Migrate from SolarWinds Web Help Desk to Zoho Desk

WHD Tickets map to Zoho Desk Tickets with direct field mapping for Ticket Number, Subject, Description, Status, Priority, Category, Assignee (resolved by email match to Zoho Desk agent), and Requester (mapped to Zoho Desk Contact). SLA timers (response and resolution) export as configuration metadata; Zoho Desk SLAs are recreated as Zoho SLA Policies referencing the migrated priority values. Thread history (internal notes and public replies) migrates as Ticket Threads. Status values from WHD (New, In Progress, On Hold, Resolved, Closed) map to Zoho Desk status options configured before import.

WHD Clients (end-user contacts who submit tickets) map to Zoho Desk Contacts. WHD's organization field on a Client maps to a Zoho Desk Account. If a Client has no organization, it becomes an unassigned Contact. We extract all Client fields (name, email, phone, location, title) and map them to the corresponding Zoho Desk Contact fields. Clients without email addresses are flagged for manual review because Zoho Desk contacts require an email for agent-to-requester routing.

WHD Technicians (staff who resolve tickets) map to Zoho Desk Agents by email match. We audit active versus inactive technicians during scoping to help right-size the Zoho Desk agent count to actual users rather than historical peak. WHD per-technician licensing means the original WHD contract seat count determines the migration baseline; Zoho Desk agents are provisioned based on the count of unique technician emails found in ticket assignments.

WHD Asset records (hardware and software inventory linked to tickets) do not map to a native Zoho Desk asset object because Zoho Desk lacks WHD's hardware inventory depth. We map Assets to Zoho Desk Products for software license tracking, and we recommend a custom Asset object for hardware records on Enterprise-tier Zoho Desk deployments. Asset fields (serial number, vendor, location, purchase date) attach as custom fields on the Product or Custom Object. Asset-to-ticket linkage migrates as a lookup field.

WHD Change Requests track CAB-approved infrastructure changes with approval workflows and risk fields that do not map 1:1 to any standard Zoho Desk object. Zoho Desk's Change Management module is available only on Enterprise ($50/agent/month), and its change workflow model differs from WHD's. We export Change Request records as a custom object (ChangeRequest) with fields for change type, risk level, approval status, and description. For non-Enterprise Zoho Desk deployments, we map Change Requests to Tasks with a custom Type picklist value of 'Change Request'. The CAB approval history migrates as comment threads on the record.

WHD Knowledge Base Articles export with article text, categories, and attachment references. We map article content to Zoho Desk Help Topics and Articles, preserving category hierarchy as Zoho Desk topic structure. Note that Zoho Desk Zwitch does not migrate Knowledge Base attachments; we flag attachment references during scoping and handle file transfers separately via direct download from WHD and upload to Zoho Desk's document storage. KB article publish status and author information migrate as metadata.

WHD custom fields on Tickets, Clients, and Assets map to Zoho Desk custom fields created during schema setup. WHD's custom field types (text, number, date, dropdown, checkbox) map to equivalent Zoho Desk field types. WHD custom fields marked as filterable, sortable, or searchable are indexed overnight at 8pm datacenter time, which requires us to schedule custom field imports 24-48 hours before full data migration to ensure indexes are populated. We handle this by staging custom field definitions first and running a test pass to validate index availability before committing the full migration.

WHD Locations object (with address, contact, and parent-location hierarchy) maps to Zoho Desk Locations. Location records must import before any Ticket or Client records that reference them, so we sequence the Locations phase first. Parent-location hierarchy maps to Zoho Desk's location parent field, preserving the organizational structure for multi-site IT departments.

WHD Purchase Orders are associated with Assets and track procurement data. Zoho Desk has no native PO object. We export PO records linked to assets and attach PO number, vendor, purchase date, and cost as custom fields on the mapped Product or custom Asset record. PO-to-asset linkage is preserved as a lookup relationship at migration time.

WHD SLA configurations (response and resolution timers by priority or category) export as configuration metadata. We do not apply SLAs as executable rules in Zoho Desk during migration because SLA enforcement is destination-platform-dependent and requires the customer's admin to map WHD SLA rules to Zoho SLA Policies post-migration. We deliver a written SLA mapping document that lists each WHD SLA, its trigger conditions, timer values, and the corresponding Zoho SLA Policy configuration for the admin to implement.

WHD stores attachment references and metadata on tickets and assets. We export file metadata (name, size, upload timestamp) as part of the ticket and asset export. Actual file blobs require separate file transfer: on self-hosted WHD, we perform direct filesystem extraction of the attachment directory; on cloud-hosted WHD, we handle downloads via the WHD web interface and re-upload to Zoho Desk. WHD's email/MAPI transport imposes a ~25MB practical ceiling per file; we flag any attachment exceeding this threshold during scoping and handle oversized files via direct extraction.

WHD tags on tickets and assets migrate as Zoho Desk Tags. Tags are preserved as plain-text arrays attached to each record. We export tag assignments per record and map them to Zoho Desk's tagging system, which applies tags at the ticket level. Tags used for ticket categorization migrate as-is; if tags function as WHD categories, we recommend converting them to Zoho Desk ticket fields rather than tags during the mapping review.