Migration Support

There is more than one way to improve your customer service, and moving to Zendesk is one of them. And just as there’s more than one way to import data to Zendesk, the painless and custom-rich way is via Help Desk Migration.

No doubt, the automated data migration to Zendesk makes things simpler and quicker. It doesn’t require coding skills or special preparation. Moreover, you can resume your customer service operations immediately - ticket field mapping and customization ensure the migration is smooth and full-scale.

Let’s check the benefits of switching to Zendesk with Help Desk Migration.

• Quick onboarding
• Ticket field mapping
• On-the-go custom field creation
• Preserved data relations
• Built-in migration testing

Custom Zendesk Migration Done Automatedly

What about making data migration to Zendesk even more flexible? Custom automation can fill the gaps in common data migration. Help Desk Migration service provides several handy automations to tailor the process to fit your business needs. These include

• Adding new tags to migrated tickets
• Migrating inline images as ticket attachments
• Skipped attachments
• Migrating call recordings
• Сontent translations

You can use these automations to streamline migration between the following pairs:

• Freshdesk to Zendesk
• Freshservice to Zendesk
• Jira Service Management to Zendesk
• Help Scout to Zendesk
• Gorgias to Zendesk
• Zoho Desk to Zendesk
• Reamaze to Zendesk
• Intercom to Zendesk
• Kayako to Zendesk
• ServiceNow to Zendesk
• HubSpot Service Hub to Zendesk

So, how do those automation options work?

Add new tags to migrated tickets

Label your source tickets so you can easily distinguish them at your Zendesk instance. You can add as many tags as you need while migrating from

• Freshdesk to Zendesk
• Freshservice to Zendesk
• Jira Service Management to Zendesk
• Help Scout to Zendesk
• Gorgias to Zendesk
• Zoho Desk to Zendesk
• Reamaze to Zendesk
• Intercom to Zendesk
• Kayako to Zendesk
• ServiceNow to Zendesk

Migrate inline images as ticket attachments

Inline images support your business, so it’s vital to keep them in place in your fresh Zendesk account as attachments. Supported migration pairs are

• Freshdesk to Zendesk
• Freshservice to Zendesk
• Jira Service Management to Zendesk
• Help Scout to Zendesk
• Gorgias to Zendesk
• Zoho Desk to Zendesk
• Kayako to Zendesk
• HubSpot Service Hub to Zendesk

Skip attachments

On default, Help Desk Migration imports attachments of your source tickets. If you want to leave them behind for some reason, no problem, tick the option to skip them. By the way, this action can speed up the migration significantly. Supported migration pairs include

• Freshdesk to Zendesk
• Freshservice to Zendesk
• Jira Service Management to Zendesk
• Help Scout to Zendesk
• Gorgias to Zendesk
• Zoho Desk to Zendesk
• Reamaze to Zendesk
• Intercom to Zendesk
• Kayako to Zendesk
• ServiceNow to Zendesk
• HubSpot Service Hub to Zendesk

Migrate call recordings as attachments

Call recordings are valuable data for reference reasons. If you want to get your call recordings from Zendesk to another help desk, select an automated option. Choosing this option, your call recordings are imported as attachments–mp3 files.

Сontent translations

Your knowledge base or help center has several language versions, and you want them to be on your new help desk? With the Help Desk Migration’s option – content translations – transfer the language versions automatedly. On condition your help desk supports multilingual support and that you have added the languages you want to import from your source platform. Currently, you can move language versions of your help center between the following migration pairs:

• Zendesk to Freshdesk
• Zendesk to Zendesk
• Freshdesk to Zendesk
• Freshdesk to Freshdesk

What Are the Other Perks of Help Desk Migration?

Delta migration

Zero downtime during data migration is easy. Use our data migration option and move the new and updated tickets from your Source tool once the Full Migration is done. Your workflow goes smoothly, customers are happy, and data is transferred.

Custom data migration

With Help Desk Migration, you can customize migration to Zendesk so that it brings you more benefits. There are several options to pick from.

