Handling identifiers during an import

Importing your data

When importing data into an application, it is crucial to prevent data loss or duplication. These types of errors can hinder the development of a clean and well-organised database, which is essential for effective data management and security.

 

Zoho Desk provides robust functionality for importing your data. The system intelligently automates the mapping of modules and fields to reduce the risk of data loss and maintain data integrity. Users have the advantage of verifying the field mappings in advance, thus adding an extra layer of security to the import process.

 

This capability is essential not only for clarity but also in mitigating the challenges associated with user adoption. For instance, clients can be accurately mapped to the Contact name field, while company names can seamlessly align with the Account name field. This approach to data management helps maintain an organised database, thereby enhancing productivity and user trust in the system. 

Related knowledge base article: Importing data into Zoho Desk.

Prerequisites

• Users can upload a .csv file or a .zip file containing multiple .csv files. 
  
• The .zip file must be named, for example, Contacts.zip, Accounts.zip, etc.
  

Working with the Identifier Field

When importing data into Zoho Desk, the Identifier Field is essential because it helps identify existing records and avoid duplicate entries. 

What are the Identifier Fields?  

Identifier fields are fields used to find and match existing records when importing data into the product. They also help link related records, like connecting a contact’s name with their email address.

Each module supports different unique identifier fields for identification, as described in the table below:

Module	Unique Identifier Fields
Accounts	Account ID  Account External ID Account Name
Contacts	Contact ID Contact External ID  Last Name First Name Email Phone Number Mobile
Tickets	Ticket ID Ticket External ID Ticket Number
Products	Product ID Product External ID Product Name
Tasks	TaskId Task External ID
Calls	Call ID Call External ID
Events	Event ID Event External ID
Article Translation	Translation: External ID Translation ID
Custom Modules	Record External ID Custom Module Name

Points to remember:

• While these fields help find matching records.
• So, if multiple records match the value, the first matching record will be selected automatically.
• This can lead to unexpected matches or data being updated in the wrong record if you're not careful.

For your understanding:

Some users expressed a preference for matching Contacts by Last Name instead of Email, highlighting the importance of flexibility in their workflow. Furthermore, some additional users approached matching through the use of a custom field, emphasising the need for tailored solutions to fit their unique requirements. Moreover, users requested that the functionality be enhanced by updating existing records with the relevant entity's Zoho Desk ID, aiming to streamline their processes and improve data accuracy.

Commonly used identifier fields:

• Find By is used to identify an existing record during the import process.
• Map By is utilized to link a child record to a parent record, for instance, by linking a Contact to a Ticket.

 

You can now select specific fields for matching, providing enhanced control and customization during bulk processes or integrations. This functionality enables more precise data handling, ensuring that the information aligns with your specific requirements. By tailoring the matching criteria, you can streamline processes, ultimately leading to enhanced efficiency and better outcomes for your team. This flexibility enables you to harness the full potential of your data.

Import Systems

Let's start by preparing the CSV file.

A sample tickets module CSV file is given below,

External ID	Subject	Contact Email	Contact Name	About
101	Hitman	rohit@bcci.com	Sharma	Rohit Sharma's journey from a gifted schoolboy to an international icon and fierce competitor reflects resilience, elegance, and remarkable leadership.
102	King Kohli	virat@bcci.com	Virat	Virat Kohli is a world-renowned Indian cricketer known for his aggressive batting, unmatched consistency, and passionate leadership across all forms of the game.
103	Lambu Ishanth	ishanth@bcci.com	Sharma	Ishant Sharma is a tall and experienced Indian fast bowler known for his 300 test wickets and key performances in overseas conditions.

Then choose the appropriate Find By identifier field.

The Find By field is selected from a predefined set of fields specific to each module. It is used to determine whether a record already exists in Zoho Desk.

When using the import tool, the system searches the Desk portal for a record (e.g., a ticket) that matches the value mapped to the selected Find By field. This prevents duplicate records by identifying existing entries based on the chosen field.  

​

• Once the file is uploaded, you need to choose a Find By Field — for instance, Ticket External ID.
• Whichever Find By field we choose must correspond to the relevant column in the CSV file. Since we've selected the Ticket External ID, the Case External ID column in your file should be mapped to the Ticket External IDfield.
  

If the chosen operation is to 'create new records while avoiding duplicates', and there is no existing ticket with the External ID 101, the import tool will generate a new ticket using the mapped fields. To associate the ticket to the correct Contact, the import tool utilizes the Map By field feature.

Finally, choose the appropriate Map By field.

The Map By field enables users to link imported records to their corresponding dependent records, such as associating a ticket with a specific contact. This functionality ensures that when you import ticket data, the import tool actively searches for a matching Contact in Zoho Desk based on the value defined in the selected Map By field.

