Migrate from Tender Support to Zoho Desk

Tender Support Tickets map directly to Zoho Desk Tickets. We extract all open and closed tickets with their full message history, preserving subject, body, status, and the conversation thread. The original ticket created_at timestamp maps to Zoho Desk's Created Time field. Tender Support's status values (open, pending, resolved, closed) map to Zoho Desk ticket status with a custom status field added if the customer's workflow uses non-standard states not present in the default Zoho Desk status list.

Tender Support Customer records (name, email, and optional metadata) map to Zoho Desk Contact. Email address is used as the primary identifier and dedupe key. Any customer-level metadata stored as custom fields in Tender Support maps to corresponding custom fields on the Zoho Desk Contact object, discovered and pre-created during the schema mapping phase.

Tender Support Agent accounts (name, email, role: admin or regular) map to Zoho Desk Agent records. Agent assignment on Tender Support tickets maps to the Assignee field on Zoho Desk tickets. We resolve agents by email match. Any Tender Support agent without a matching Zoho Desk agent goes to a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before ticket import resumes. Note that Zoho Desk's Free plan limits agents; Team and above support additional agents.

Tender Support's flat, single-level Label system requires normalization before mapping to Zoho Desk. We deduplicate overlapping labels (e.g., 'billing-question' and 'billing-issues' become a single 'billing' tag), group semantically similar labels, and map the resulting set to Zoho Desk Tags or Categories depending on the customer's preference. We document the full label-to-tag mapping for customer audit. Sites with fewer than 20 labels typically map cleanly to Tags; sites with 50+ labels require a grouping strategy documented in the migration spec.

Tender Support attachments are referenced by URL in ticket messages. We download each attachment to local storage during migration, then re-upload to the corresponding Zoho Desk ticket message, preserving the original filename and content type. Attachments are uploaded via Zoho Desk's file attachment API after the parent ticket record is confirmed to exist in the destination.

Tender Support custom ticket fields (defined by the admin, with varying field types and names) are discovered during the discovery phase and mapped to equivalent Zoho Desk custom fields. We pre-create the destination custom field schema in Zoho Desk before the ticket migration phase begins, matching field type (text, number, date, dropdown, checkbox) and field label. Custom fields with no corresponding Zoho Desk field type are flagged for the customer's admin to review and resolve.

Tender Support internal notes are identified by inspecting the message_type or status column in the raw CSV or JSON export. In some Tender Support export formats, internal notes appear as regular message rows without an explicit visibility flag, so we check for specific column values or content patterns. We apply the internal/private visibility flag during Zoho Desk import so that notes land as internal notes visible only to agents, not to customers. If the export omits this signal entirely, we flag those records for manual review before committing the import.

Tender Support ticket conversation threads (public replies from customers and agents) map to Zoho Desk ticket Comments. Each message in the thread becomes a separate Comment on the Zoho Desk ticket, preserving the author (Contact for customer messages, Agent for agent replies), timestamp, and content. The chronological order of the thread is preserved by setting the comment creation time to the original Tender Support timestamp.

If Tender Support includes department groupings for agents, these map to Zoho Desk Departments. We extract the department structure from the Tender Support agent export and create matching Zoho Desk departments before agent migration. Department assignment on tickets is preserved in a custom field if Tender Support uses a department field that has no direct Zoho Desk equivalent.

Tender Support does not include a native SLA object or first-response/resolution-time tracking feature. No SLA data exists in the source export to migrate. Zoho Desk SLA policies must be configured from scratch post-migration by the customer's admin. We deliver a written SLA configuration guide referencing the ticket categories and priority levels mapped from Tender Support.

Tender Support does not include a built-in knowledge base or self-service portal. No KB content is present in the standard ticket migration export. If the customer has maintained a separate knowledge base elsewhere, that content is outside the migration scope. Zoho Desk Help Center articles must be created from scratch post-migration.

Tender Support does not expose a workflow automation engine via its admin interface or API. Any ticket routing rules, auto-assignment logic, or triggered actions configured in Tender Support are not present in the data export and cannot be migrated. We deliver a written inventory of any known Tender Support workflow patterns described during discovery for the customer to rebuild as Zoho Desk Blueprint or Workflow Rules post-migration.