Custom Demo

Don’t need to migrate all tickets? Not a big deal! Request a Custom Demo and migrate specific tickets to Zendesk. If you need more flexibility, contact our support team and discuss your Personalized Demo. Or set your custom Demo yourself – by importing in a testing migration up to 20 ticket IDs and up to 20 knowledge base article IDs.

Custom migration

To add more customization to your data transfer, choose Custom migration and reshape the default migration process to fit your needs. This service includes custom mapping, adding custom fields or tags, or doing anything you prefer. 

Scheduled migration

To keep your time management undamaged, you can schedule data migration for a particular date and time. 

Concierge migration service

If you have many burning tasks, you can let our techs set up and run the migration for you. This service includes migration planning, data mapping, and the migration itself.

Migration Planning

A successful migration is a well-planned migration. Here’s how to avoid roadblocks while migrating data to Zendesk.

1. Run Demo Migration to see what the process looks like.
2. Customize your data import to Zendesk.
3. Disable triggers, notifications, and automations on Zendesk and arrange that with your team.
4. Launch Full Data Migration and have all data transferred to Zendesk.
5. Import new or updated data with Delta migration, if necessary.
6. Enhance your customer service processes on Zendesk.

These steps under the supervision of our team ensure your data is flawlessly transferred to Zendesk and you can start using your new software right away.

Setting up industry-specific migration

You’re working in a specific industry and your data migration requirements are non-typical? No worries, Help Desk Migration has experience in setting up 35K+ migrations for 12 industries, such as

• Retail and eCommerce
• Software and IT
• Manufacturing
• Healthcare
• Telecom
• Business Consulting
• Financial Services
• Marketing Services
• Government Services
• Education Services
• Non-Profit
• Media Sector

Cover Up

Are you excited to migrate data to Zendesk automatedly? Run a Free Demo to check all ins and out of the process and estimate our Migration Wizard in action.

Do you know how many instances are being used in your company? And is it necessary to have multiple instances, or a single instance will be more than enough?

What is a Zendesk instance? This term refers to your company’s environment, which you will be managing. Typically, a company has one instance unless it is a big corporation with numerous departments and a complex operational system.

By having only one working instance or environment, you will get a unified stream of activity, which makes the work of your customer service a lot easier. So, you need to delete your extra instances, but what about the data? The answer is ‘No.’ There is no need to delete anything, as you can integrate all your working environments into one.

If you decide to merge Zendesk instances, you may face a share of challenges. Want to do it effectively? Then, keep on reading.  

What is Help Desk Instances Merging?

Okay, you own a large company with different departments and multiple working processes and workflows. But there may come a day when you need to consolidate it all to streamline your operations. And that is when help desk instance merging comes into play.

What is it? To put it simply, it is a merging mechanism of linking multiple help desk working environments to have a unified and centralized place of operation for your requests, tickets, or calls. 

When to Merge Your Help Desk Instances?

Now let’s clarify why you might need to consider implementing a data migration mechanism. Here are the most popular cases when you might need to merge help desk instances:

• When a company is acquired or sold: merging data and your support teams are crucial for enhancing workflows and reducing expenses.
• When a company is merging data: if you want to get all your data stored in one place, you should consider merging your help desk instances. Even if you have your support teams working on different projects and using different tools, there is no need to use different environments for that.
• When a company merges its departments: when you have a few support teams working under one system, using a help desk but having separate instances, the rational decision would be to have them all under one roof. This way, you can speed up your business operations and get better results.

What Are the Benefits of Merging Zendesk Instances?

Moving your Zendesk instances to a single environment and operating everything from there is quite advantageous. Here are some of the whys:

• a unified reporting system, user management, and customer experience
• merging of duplicate accounts and contacts, see the history of end user’s requests, and save your time on answering
• merge tickets and avoid duplicate entries
• easy issue tracking process
• the improved cross-department interaction process

Zendesk to Zendesk: How to Merge Multiple Zendesk Accounts?

If you have weighed all the pros and want to work within one Zendesk instance, there are several options to merge or migrate two Zendesk accounts.

1. You can do it yourself with the help of Zendesk API (namely, incremental export API to export your data and ticket import API to send your data) or use free Migration Wizard to make this process effortless.
2. Or you can get professional help from a trustworthy service like Help Desk Migration. It will handle a custom data migration to a new help desk or merge your current help desks (Zendesk or any other) in no time.