For instance, during the field mapping process, you can specifically choose to map the Ticket to a Contact using criteria such as the Contact's email ID. This approach enhances the accuracy of data integration by ensuring that each ticket is correctly associated with the relevant Contact, thereby improving data integrity and streamlining the support process. This meticulous mapping not only minimizes the chances of errors but also facilitates a more organized and efficient ticket management system, ultimately leading to improved customer experiences and satisfaction.

Map by identifier field functionality

The tool efficiently searches for contacts associated with the provided email address.    

Search: When a user submits a ticket, the system initiates a search for contacts associated with the specified email address.   

Match found: If a single match is identified, the ticket is seamlessly associated with that Contact, ensuring that all relevant customer information is readily accessible for support agents.   

Multiple Matches: If numerous contacts are found with the same email address, the system will prioritize and use the first match. This helps streamline the ticketing process while maintaining clarity in customer support.   

No Match Found: If no matches are found within the system, the ticket will not be created. This prevents unnecessary duplication and ensures that support agents are only working with valid, existing customer records. 

In summary, the strategic use of Custom Unique Fields and External ID fields as identifiers, along with the potential for composite identifiers, positions support teams to operate more effectively and improve overall customer interactions.

Significant improvements in user experience 

Transparent process and status tracking 

We’ve implemented a straightforward, step-by-step process for data imports, complete with real-time status updates for each stage. This transparency enables users to monitor import progress and understand the current state of the process.

Unique identifiers for entity mapping 

New fields have been introduced to help users identify if a parent entity already exists when importing related child entities. For example, users can seamlessly map a contact to an existing account in Zoho Desk, streamlining the import process while minimizing the risk of duplicate entries.

Enhanced error handling and log accessibility

We’ve made significant improvements in error handling by allowing users to download detailed error logs directly from the history page in the event of import failures. This enhancement provides users with greater insight into any issues, facilitating faster troubleshooting and resolution.

Support for custom modules

The import UI has been revamped to support custom modules, providing users with greater flexibility and customization options. This enables a more personalized and efficient data import experience.

Takeaway

For instance, a large corporation merging client data from multiple legacy systems into Zoho Desk modules will benefit significantly from automatic field mapping, ensuring that contact and account names are accurately aligned. This attention to detail not only improves the user experience but also enhances overall data integrity during the merging process.

 

Please stay tuned for more Desk updates.

 

Cheers,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

• Topic Participants

• Kavya Rao Addepalli

  

• Sticky Posts

• Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

  Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

• WhatsApp pricing changes: Pay per message starting July 1, 2025

  Starting July 1, 2025, WhatsApp is shifting from conversation-based pricing to per-message billing. That means every business-initiated message you send will count. Not just the first one in a 24-hour window. Pricing updates on the WhatsApp Business Platform

• Live Webinar - Work smarter with Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace integration

  Hello customers! Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace are coming together for a webinar on 14th May, 2024. Zoho Workplace is a suite of productivity apps for email, chat, docs, calls, and more at one single place. Zoho Desk is closely integrated with a few tools

• Apple iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 updates for Zoho Desk users

  Hello Zoho Desk users! Apple recently announced the release of iOS 17 and iPad OS 17. These latest OS updates will help you stay productive and efficient, through interactive and seamless user experiences. Zoho Desk has incorporated the updates to help

• Zoho Desk Cheat Sheet For The Year-End

  Check out these Zoho Desk best practices to end this year on a high and have a great one ahead! #1 Set Business (Holiday) Hours - If you have limited working hours, please make sure you restrict your business hours or set them as holidays for the coming days. Let your customers know when you will, and won't, be available. #2 Update the Annual Holiday List - Check the holidays for the new year and update the holiday schedule. Usually, holidays from the current year will be carried over for the next

• Recent Topics

• Special characters (like â, â, æ) breaking when input in a field (encoding issue)

  Hey everyone, We are currently dealing with a probably encoding issue when we populate a field (mostly but not exclusively, 'Last Name' for Leads and Contracts). If the user manually inputs special characters (like ä, â, á etc.) from Scandinavian languages,

• Set Custom Icon for Custom Modules in new Zoho CRM UI

• is there any way to change the "chat with us now" to custom message?

  is there any way to change the "chat with us now" to custom message? I want to change this text

• Notes badge as a quick action in the list view

  Hello all, We are introducing the Notes badge in the list view of all modules as a quick action you can perform for each record, in addition to the existing Activity badge. With this enhancement, users will have quick visibility into the notes associated

• Is Zoho Live Chat compatible with WordPress CMS?

  Hello, I have a website called www.jjrlab.com and I'm interested in using Zoho Chat on it. Does it support WordPress CMS? Thanks.

