Migrate from Trouble Ticket Express to Zendesk

Discovery and archive format identification

We audit the TTX installation to determine the database backend (plain-text, MySQL, or SQL Server), confirm which add-on modules are licensed (File Attachments, Layout Designer, Answer Library, Inventory Database, Mail Module), and identify the backup archive file location. We validate archive integrity by running our parser against a test extraction on a throwaway TTX instance or a copy of the archive. We extract a full file inventory (ticket count, message count, attachment count and total size, operator count, department count, Answer Library entry count) and share the volume summary with the customer to agree on scope exclusions before migration planning finalizes.

Zendesk destination setup and field schema creation

We configure the Zendesk destination org in parallel with TTX extraction development. This includes activating Guide (required for Answer Library migration), creating Groups that map to TTX departments, creating End User fields for any TTX Customer custom data, creating Ticket custom fields mapped from TTX x-prefixed fields with inferred types (text, dropdown, numeric), and configuring ticket statuses and priorities to match TTX values. We run this setup in a Zendesk Sandbox first if one is available. The custom field schema is finalized before any ticket data is loaded so that field IDs are stable during import.

Customer and operator extraction and End User provisioning

We extract all TTX Customers and Operators from the backup archive and load them into Zendesk as End Users and Agents respectively. Customer extraction runs before any Ticket import because Zendesk requires a valid requester_id on every ticket. Operator extraction includes department assignments that map to Zendesk Group membership. We reconcile by email; any TTX Customer or Operator without an email address is flagged for admin review and held in a queue until resolved.

Two-pass custom field extraction and value injection

For each x-prefixed custom field declared in TTX, we run both the structured column extraction (if Layout Designer is present) and the message-body regex extraction (always). We merge results with a precedence rule: structured value wins if present, regex value fills the gap if structured is absent. Each extracted field-value pair is stored with its parent ticket ID for injection into Zendesk custom fields during the ticket import phase. We produce a confidence score per field so the customer's admin knows which fields require post-migration validation.

Ticket and attachment import with attachment re-association

We import Tickets in Zendesk API batches with batch size governed by Zendesk rate limits (700 requests per minute for the Tickets API, with exponential backoff on 429 responses). Each ticket carries its original TTX ID in the ttx_original_id__c custom field. Comments are attached in the same API call as the parent ticket. File attachments are extracted from the TTX archive, validated for size (<20 MB), and uploaded via the APIAttachments endpoint, then linked to the correct ticket and comment by file path mapping from the archive. We run a row-count reconciliation after each batch and compare against the TTX source counts before proceeding.

Answer Library migration to Guide

We extract Answer Library entries and map them to Zendesk Guide articles under a single Section (or one Section per TTX category if categories exist). Guide must be activated by the account owner before this phase runs. Article content, titles, and any keyword metadata migrate as article labels. We do not migrate the Answer Library as a live knowledge base feature with article versioning or translation management unless the customer licenses Guide with multilingual support; we flag this gap in the scope document.

Cutover, delta sync, and automation handoff

We freeze TTX writes during cutover, run a final delta migration to capture any tickets, messages, or attachments created or updated during the migration window, then mark Zendesk as the system of record. We deliver the configuration inventory document mapping TTX settings to Zendesk Admin Center equivalents, the custom field extraction confidence report, and a written list of Zendesk Triggers, Macros, and Automations that require rebuilding. We do not rebuild TTX-style configuration rules as Zendesk automations inside the migration scope; that work is handled by the customer's Zendesk admin using the inventory document as a reference. We support a three-day post-go-live reconciliation window for ticket linkage and attachment verification.