Merging help desk instances can be a long and exacting process. The right tools can, however, lighten the load for you. Got questions? Contact us to figure answers out.

Hey Anton,

The easiest way is to create a new custom field on your new platform and map it with the ID field from your source platform.

As long as Zendesk Support and Guide support a multibranding feature, there are no more reasons to continue using separate accounts for different brands. You can manage everything in a single one. However, what should you do if you already have two or more Zendesk accounts for separate products each having valuable historical data that you can’t leave behind. Then, the best decision would be a data migration that will result in merging data from several Zendesk accounts into a single one. 

Why businesses may need to merge two Zendesk accounts

There are actually plenty of cases when companies decide to merge Zendesk accounts into a single one. The background of each mostly lies in maintaining the full context of customer relationships on hand.

As mentioned before, there are companies that own a separate account for each product or service it sells. However, over time, it may seem more logical to move to a single instance as it’s easier to use Zendesk multibranding features than operating two accounts. Thus, your agents will have vital information about previous customer’s interactions at the arm’s reach and save huge amounts of time.

The other popular reason for merging data into one Zendesk instance is a closure of one of the company's agencies or when a product manufacturing stops. Not all businesses work out. However, there are still customers that require support after purchasing a product. And the only workable solution is to move the database of the existing clients to a remaining agency’s instance. That will also provide your support agents with a vital background for supporting existing clients in case of old staff reduction. 

Lastly, merging two Zendesk instances can be useful when consolidating support teams taking over the support from another department. If leaving a significant part of customer interaction history behind is not an option for you, then the best resolution is to merge two Zendesk instances into one. 

Now, when we’ve discussed the most popular cases of merging two help desk accounts that we met on our way in data migration, let’s see how users can prepare for such a process.

How to prepare your Zendesk accounts

In this section, we’ll mention some of the general steps of preparing for data migration and also explain what are the peculiarities of migrating from and to Zendesk. 

Step 1. Qualify your data 

It’s the most essential part of the preparation as it will save you a load of time in the future, plus, time and money during the migration process. What we mean by this step is reviewing everything from top to bottom and leaving only the records that you will need in your future help desk instance indeed. It may seem that you will need ALL of your historical data in the future, however, there are a lot of records that may be irrelevant in your future sales and support workflows. Yes, there are usually plenty of records that you haven’t used for months of even years that will definitely be odd during the migration. Also, we recommend you to look for the following info and delete it without back thoughts:

• Unassigned tickets
• Invalid emails
• Duplicate records
• Contacts that have no ticket history
• Past calendar events

The best people to deal with this kind of a job are your support agents that work with these records everyday. Assign this task to reliable people on the support team as they will know if you can take advantage of this or that in the future.

Step 2. Choose the right time for the data migration

It may seem a bit odd to set a specific date for such a process, but we insist on picking one. If you take a wild guess with Zendesk data migration, it will leave you with immense downtimes if you’re lucky. In the worst scenario, your records can just get mixed up and that’s definitely not what you want as the outcome. 

You should thoroughly review your helpdesk-related workflow to pick a time frame with an insignificant number of customer requests coming into the system. Both data migration and the support team’s workflow should not interfere with new tickets.

Step 3. Update your team 

This step includes giving your employees a general idea of the data migration process. Mainly, it’s needed for your team to know about the final transition date so that they can start closing tickets in the instance you’re exporting customer data from. Once again, this way, you will avoid getting ticket updates in the old account. They can get lost in the process of migration but turn out to be very useful for maintaining up-to-date customer relationship status. 

Step 4. Switch customer support to the new account 

In the ideal case scenario, you should fully stop using the source Zendesk account during the data migration process. You can keep the target account up and running to go on with customer support, but make sure you’ve linked all the support channels to it. The source account should be completely stopped by the time of data migration so that new customer requests won’t arrive to the old repository. Otherwise, you’ll have to update the new data you’ve missed out on, or a part of the data structure will be damaged.

