Migrate from Zendesk to Zoho Desk

Zendesk Tickets map directly to Zoho Desk Tickets. Every ticket's status (New, Open, Pending, Hold, Solved, Closed), priority, type, and assignee transfers. We resolve Zendesk's assignee email against Zoho Desk agent records at migration time; if a Zoho Desk agent profile does not exist for the assignee, the ticket is assigned to the migration admin and flagged in the reconciliation report. Comments migrate as threaded replies in Zoho Desk's Conversations tab. Ticket channel (email, chat, voice, social) maps to Zoho Desk's channel field, though Zendesk's social channel types may map to a generic 'Social' or 'Other' channel depending on the Zoho Desk version.

Zendesk End-Users (requesters) map to Zoho Desk Contacts. We extract name, email, phone, role (end-user vs agent), organization membership, and all custom field values. Zoho Desk Contacts have a one-to-many relationship with Tickets; each Zendesk requester becomes a Contact with its full ticket history. Role distinctions between end-users and agents in Zendesk do not map directly to Zoho Desk's agent model — we flag agent-role users for manual configuration in Zoho Desk post-migration.

Zendesk Agents map to Zoho Desk Agents. Agent email addresses must match between Zendesk and Zoho Desk for the migration to resolve assignments automatically. Zoho Desk's Zwitch documentation confirms that migrated agents are listed under the 'Imported' tab and do not need to accept invitations. We flag any Zendesk Light Agent records — these map to Zoho Desk Agents but receive no ticket assignments per Zoho's permission model. Department permissions must be configured manually in Zoho Desk after migration.

Zendesk Organizations map to Zoho Desk Accounts. Organization name, domain names, details fields, and user memberships transfer. The Account record is created before any Contact import so that the Account-Contact lookup relationship is satisfied at insert time. Cross-references between Zendesk Organizations and their member Users transfer as Zoho Desk Account-Contact relationships.

Zendesk ticket custom fields, user custom fields, and organization custom fields migrate to Zoho Desk equivalent fields. Per Zoho's Zwitch documentation, Zoho Desk auto-creates fields that do not already exist and identifies field types from the data (e.g., picklist values become picklist fields). Nested custom fields (hierarchical structures) are not supported for migration. We run a type-resolution step during scoping to identify any Zendesk fields that may not map cleanly (e.g., complex conditional fields, lookup fields to external objects) and flag them for manual Zoho Desk field creation before migration begins.

Ticket comment attachments and Help Center article attachments download from Zendesk via the API and re-upload to Zoho Desk preserving original filenames and MIME types. We store attachments against the parent ticket or article record using Zoho Desk's file upload API. Note: Zendesk inline images embedded in ticket comments are not migrated per Zoho Zwitch limitations; these images remain accessible only while the Zendesk account is active. We notify customers of this limitation during scoping and recommend downloading inline images before migration if they are critical.

Zendesk tags (flat string labels on tickets, users, and organizations) migrate to Zoho Desk tags. Tag naming collisions are handled by appending a suffix. Note: Zoho's own Zwitch migration tool explicitly states that tags cannot be migrated. We handle tag migration via the API by reading Zendesk tag assignments and writing them to Zoho Desk ticket tag fields during the ticket import phase. Tags used for workflow routing in Zendesk will need to be re-evaluated against Zoho Desk's Business Rules model post-migration.

Zendesk Help Center articles migrate to Zoho Desk Help Center articles with their section hierarchy intact. We use Zendesk's Help Center API to iterate over Categories, Sections, and Articles, download HTML content and translations, and reconstruct the structure in Zoho Desk. Dynamic Content (multilingual placeholder-based text in Zendesk, Growth+ tier only) migrates to Zoho Desk locale fields on the equivalent article. Internal links between Zendesk KB articles will not auto-update after migration — we document all cross-links for the customer's admin to update manually post-migration.

Zendesk Macros (canned reply templates with variable substitution) map to Zoho Desk Ticket Templates. We export full macro content, conditions, and actions and map variable placeholders to Zoho Desk's template variable syntax. Because macro logic and triggers differ between platforms, we deliver a macro inventory document listing each Zendesk Macro and its recommended Zoho Desk Template equivalent, noting any placeholders that require manual variable reconfiguration in Zoho Desk's interface.

Zendesk SLA Policies (first-response and resolution targets) map to Zoho Desk SLA Policies. We migrate SLA definitions as structured records. Note: SLA Policies in Zendesk Suite Professional and above include calendar-based SLA; Zoho Desk's SLA configuration on Professional+ includes business hours and holiday list settings that must be reviewed post-migration. SLA assignment rules (which SLAs apply to which ticket types or priorities) require manual reconstruction in Zoho Desk's SLA configuration UI.

Zendesk Groups map to Zoho Desk Teams. We extract group memberships from Zendesk and recreate them as Zoho Desk Teams, mapping group members to team members. Per Zoho Zwitch documentation, Groups cannot be migrated automatically; we handle this by reading Zendesk Groups via the API and creating equivalent Zoho Desk Teams before ticket import so that ticket assignment by group can be resolved during migration.

Zendesk Custom Objects (v2 API, Enterprise/Enterprise Plus only) do not have a direct Zoho Desk equivalent. If the customer uses Zendesk Custom Objects, we assess whether the destination Zoho Desk account has Zoho Creator or Zoho CRM available for equivalent custom object modeling. Custom object records with lookup relationships to Tickets, Users, or Organizations are mapped to custom fields in Zoho Desk (storing the related record ID) or to a Zoho Creator application if the customer's subscription includes it. This scope is determined during discovery.