Migrate from Thulium to Zendesk

Thulium Cases map directly to Zendesk Tickets. The Case subject becomes Ticket subject, Case status maps to Ticket status (new, open, pending, hold, solved, closed), and Case priority maps to Ticket priority (low, normal, high, urgent). Thulium's Case ID can be preserved in a custom field thulium_case_id__c for cross-reference after migration. The Ticket is created before any Comment import so that comment threading has a parent record.

Thulium stores email, chat, and voice interactions as sub-objects within a Case. We flatten these into Zendesk Ticket Comments during the transform phase, extracting each interaction in chronological order. The channel type (email, chat, voice) is preserved in a custom comment attribute or tag so the customer can filter by original channel. Internal notes in Thulium map to Zendesk private Comments (is_public = false). Public comments map to Zendesk public Comments.

Thulium CRM Contacts with name, email, phone, and custom fields map to Zendesk Users with role = end-user. The Thulium Contact email becomes the Zendesk User email and serves as the dedupe key during import. If the Contact email is blank, we use the contact name as a fallback identifier. Custom field values from Thulium migrate to Zendesk User custom fields if the destination field types are compatible.

Thulium Companies map to Zendesk Organizations. The Company name becomes Organization name, and address data maps to Organization fields. We extract the Company from each Contact record and create the Organization before Contact import so that the Organization lookup is satisfied at import time. Contacts without a linked Company in Thulium create standalone Zendesk Users without an Organization assignment.

Thulium links Contacts to Companies via a relationship table. Zendesk Links Users to Organizations via the organization_id field on the User record. We resolve each Contact's Company reference during scoping and populate organization_id on the corresponding Zendesk User at migration time. If the same Contact has multiple Company associations in Thulium, we assign the primary Company and flag the secondary associations for manual review.

Thulium CRM supports nine field types: text, large text, email, numeric, link, list, yes/no, and date. We apply type mapping when the destination Zendesk field uses a different type name or constraint. For example, Thulium list fields map to Zendesk tagger (dropdown) fields with explicit option value mapping. Thulium yes/no fields map to Zendesk checkbox (boolean) fields. Thulium link fields (URLs) map to Zendesk text fields with URL format validation. We build a field-mapping table during scoping before any import.

Custom fields applied to Thulium Cases map to Zendesk Ticket custom_fields entries using the same type-mapping logic as CRM custom fields. The Zendesk custom field must be pre-created in the target Zendesk instance before migration. We use the Zendesk API field ID (not the display name) as the target identifier. List-type values from Thulium migrate to Zendesk dropdown option IDs via a value-mapping table built during scoping.

Thulium Agents are the user accounts that can be assigned to Cases and Companies. We map Agent records to Zendesk Users with role = agent. Agent email is the dedupe key. Agent status (active/inactive) in Thulium maps to Zendesk User active field. The customer's Zendesk admin must provision the Agent accounts in Zendesk before migration; we reconcile any Agent references in Cases against the available Zendesk User list and flag unresolved assignees for manual provisioning.

Thulium assigns Agents to Cases via a reference ID stored on the Case. We resolve each reference ID against the Thulium Agent table to get the email address, then match that email to the corresponding Zendesk User at migration time. If Zendesk supports group-based routing and the customer uses Thulium's team structure, we map the Agent's team to a Zendesk Group and assign the Ticket to the Group rather than directly to the Agent.

Thulium Tags on Cases map to Zendesk Tags on Tickets. We build a value-mapping table during scoping for any naming differences between the two systems. Zendesk Tags are flat strings; Thulium Tags are also flat, so the mapping is direct. Tags used for channel identification (email, chat, voice) are preserved as separate tags during migration.

Files attached to Thulium Cases or Contacts are exported and re-uploaded to Zendesk Tickets via the Zendesk API. We preserve original filenames and map each attachment to the correct parent Ticket using the Thulium attachment-to-Case linkage. Attachments stored as inline images within conversation text are handled as separate ContentDocument records in Zendesk. Note: Zendesk has a 50MB attachment size limit per file.