Step 5. Arrange the target Zendesk account

As we mentioned before, when merging two Zendesk instances, you will have to pick which one will be the main (target) one. First of all, it’s needed to know which account will be completely closed from serving customers. Secondly, you will have to match the arrangement of both accounts so that there will be no inaccuracies in the future. 

Here’s what you should consider: 

1. Make sure you have all agent seats needed. It may sound obvious, but people often forget that they may run out of seats as there can be more agents added to the existing Zendesk account when merging data. If you forget to purchase additional seats, the tickets (and all related data) may end up with a different arrangement. And you surely don’t want to spend extra time sorting that out. 
2. Check if all the custom fields match. If different people worked behind your Zendesk accounts, it’s natural that the custom fields they created can vary. On this step, you will make sure that all the necessary custom fields exist in the target instance so that the ticket mapping field will proceed without any hiccups. 
3. Recreate macros and canned responses. Similarly to custom fields, check if your team has all the necessary macros in the main account to save time after the data migration. 
4. Turn off all triggers, automations, and notifications. These guys will not only hinder the data migration process but also might send out unnecessary messages to both your agents and customers. Also, such things as scenario automations can result in altering some parts of your data structure. So, simply disable them before the migration to avoid any issues. 

Now, you’re all set for the data migration, so let’s head out to the process itself. 

Merging Zendesk data with HDM service 

If you are planning on Zendesk data merging, you can use our Help Desk Migration service. This way, you will be able to migrate: 

• Tickets together with Attachments, Public and Private Notes, and CC;
• Contacts and Organizations;
• Agents and Groups;
• Knowledge Base Articles and Attachments; 
• Custom Fields;
• Tags.

Here’s how the data migration process goes on: 

1. Sign up on our website. You can use your email or social media, the registration itself requires no credit card details. Then, you will be able to access the automated data migration tool called Migration Wizard. 

2. Now, you will be offered to choose your source and destination help desks. First, connect your source Zendesk account. All you need to do is provide its URL, click continue, and log in to the instances as you usually would. Thus, you will provide the tool with the required access so that it can copy and transfer your data from one account to another.

3. Then, connect your target Zendesk. In the URL field, enter the link to the target brand (go to Admin>Manage>Brands>Click on the target brand> Copy the Subdomain name).

You can see how to add another brand to your Zendesk in this article if you haven’t created one yet.

4. Then, you will be asked to choose from the objects for your data migration which are stated in the list above.

5. As soon as you pick objects for your data migration, you will have to manage the standard and custom ticket fields. Make sure they correspond to each other in both accounts to avoid mismatches.

6. When done with field mapping, our tool will perform a free demo migration process, which is a required step of any migration with our service. Demo migration implies the tool transferring random 20 records with all related data between the instances. It allows you to see and check the result before starting the full process. Our tool will also estimate and display the price of the full data migration. Make sure you thoroughly check the demo migration results before you move on to the full process.

You can see how to check the demo results here. 

7. If you’re satisfied with the demo result, you can proceed to the payment and, when it’s complete, start a full data migration to finally merge your Zendesk instances. 

Well done! 

So, here is a full process of merging two Zendesk accounts into one. If you’re interested in migrating your historical data to a new Zendesk account, feel free to use this short guide. Or, you can also turn to our Help Desk Migration to complete this kind of complex process for you. You can always check us out in the Zendesk marketplace and contact us if you’re interested.

@..., @... is right!

The best way to add tags to existing tickets is to use Bulk feature in Zendesk.

 

Always welcome, Brett!

Hope we can help somebody!

Importing data from another help desk to Zendesk while preserving support history is crucial for maintaining strong customer relationships and delivering exceptional service.

This article outlines the steps required to seamlessly import your tickets, including agents, contacts, and other associated data, from a CSV file into Zendesk using the Help Desk Migration service.

Help Desk Migration, an official Zendesk solution partner, provides data migration services tailored to companies seeking to transition their data from one help desk platform to another. It's worth noting that there is a fee associated with using the automatic data migration tool. However, you have the opportunity to test it free of charge before making a payment decision. 

