permissions map to Zoho Desk Teams. Zoho Desk's Zwitch tool cannot transfer Teams via API in all migration paths — we handle this by migrating agent records first, then programmatically creating Teams in Zoho Desk using the Zoho Desk API and assigning the pre-mapped agents to each team. Role permission schemas differ between platforms; we document the source role structure and recommend a Zoho Desk profile and permission set review post-migration.

Polar Help Desk Knowledge Base Articles with Categories and Sections map to Zoho Desk Help Center Articles under the corresponding department. Article content and metadata migrate, but article attachment files are excluded from migration because Zoho Desk's Zwitch and most third-party migration paths do not carry KB attachments. We flag all affected articles post-migration and provide a checklist for re-attaching documentation files manually. Publication-state flags from Polar Help Desk may reset articles to draft status in Zoho Desk, requiring a bulk re-publish step.

Polar Help Desk SLA definitions — response and resolution time windows per priority tier with optional business-hours calendars — map to Zoho Desk SLA configurations. We migrate SLA metadata (tier names, time windows, business-hours settings) and document the escalation trigger rules. Actual breach-action rules (auto-escalation, notification routing, field updates) are destination-specific in Zoho Desk and must be re-implemented manually; we provide a written SLA rebuild guide as part of the handoff package.

Polar Help Desk inbound email accounts that route to Incidents (IMAP polling configurations) map to Zoho Desk email account configurations. IMAP/SMTP credentials cannot be migrated — credentials stored in Polar Help Desk are not exportable in a migration-safe format. We migrate the email account metadata (display name, routing rules, inbox configuration) and provide a step-by-step checklist for re-entering IMAP/SMTP credentials in Zoho Desk's email setup module post-migration to restore email-to-ticket routing.

Documents attached to Polar Help Desk Incidents and Work Orders migrate as Attachments linked to the corresponding Zoho Desk Tickets and Tasks. We re-attach files via Zoho Desk's attachment API using the parent record ID resolved during migration. Binary attachments exceeding 25 MB require chunked upload handling; we flag any oversized files during scoping and recommend splitting or using a file storage link for large media assets.

Polar Help Desk custom fields on Incidents map to Zoho Desk custom fields on Tickets. Zoho Desk requires that custom fields be created in the destination system under the relevant department layout before data import begins. We extract all custom field definitions from Polar Help Desk (field name, data type, options list if applicable), pre-create them in Zoho Desk, then map the extracted values during the Ticket import phase. Field type translation follows the Zoho Desk supported types: string, decimal, integer, currency, checkbox, dropdown, date, and multi-select picklist.

Polar Help Desk custom fields on Contact records map to Zoho Desk custom fields on Contacts. Same pre-creation requirement applies — we extract the field schema from Polar Help Desk, create the destination fields in Zoho Desk under the Contacts module for the relevant department, then load Contact records with custom field values. Any required-field constraints set in Zoho Desk must be disabled or satisfied during import to avoid record rejection.

Polar Help Desk tag values on Incidents migrate as plain-text tags on Zoho Desk Tickets. Tag inheritance rules differ between platforms — Polar uses flat tag assignment per ticket while Zoho Desk supports tag scoping by department. We migrate tag labels as-is and document any tag clusters that may require re-organization in Zoho Desk. Tags used for internal categorization (not visible to customers) land as agent-side tags in Zoho Desk.

Polar Help Desk Active Directory integration links user accounts and group memberships from an on-premise AD domain to the help desk agent table. This is a destination-side configuration that cannot be migrated as data. We document the AD group-to-agent mapping from Polar Help Desk and provide a guide for re-configuring Zoho Desk's directory sync or manually provisioning agents with matching email addresses. AD group-to-Zoho Desk role mapping requires admin-level review post-migration.