Migrate from Zammad to Zendesk

Zammad Tickets map directly to Zendesk Tickets. The ticket number (Zammad's id) is preserved as a custom field zammad_ticket_id__c for cross-reference. Thread history (articles) migrates as Zendesk Comments and Public Replies in chronological order. Zammad's ticket state (new, open, pending close, closed) maps to Zendesk ticket status. Priority and group assignment transfer directly. Tags migrate as Zendesk Tags.

Zammad Agents map to Zendesk Agent accounts. Role assignments (Agent, Admin) map to Zendesk Light Agent and Staff roles respectively. Note that Zendesk's Staff role (full permissions) is only available on higher plans; Enterprise customers must assign Staff role to all agents who need to resolve tickets. Passwords cannot migrate; agents receive password-reset links on first login. We resolve by email match against the Zendesk User API.

Zammad Customers map to Zendesk End Users. The requester relationship on tickets migrates as the End User on the Zendesk Ticket. Organizations attached to Customers map to the Zendesk Organization via Organization lookup. End users without an email address require manual handling; Zendesk requires an email for user provisioning.

Zammad Organizations map to Zendesk Organizations. Organization memberships for Users transfer as Organization membership in Zendesk. Organization-level custom Objects in Zammad map to custom fields on the Zendesk Organization record. Note that Zendesk requires an Organization to exist before a User can be assigned to it via the API; we provision Organizations before Users.

Zammad Groups (e.g., First Level Support, Second Level Support) map to Zendesk Groups. Group email addresses migrate as Zendesk group email routing targets. The assignment rules and active/inactive status transfer. Default groups like Users and First Level Support are preserved. Group membership (which agents belong to which groups) migrates as Zendesk Group Membership records.

Zammad custom Roles map to Zendesk Role configurations. The Zammad Agent role maps to Zendesk Light Agent or Staff depending on permission requirements; Admin maps to Staff. Permission granularity is preserved but we flag any Zammad permissions that have no direct Zendesk equivalent (e.g., Zammad-specific system permissions) for admin review.

Zammad SLAs define response and resolution time commitments tied to Calendars. These map to Zendesk SLA Policies. Calendar bindings migrate as Zendesk Business Hours references. We pre-create Zendesk Calendars before SLA Policy migration so that SLA Policy assignments are valid at creation time.

Zammad Calendars define working days, timezones, and holiday schedules for SLA calculations. These map to Zendesk Business Hours records. Holiday schedules migrate as Zendesk Holiday records attached to the Business Hours. Calendars must be created before SLAs that reference them; we sequence this correctly in the migration order.

Zammad Knowledge Base articles migrate to Zendesk Guide articles. Category structure in Zammad maps to Zendesk Sections and Categories. Multi-language articles require matching locale configurations in Zendesk Guide; only the default language migrates automatically. IMPORTANT: Zendesk Guide must be manually activated by the account owner before article import; we flag this in the pre-migration checklist. Article visibility settings (internal vs external) require manual configuration post-import.

Zammad Tags (flat key-value labels on Tickets) map directly to Zendesk Tags. Tags on tickets migrate as Zendesk ticket tags. Note that Zendesk automatically copies custom field dropdown values to Tags during import; we account for this in tag deduplication. There is no tag hierarchy in either platform.

Zammad Triggers automate actions based on ticket conditions. We migrate Trigger configurations including condition operators and action sets. Some Trigger conditions referencing Zammad custom Objects may not map directly to Zendesk Trigger conditions because the field references differ. We deliver a written inventory of every Trigger with its trigger type, conditions, actions, and recommended Zendesk Trigger equivalent for admin rebuild.

Zammad Macros bundle ticket updates and article templates for quick agent responses. We migrate Macro content and action sets. Macros referencing specific Group IDs or User IDs require re-mapping to Zendesk Group and User IDs during migration. The macro content (text, attachments, field updates) transfers; the customer rebuilds macro assignment to views post-migration.

Zammad Text Modules are reusable response templates. These map to Zendesk Saved Replies. Multi-language Text Modules preserve language tags; Zendesk must have matching locale configurations active. Content transfers as-is; the admin assigns visibility and permissions post-import.

Zammad Custom Objects and Object Attributes (Boolean, Date, DateTime, Integer, Float, Text, Single Select, Multi Select, User Reference) map to Zendesk custom fields on the corresponding ticket, user, or organization record. Zammad's object attribute name uniqueness constraint (one unique name per attribute) must be enforced in Zendesk. Objects with cyrillic strings cannot be migrated; we flag these for rename before migration begins. We pre-create Zendesk custom fields before ticket import.