Freshdesk — Migration Reference

Freshdesk — Migration Support Overview

Role in migrations

• Staff (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Company (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Contact (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Ticket (HD): supported as both (source and target).
• Category (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Folder (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Article (KB): supported as both (source and target).
• Macro (BR): supported as source (source and target).
• Response (BR): supported as both (source and target).

Field-level support migrating FROM Freshdesk (Ticket)

Field-level support migrating TO Freshdesk (Ticket)

Field-level support migrating FROM Freshdesk (Company)

Field-level support migrating TO Freshdesk (Company)

Field-level support migrating FROM Freshdesk (Contact)

Field-level support migrating TO Freshdesk (Contact)

Field-level support migrating FROM Freshdesk (Article)

Field-level support migrating TO Freshdesk (Article)

Migration options available for Freshdesk

• Update cross-links between articles - applies to: both (Article)
• Migrate content translations - applies to: both (Article)
• Migrate the newest records first - applies to: source (Ticket)
• Retain multi-company contact associations - applies to: both (Contact)
• Select records for Demo - applies to: source (Ticket), source (Article)
• Migrate records associated with tickets - applies to: source (Company), source (Contact)
• Migrate time entries - applies to: both (Ticket)
• Inline images in tickets - applies to: source (Ticket)
• Skip ticket attachments - applies to: source (Ticket)
• Add a new tag to tickets - applies to: target (Ticket)

Freshdesk — Setup & How-To Guide

For more information: https://help-desk-migration.com/help/freshdesk-migration-guides/ , https://help-desk-migration.com/help/freshdesk-data-migration-checklist/

How to get the Freshdesk API key?

To obtain your Freshdesk API key, follow these steps:

1. Click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen
2. Go to Profile settings:
3. There, you will find your API key:
4. Copy the API key

Finding the original account URL when a custom domain (CNAME) is used

1. Open the custom URL in a new browser tab.
2. Right-click → Inspect → Network tab.
3. Click Sign up or Login on the page.
4. Locate the Authorize request and open it.
5. Copy the Request URL from the General section.
6. Paste it into https://www.urldecoder.org/ and decode.
7. The decoded URL after the redirect is the original Freshdesk account URL.

Why turn off Automations and Notifications for Freshdesk migration?

Yes, turning off all Automation rules, Scenario Automations, and Email Notifications in your Freshdesk account is crucial before migrating to this platform.

Freshdesk offers powerful Automations to streamline tasks and boost productivity. However, migrating to Freshdesk with active automation rules can result in clients and agents receiving updates during the ticket import. To avoid this, disable all Automation rules before beginning the migration process.

Here's how:

1. Log in to Freshdesk and navigate to the Admin panel.
2. Go to Automations and disable all active automation rules by clicking the green slider button.
3. Similarly, go to Scenario Automations. Document all scenarios and delete them afterward.
   Important: You can keep the scenarios active, but remember that even if you disable Agent Notifications, Freshdesk might still send updates during the migration.
4. Lastly, in the Email Notifications tab, disable Agent and Requester Notifications by clicking on the green slider buttons next to each notification.

Disable all notifications by following the same steps as you did for Automation rules. Click on the green slider button next to each notification, and if it turns grey, it's disabled.

Now, go to the Requester Notifications section and do the exact same actions.

How to disable Parent-Child ticketing in Freshdesk?

In Freshdesk, users can divide complex tickets into smaller sub-tickets to resolve issues faster. However, this feature can pose problems during migration, as the Parent-Child relation field is mandatory for tickets of the Task type. If any ticket with this type lacks the necessary Parent-Child field info, the Migration Wizard cannot transfer it, resulting in migration failure.

To prevent this, we recommend disabling this feature in your Freshdesk account. Here's how:

1. Login as an Administrator and navigate to the Admin section.
2. Scroll down to the Helpdesk productivity and click Advanced Ticketing.
3. Toggle off Parent-child ticketing in the upper right.
4. Confirm the action by clicking Disable.
5. You'll receive a notification confirming the feature's disablement, allowing you to proceed with data migration.

