Migrate from Vivantio to Zendesk

Vivantio Tickets (Incident, Problem, Change, Service Request, and unlimited custom types) map to Zendesk Tickets. Each Vivantio ticket type's custom form fields are mapped to Zendesk custom ticket fields of equivalent data type (text, dropdown, date, numeric). Ticket status, priority, and category values are mapped to Zendesk Ticket Status and Priority fields. Requester (Caller/Contact), Assignee (Agent), and Team (Resolver Group) are mapped to Zendesk Requester, Assignee, and Group respectively. We resolve the assignee and group references after loading Users and Groups so that ticket assignment is satisfied at the moment of insert.

Vivantio custom fields (modern type only; legacy Service Desk fields are flagged separately during discovery) are mapped to Zendesk ticket field equivalents by data type. Dropdown fields migrate as Zendesk tagger or dropdown fields; date fields migrate as date fields; numeric fields migrate as integer or decimal. Multi-select checkbox fields in Vivantio migrate as multi-line text fields in Zendesk unless the customer opts for a comma-separated string approach. Legacy Vivantio Service Desk custom fields are excluded from direct migration and surfaced as explicit remediation items: we remap them to modern equivalents or archive them before the load, because importing them as-is produces fields that cannot drive Zendesk triggers and automations.

Vivantio Knowledge Articles (public customer-facing and private internal) map to Zendesk Guide Articles. Public/private visibility is mapped to Zendesk's Article Draft/Published status and Section visibility permissions. Article body (rich text), categories (mapped to Zendesk Sections), status, and publication date are preserved. If Zendesk Guide is not yet active in the destination account, we advise the customer to enable it before migration so that the Help Center is ready to receive the imported content. Zendesk Guide's Section hierarchy (up to five levels on Enterprise) migrates from Vivantio's category structure.

Vivantio Agents map to Zendesk Users with the Agent role. We preserve assigned Teams, Roles, and field-level permissions by mapping them to Zendesk User groups and permission sets. Vivantio's concurrent license holders are flagged as a separate attribute and mapped to a Zendesk user-level custom field because Zendesk's permission model does not have a native concurrent-license flag equivalent. The customer must provision Zendesk user accounts before migration begins, matching by email address, so that our import can resolve the OwnerId reference on each Ticket.

Vivantio Teams and Resolver Groups map to Zendesk Groups. Team membership is preserved, and workload balancing rules are noted as a configuration item to be recreated in Zendesk Group settings. Group-level SLA assignments migrate as references to the Zendesk SLA Policy object that is created during the SLA mapping phase.

Vivantio Customers, Clients, and Callers (contacts) map to Zendesk End Users. Terminology is canonicalised during mapping. If the Vivantio instance has Active Directory synchronisation linking contacts to AD accounts, the ISC link instance name is preserved in the mapping notes; changing this name on the destination causes duplicate contact creation. We advise the customer's admin to verify the AD connector instance name matches between source and destination before the user import phase.

Vivantio Organisations map to Zendesk Organizations. The Organisation-to-Contact linkage graph is preserved so that each migrated Contact is attached to its correct Organization in Zendesk. Organization is loaded before Contacts so that the Organization lookup is satisfied at the moment of Contact insert. Company domain and contact information fields map to Zendesk Organization fields by name match.

Vivantio SLA configurations (priority-based response and resolution windows, business-hour calendars) map to Zendesk SLA Policies. Each Vivantio priority level maps to a Zendesk SLA Policy assignment based on ticket priority. Business-hour calendars migrate as Zendesk Business Hours configurations. SLA policies are created in Zendesk before ticket import begins so that new tickets receive the correct SLA assignment at creation time.

Vivantio Self Service Portal structure (portal layout, Service Catalog, request forms) maps to Zendesk Help Center with caveats. Zendesk Help Center is a separate product that must be activated and configured before import. We migrate the portal structure, category hierarchy, and form field definitions. Visual branding elements (logo, colour theme, custom CSS) do not migrate and are listed as an out-of-scope configuration item for the customer's admin to reapply. Multiple Vivantio portals map to a single Zendesk Help Center with sections scoped per original portal domain.

Files attached to tickets, articles, and contacts are extracted from Vivantio, downloaded in bulk, and re-uploaded to Zendesk with the same parent ticket reference. Large file batches are chunked to avoid API timeout (Zendesk's attachment upload endpoint has a 20 MB per-file limit). We preserve file name and original upload date. Attachments are loaded last, after parent tickets are confirmed in Zendesk, to ensure the target ticket ID exists at the time of attachment creation.

Vivantio Quick Actions and Templates map to Zendesk Macros. We extract the action body, subject, and recipient configuration from Vivantio and recreate them as Zendesk Macros with the same target (ticket comment, email draft, or new ticket draft). Macros scoped to specific teams or roles map to Zendesk Macros restricted to the equivalent Group or Agent role. Macro migration is done as a configuration import rather than a data migration, using Zendesk's Macro API or Admin import tooling.