Freshdesk to Zendesk Migration

Migrate your Freshdesk users, tickets and conversations / comments to Zendesk.

Setup

Before migrating tickets you need to set up the environment and install the necessary packages.

Install Ruby

Follow this link to install Ruby on your system. The version of Ruby used during development was 2.7.1, to use other versions of ruby you may need to update the Gemfile.

Install MySQL

MySQL is used as a relational database management system, which is used to store tickets locally for successful ticket migration, monitoring progress, and post-migration verification.

Install Dependencies

After installation of Ruby and MySQL, run the below command to install the requirements.

bundle install

Configure

Open fd2zd.rb file and update the configurations. For Freshdesk you will need to update the following configurations:

• subdomain - Subdomain of Freshdesk account
• api_token - Your Freshdesk API Key
• include_conversations - Import conversations of each ticket as well
• filter - Define criteria to migrate only required tickets
• tickets_updated_since - This should be set to any date which is older than your Freshdesk account creation date

For Zendesk, update the following configurations:

• subdomain - Subdomain of your Zendesk account
• api_token - API Token created in your Zendesk account
• admin_email - Admin Email of Zendesk account.
• jobs_count - Number of Import Jobs to start in parallel to speed up the process.

For Database you will need to update these configurations:

• adapter - Database adapter
• encoding - Character Set Encoding
• username - Database Username
• password - Database Password
• database - Database Name

Setup Zendesk Account

Before migration, you should set up Zendesk account for migration.

• Disable the welcome email notification for new end users.
• Create a sandbox instance to test the migration.

Migrate Data

Load required data in database

Run the command below to create and set up a database.

bundle exec rake db:prepare

After the database is prepared, we can load tickets in the database.

bundle exec rake fd2zd:load_tickets

Load agents in the database as well:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:load_resources CLASS=Agent

To load contacts in the database you have two options

1. Load all contacts
2. Load only required contacts (having tickets that will be migrated to Zendesk)

To load all contacts:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:load_resources CLASS=Contact

To load only required contacts:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:load_required_contacts

Import Users

Once you have required users in the database, you can import them into your Zendesk account. A user is only imported if it doesn't already exist in Zendesk.

User Fields Mapping

Before migrating users, you may want to customize the mapping of the fields. To do so, open the file lib/converters/user_converter.rb. The UserConverter class can be changed to customize the migration of users.

Import

Run the command below to import users.

bundle exec rake fd2zd:import_users

If the number of users to import is large, you may want to monitor the progress. Open a new terminal tab and run this command to monitor progress.

bundle exec rake fd2zd:users_import_job_status

After completion of the users import job, you can verify the migration by running this command:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:verify_users_import

Import Tickets

After you have imported all required users from your Freshdesk account to Zendesk, you are ready to import tickets.

Ticket Fields Mapping

Like UserConverter, the TicketConverter class converts Freshdesk ticket into Zendesk ticket. The class is defined in file lib/converters/ticket_converter.rb. You can customize this class to control the mapping of the fields.

Important: In lib/converters/ticket_converter.rb file, enter default values for assignee_id, requester_id, author_id, otherwise your tickets will not be imported if your Freshdesk agent / customer does not exist in Zendesk.

Import

Once the TicketConverter class is ready, you can run the below command to start migration.

Note: The tickets imported will be archived immediately, ticket status is set to 'closed' by default (can be changed in TicketConverter class) and 'freshdesk-import' tag is added to each ticket.

bundle exec rake fd2zd:import_tickets

To monitor progress of tickets import, you can run this command in a new terminal:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:tickets_import_job_status

To verify the tickets import, after the import job is completed, run this command:

bundle exec rake fd2zd:verify_tickets_import

To customize the import job further, you can edit the lib/zendesk/tickets_import_service.rb file.