How to calculate the number of tickets in Freshdesk?

To calculate the number of tickets in Freshdesk, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Tickets tab:
2. Sort the tickets by Date created, set the created time to Any time, > and right away, you will see the number of all tickets in the top > right corner

How to calculate contacts in Freshdesk?

To calculate the number of contacts in your Freshdesk, follow this guide:

1. Hover over the Contacts icon on the Freshdesk sidebar and select Contacts.
2. Click the filter icon to calculate a specific customer type.
3. Or apply the filters on the right.
4. Find the number of filtered contacts on the top right.

How to calculate knowledge base articles in Freshdesk?

Freshdesk automatically calculates the number of knowledge-based articles for each category. To find this information, do the following steps.

1. Open the Solutions tab on the sidebar.
2. Check the number of articles in each knowledge base category. Click the filter button to view the number of articles related to specific groups, such as Drafts or Approved.
3. The number of articles will be displayed next to each group.

How to create custom filtering reports in Freshdesk?

You'll create a custom report to export Freshdesk tickets with specific filters. This is essential if you want to transfer tickets based on criteria like status or date. Our team can't use advanced custom filters due to Freshdesk's API limitations.

Follow these steps to create a custom report:

1. Go to your Freshdesk account.
2. Select “Tickets” in the left navigation.
3. On the right-hand side, navigate to the "Filters" menu, choose the desired parameter you want to use as a filter, and then click “Apply.”
4. After applying the filter, click the "Export" button.
5. In the export menu, choose "CSV."
6. Select the required ticket fields, like "Ticket ID" and your filter criteria.
7. Click "Export," and the file will be sent to your email.

Why can’t I see attachments in unpublished articles in my Freshdesk?

If you're unable to view attachments in unpublished articles within your Freshdesk account, it's essential to note the following reasons:

Freshdesk operates on AWS servers, and attachments are hosted exclusively within AWS. However, attachments are only stored in AWS once an article is published. Since the API provides access solely to the Freshdesk database on AWS servers, attachments remain inaccessible via the API if the associated article is unpublished.

How can end-users access a portal in Freshdesk after the data migration?

Upon the transfer to Freshdesk, agents need to accept the activation email. The activation email will only appear if the 'User Activation Email' button is turned on.

If the button is enabled, after the data migration, end-users will receive the activation email where they can click on the activation link. This will open an 'Activate your account' landing page, where they'll need to provide their full name and create a password. After that, they'll be active and able to log in to their account.

Next, they can click on their profile icon and hit the 'Go to customer portal' button, which will redirect them to the portal page immediately.

The user will be redirected to the portal page immediately.

Having completed all the previous steps, the end-user in Freshdesk can:

• View Tickets
• Search for tickets
• Create tickets
• Update certain fields in tickets
• Comment on tickets
• View articles and sections
• Search articles

Freshdesk Sandbox connection error

Error: “Your account must have ‘Account Administrator’ role and ‘All tickets’ ticket visibility scope”.

1. Check whether roles were copied from the production environment.
2. If not:
   • Create an Account Admin role in the sandbox with all permissions.
   • Edit an existing agent’s profile and assign this role to them (you cannot assign the role to yourself).
   • Ask that agent to assign the same role to the client’s account.
3. After the role is assigned, copy the API key and connect the sandbox.

Freshworks Customer Service Suite (Freshdesk Omni)

• Customer Service Suite combines Freshdesk + Freshchat into a single product.
• Migration to Customer Service Suite is supported.
• Client chooses how data should appear:
  • As tickets → set target to Freshdesk
  • As conversations → set target to Freshchat
• If tickets should become conversations and source contacts have custom-field data, first migrate Contacts + Companies into Freshdesk, then migrate the tickets into Freshchat.
• Agents must be created manually when the target is Freshsuite.