Benefits of migrating data with Help Desk Migration

• Your data relationships are meticulously preserved throughout the migration process.
• Enjoy the flexibility of importing an unlimited number of rows in a single file, accommodating even large datasets.
• You can import all critical data, ensuring that nothing important is left behind during the migration.
• Take advantage of the ability to conduct unlimited migration tests to ensure a seamless transition.

Help desk records you can import

You can import the following help desk records using this data migration tool:

• Groups
• Agents
• Companies
• Contacts
• Tickets
• Ticket comments
• Tags
• Attachments
• Standard and custom fields

You also can import Knowledge Base objects, including:

• Categories
• Folders
• Articles

Preparing data for migration

To begin the migration process, it's essential to organize your data into the following CSV files:

• CSV file with tickets
• CSV file with ticket comments
• CSV file with Knowledge Base.

When preparing your files, please ensure they meet the following requirements:

1. File Size Limit: Keep each file under 1GB in size.
2. Include Headings: All files must have a heading row that clearly labels each column.
3. Delimiter: Use a comma as the delimiter to separate data within each row.
4. Attachments: For importing attachments, provide publicly accessible URLs for each attachment. If there are multiple attachments, separate them with commas.
5. Multiline Data: When dealing with data that spans multiple lines, such as Tags, Attachments, or Description, enclose the content within double-quote marks (").
6. Language Flexibility: The information you're importing can be in any language, but the headers in the heading row must be in English.
7. Capitalized Headers: Begin all headers with a capital letter for consistency and readability.

How to prepare the Tickets.csv file

Here are the data fields and their requirements for the ticket CSV file:

• TicketId - required
• Subject - required
• Tags - optional
• DepartmentName - optional
• Description - required
• Type - required
• Status - required
• Priority - required
• AgentEmail - required
• AgentName - required
• ContactEmail - required
• ContactName - required
• ContactPhone - optional
• CompanyName - optional
• CreatedTime - required. (Use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS time format)
• UpdatedTime - required. (Use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS time format)
• ClosedTime - optional. (Use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS time format)
• Attachments - optional.

Importing custom fields

To migrate custom fields, use the appropriate tags in the column header. Here are the tags you should use for different custom field types: 

• _select - dropdown (e.g., product_select)
• _date - time (e.g., due_date)
• _integer - number (e.g., TicketInternal_integer)

For other types of custom fields, you can use the _textArea tag.

Importing ticket comments

To import ticket comments along with your tickets, you need to provide them in a separate file, which should contain the following headers:

• CommentId - optional
• TicketId - required
• AuthorEmail - required
• Public - required (Use 0 for private and 1 for public comments)
• Body - required
• CreatedTime - required (Use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS time format)
• Attachments - optional

For tickets with multiple comments, arrange them as follows in the file:

How to import files to Zendesk

When your files are prepared and ready, follow these steps to begin your import on the Help Desk Migration website: 

1. Go to the Help Desk Migration website. Select CSV as your data source. Upload your CSV files. You can choose from the following options: 

If you do not need to import knowledge base articles, you can utilize our sample data to pass the source step. Later, when you are selecting which data you want to migrate, simply skip the option for Knowledge Base objects. This allows you to focus solely on the data that is relevant to your migration process.

2. Select "Zendesk" as the target platform and provide your company's Zendesk URL.

3. Choose which specific records you want to migrate and proceed to map the ticket fields, ensuring that your data aligns correctly with Zendesk's structure.

4. Initiate the Free Demo Migration to obtain a quote and verify that the data has been migrated accurately. You can review the migration results by following the guidelines provided in the linked guide.

5. If you are satisfied with the results of the Free Demo Migration, you can proceed to complete your data transfer.

Once you've initiated the migration of all records, you can simply close the tab and continue with your daily activities. We will send you an email notification once the entire import process is completed.

However, please exercise patience during this period and refrain from merging, editing, or deleting any of the imported data. Making changes to the data during this phase can result in irreversible alterations. It's advisable to wait for the migration to conclude before safely working with your data in the new platform.

If you have any questions or require assistance throughout the migration process, please do not hesitate to contact Help Desk Migration. Our team is here to provide support and address any inquiries you may have. Your successful data migration is our priority, and we are ready to assist you every step of the way.