Migrate from SolarWinds Web Help Desk to Salesforce Service Cloud

WHD Tickets map directly to Salesforce Case records. Status (New, In Progress, On Hold, Resolved, Closed) maps to Case Status picklist values we configure in the destination org. Priority (Critical, High, Medium, Low, Minimal) maps to Case Priority. WHD Category maps to Case Origin or a custom Category picklist depending on whether the customer uses a Record Type per service line. The WHD ticket description and resolution fields map to Case Description and Case Resolution text fields. WHD SLA response and resolution timestamps are preserved in custom fields because Salesforce Entitlement Milestones enforce SLAs rather than storing them as data.

WHD Clients (end-user contacts) map to Salesforce Contact records. We extract the organization name from WHD client fields to create or match Salesforce Account records, then link each Contact to its Account via the AccountId lookup. Clients without an organization name map to individual Contacts without an Account (similar to Consumer Account pattern). Email becomes the dedupe key for Contact matching. Active versus inactive client status is preserved in a custom field so that inactive clients are not inadvertently contacted post-migration.

WHD Assets (hardware and software inventory) map to Salesforce Asset records in Service Cloud or to Product2 records depending on whether the customer uses Service Cloud Asset Management. Asset type, serial number, purchase date, vendor, and location fields map directly to the corresponding Salesforce Asset fields. We flag during scoping whether the destination org has Asset Management enabled because it requires a separate Service Cloud license tier and a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) setup if full ITSM lifecycle tracking is desired.

WHD Knowledge Base Articles export as structured text with category and subcategory metadata. Salesforce Knowledge requires article types (Title, Summary, Body, UrlName, and up to 100 custom article fields per type) to be configured before import. We export article content, category hierarchy, and attachment references from WHD, then map them to the appropriate Salesforce Knowledge article type. If the destination uses multiple article types (FAQ, Troubleshooting, Policy), we split the WHD export by category and create separate article type records.

WHD custom fields on Tickets (filterable, sortable, searchable) are exported with a 24-48 hour pre-indexing window at 8pm PT for US datacenter before the full migration pass. We run a custom field import pass first to populate the Salesforce Case custom field schema, then execute the full data migration. Custom field data types (dropdown, multi-picklist, checkbox, date, text) are mapped to equivalent Salesforce field types. Any WHD custom field that exceeds Salesforce's 255-character text limit is flagged for truncation or conversion to Long Text Area.

WHD custom fields on Clients map to Salesforce Contact custom fields. We create the Salesforce field schema first, then run the client import with the custom field values attached. The 8pm PT indexing schedule applies to WHD custom fields used in filter views, so we import custom field definitions 24 hours before the client migration pass.

WHD Technicians (staff who receive and resolve tickets) map to Salesforce User records. WHD per-technician pricing means we audit which technicians are active versus inactive before migration to help customers right-size their Salesforce Service Cloud agent count at migration time. Active technicians are matched to Salesforce Users by email; inactive technicians are mapped to inactive Salesforce Users so that historical assignment records are preserved. The customer provisions Salesforce User licenses before migration.

WHD Locations with address, contact, and parent-location hierarchy map to Salesforce Account Site values or Location objects (if the destination org has Field Service or Advanced Asset Management enabled). Location names and hierarchies are preserved as text arrays on the target record for reference.

WHD Change Requests track CAB-approved infrastructure changes with approval workflows and risk fields. Salesforce ITSM does not have a native Change Request object at all tiers; Standard Change, Normal Change, and Standard Change Request are available in ITSM Tools or must be implemented via custom objects or a separate ITSM package. We map Change Request records to a dedicated Case Record Type with a Status field that reflects the WHD change approval state, preserving the audit trail but flagging that SLA enforcement and approval workflows do not migrate as code.

WHD SLA configurations define response and resolution timers by priority or category. We export SLA rules as configuration metadata. Since Salesforce Entitlement Processes and Milestones enforce SLA compliance but are not migratable as data, we deliver a written SLA mapping document that lists every WHD SLA rule with its priority threshold, response timer, and resolution timer, along with the equivalent Salesforce Entitlement Process configuration steps for the customer's admin to rebuild.

WHD stores attachment references and metadata on tickets and assets. WHD's standard export mechanism routes files through email or MAPI protocols with a practical ceiling of roughly 25MB per file. We flag any ticket or asset attachment exceeding this threshold during scoping and handle oversized files via direct filesystem extraction on self-hosted WHD deployments, or manual download-and-reupload for cloud-hosted WHD. Salesforce receives file blobs as ContentDocument records linked via ContentDocumentLink to the parent Case, Contact, or Account.

WHD supports tagging on tickets and assets. We export tag assignments per record and map them to Salesforce Topics with TopicAssignment records (for knowledge article tagging) or to multi-select picklist fields on Case (for case categorization). The customer chooses the tagging strategy during scoping based on whether they intend to use Salesforce Knowledge and how they want case labels surfaced in reports.