The Ultimate Helpdesk Migration Timeline (Templates Included)

“We’ll just export the tickets on Friday and import them on Monday. How hard can it be?”

Famous last words.

A Helpdesk Migration (moving from Zendesk to Salesforce, or Freshdesk to HubSpot) is not a simple data transfer. It is a surgical operation on your company’s central nervous system. If you mess it up, customers get ghosted, agents get locked out, and your CSAT score plummets.

The difference between a disaster and a non-event is Planning.

In this guide, we will break down the industry-standard “5-Phase Migration Timeline” that we use for enterprise clients.

Phase 1: Discovery & Scoping (Weeks 1-2)

Goal: Know what you are moving.

Before you move a single byte, you need to audit your current state.

API Limits Check: Does your legacy vendor limit how many tickets you can export per hour? (Zendesk has rate limits; Salesforce has API call caps).
Field Mapping: Do your “Status” fields match? (e.g., System A uses “Solved,” System B uses “Closed”).
The “Must-Haves”: Identify which Macros, Triggers, and Automations are critical. Don’t migrate garbage; only migrate what is used.

Phase 2: Data Strategy (Weeks 3-4)

Goal: Clean the house before you move.

Migrating “Dirty Data” is expensive.

Purge: Delete tickets older than 3 years (unless legal requires them).
Clean: Use a Data Profiler to identify and fix null values or duplicate user emails.
Map Users: Ensure your “Agent IDs” in the old system map to the correct “User IDs” in the new system.

Phase 3: The “Dry Run” (Week 5)

Goal: Fail safely.

Never, ever go straight to production.

Full Export: Dump all your data.
Test Import: Load it into a Sandbox/Staging environment.
Audit: Did attachments survive? Did internal notes stay internal? Did timestamps shift timezones?

Phase 4: UAT & Training (Week 6)

Goal: Prepare the humans.

Your data might be perfect, but if your agents don’t know how to log in, you have failed.

UAT (User Acceptance Testing): Have your top 3 agents try to “work” a ticket in the new system. Let them break it.
Code Freeze: 48 hours before launch, stop changing settings. No new triggers. No new fields. Lock it down.

Phase 5: The Cutover Weekend (The Event)

Goal: The Switch.

This is the scary part. You need an hourly “Runbook.”

Friday 5:00 PM: “Stop the World.” Disable ticket creation in the old system. Redirect support@ email to a holding queue.
Friday 8:00 PM: The Delta Sync. You already migrated 90% of the data in Phase 3. Now, you only migrate the tickets created in the last week.
Saturday 12:00 PM: DNS Switch. Point help.yourcompany.com to the new portal.
Sunday 10:00 AM: Smoke Tests. Send test emails. Reply to them. Verify the loop.
Monday 8:00 AM: Go Live.

Tutorial: Build Your Custom Timeline

You can try to build this in a spreadsheet, or you can use a purpose-built tool.

We built the Helpdesk Migration Planner to automate this scheduling.

Set Your Date: Enter your target Go-Live date.
Select Complexity: Choose “Standard” (4 weeks) or “Enterprise” (12 weeks).
Visualize: The tool generates an interactive Gantt Chart showing exactly when you need to start Phase 2 to hit your deadline.
Export: Download the Migration Runbook PDF to show your boss you have a plan.

[Try the Helpdesk Migration Planner]

Interactive Gantt Chart
Risk Detection (Crunch Time Warnings)
Export to CSV/Calendar

Don’t guess your dates. Plan them.