Freshdesk migration limitations

1. Agents Matching: You can create agents using the migration tool unless you're working with a Customer Service Suite account - in that case, you need to create agents manually. Agents are created with full rights but without any group assignments. During the ticket migration, the tool checks whether each agent-assignee belongs to the appropriate group and adds agents to groups based on ticket assignments and group mapping. When Freshdesk is the target account, you can match both Agents and Account Administrators (including occasional ones). When Freshdesk is the source account, all agent types are available for matching.
2. Contacts Migration: If a contact exists in both source and destination accounts, they are matched by email. In this case, custom fields of contacts are not updated. Contacts will be updated with their associated migrated companies. If contact and company exist in the target but aren’t linked - Migration Wizard will link them based on the ticket data.
3. Companies Migration: If companies exist in both the source and destination accounts, you match them by name. You don’t update their custom fields during the migration, but you do add contacts to the matched companies as part of the process.
4. Tickets Migration: If the source platform doesn't provide a proper ticket description, we use the message body instead. Since Freshdesk doesn't support agents as the author of a ticket description, we add the actual description as the first comment. Additionally, when Freshdesk is the target platform, we migrate the ticket subject into the description field.
5. Soft-deleted contacts: Tickets associated with soft-deleted contacts are migrated into the Spam folder. To ensure proper migration, these contacts must be manually reactivated or permanently deleted in advance.
6. Archived tickets: We can migrate archived tickets in a custom way if the ID of the last archived ticket is provided.
7. Comments: All comments migrate as private notes or public notes (not replies).
8. Ticket source options are predefined: API, Email, Portal, Phone, Chat, Feedback Widget, WhatsApp
9. Ticket requester:
   1. If the requester is a contact in the source, but an Agent in Freshdesk - The agent will appear as the ticket requester.
   2. If the requester is a Collaborator - A new contact is created with +collaborator in the email (e.g., test+collaborator@gmail.com).
10. Portals: By default articles migrate from a single default portal. If you need to migrate multiple portals, the process must be customized.
11. Some ticket sources (like Instagram and Facebook) are removed from mapping when Freshdesk is Target as they are not allowed sources and fail ticket import.
12. Knowledge Base attachments larger than 15 MB are not migrated (limit depends on the plan).
13. Links between Knowledge Base articles are not migrated.
14. Comments larger than 20 MB are not migrated.
15. Watchers are not migrated by default (available only via a short custom development).
16. Spam tickets are not migrated from Freshdesk.
17. The Summary field is a separate field (not the same as Description) and has its own API method. It is not migrated by default — only via customization.
18. Call recordings are not migrated. They appear in Freshdesk only because of the internal Freshcaller integration; the Freshdesk API provides no call_id or recording data.
19. When migrating to Freshdesk, a company will not be attached to a ticket if the target plan does not allow it.
20. Only one Knowledge Base portal (brand) is supported per migration. To migrate from/to multiple portals, a separate Demo must be set up for each.
21. Removing an agent from a group automatically unassigns all of that agent’s Open, In Progress, and Pending tickets.
22. Text formatting problems may occur if extensions, filters, or integrations are active on the source.
23. Knowledge Base custom domain must not be switched from source to target before migration. Doing so breaks attachment links because the URLs contain the old domain and redirect to the target where the files do not exist.
24. Default language on Freshdesk cannot be changed. When Freshdesk is the target and content translations are migrated, the default language on the source must match the default language on the target.

Zendesk to Freshdesk migration limitations

1. If the size of the attachment per note/reply or a solution article is greater than 15MB, then none of the attachments will be migrated;
2. Spam tickets on Zendesk won't be migrated
3. Channel configurations, Macros, Triggers, Email notifications, Canned responses and Integration configurations can’t be migrated.
4. Tags in contacts or tickets that are longer than 32 characters will be trimmed;
5. Deleted contacts on Zendesk and the tickets associated with them won’t be migrated.
6. Article Comments on Zendesk won’t be migrated.
7. Unsupported article languages versions (if multilingual support is enabled in Zendesk);
8. If multilingual support is enabled in Zendesk, only the primary language will be imported unless users select Migrate content translations option
9. Migration Wizard do not support migrating reporting metrics for tickets exported from Zendesk.