• Introducing spam detection for webforms: An additional layer of protection to keep your Zoho CRM clean and secure

  Greetings all, One of the most highly anticipated feature launches—Spam Detection in webforms—has finally arrived! Webforms are a vital tool for record generation, but they're also vulnerable to submissions from unauthenticated or malicious sources, which

• Bring your CRM and Desk app inside SalesIQ with widgets

  Have you ever been confused and frustrated with multiple open tabs and switching back and forth from SalesIQ to other apps to perform your business-specific operations? How effective would it be to have all the required tools and data of the apps you

• Speak Your Customers' Language: SalesIQ's chatbots now support 30 languages 🤖

  We're unveiling some major upgrades to our chatbot that are set to revolutionize your experience! Now SalesIQ support 30 languages for both Zobot and Answer bot. By speaking your customers' language, you can enhance engagement, improve customer satisfaction,

• Repeat Column merge in ZOHO writer columns doesn't allow to set max columns per row

  I'm using ZOHO writer to merge data from a ZOHO CRM subform and I want it to make a table. We're using Insert Table for Column Repeat, because this is what we need. (Name of column (Teamname) and underneath that a list of names of teammembers). It works

• Persisting email signals to contact timeline?

  Hello there. Regarding the email signals that are logged when a contact opens an email, am I correct that these signals are not logged to a contact's timeline? Ideally, I would like to have this context available for future follow-ups, if the contact

• Trouble with using Apostrophe in Name of Customers and Vendors

  We have had an ongoing issue with how the system recognizes an apostrophe in the name of customers and vendors. The search will not return any results for a name that includes the mark; ie one of our vendors names is "L'Heritage" and when entering the

• Really want the field "Company" in the activities module!

  Hi team! Something we are really missing is able to see the field Company when working in the activities module. We have a lot of tasks and need to see what company it's related to. It's really annoying to not be able to see it.🙈 Thx!

• Upcoming update to Google Drive integration in Zoho Creator

  Hello everyone, We're writing to inform you about an upcoming update to how Zoho Creator integrates with Google Drive. In Zoho Creator, during actions like importing files to create an app or attaching files to fields, you can choose files directly from

• Changing Account Type in Chart of Accounts

  Does anyone know how to change/edit the account type for an Account name in Chart of Accounts. Zoho will not let me do this for some reason

• Managing Scheduled Replies

  Communication is most effective when the intended message reaches the right person at the right time. However, this can be challenging when communication occurs across different time zones. By scheduling replies, businesses can ensure that responses reach

• Show price book list price

  When using price books, once you add products to the price book in the Products related list you can display the Unit price which is the default list price; however, there is no option to show the price book list price. To see the price book list price

• Allow Attaching Quartz Recordings to Existing Zoho Support Tickets

  Hi Zoho Team, We would like to request an enhancement to how Zoho Quartz recordings integrate with Zoho Support tickets. Current Behavior: At the moment, each Quartz recording automatically creates a new support ticket. However, in many real-world scenarios:

• Issue with open-rate reporting in Zoho Campaigns

  Hello, Since yesterday I’ve been experiencing an issue with the open-rate reports in Zoho Campaigns. The campaigns I send appear in the reports as if none of the emails have been opened, even though I know they have. To verify this, I replicated the campaign

• Can I hide empty Contact fields from view?

  Some contacts have a lot of empty fields, others are mostly filled. Is there a way I can hide/show empty fields without changing the actual Layout? I would like to de-clutter my view, and also be able to add information later as I am able. I would be

• Manage user roles and profiles from the Bigin app (iOS and macOS)

  Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that you can manage user roles and profiles from the Bigin mobile app. The Users & Controls section has three subsections: Users, Profiles, and Roles. Users Employees who belong to your Bigin organization are called

• Support Bots and Automations in External Channels

  Hello Zoho Cliq Team, How are you? We actively use Zoho Cliq for collaboration, including with our external developers. For this purpose, external channels are a key tool since they work seamlessly within the same interface as all of our other channels

• Zoho Books Sandbox environment

  Hello. Is there a free sandbox environment for the developers using Zoho Books API? I am working on the Zoho Books add-on and currently not ready to buy a premium service - maybe later when my add-on will start to bring money. Right now I just need a

• Form to PDF template

  I am looking to create a Form and when information is inputted, it will merge it into a PDF template we already have. There could be multiple lines in the form and each line inputs information into a new page of a PDF template.

• Please verify my account

  Hi, We have just launched our website and received media coverage in our country. Hundreds of users are signing up for our platform every day. We would like to send them a welcome email, but we are unable to do so because our ZeptoMail account has not

• Subject character limit increase

  We have an occasional user case where subject lines exceed 500 characters which is the ZeptoMail imposed limit. While I understand long subject lines are not "best practice", these are particular notification emails with specific information for client

• Account blocked

  Yesterday I got my Zeptomail account blocked due to too many hard bounces. My account is used exclusively for sending transactional emails (eg. your order has been shipped, a form has been filled, etc) and the sudden blocking impacted hundreds of websites

• Nested notebooks

  Dear Sir/Madam, I would like to know if it is possible to nest notebooks. It would be very helpful when there are too many, as it would improve organization. Thank you for your response. Best regards.

• Cannot see correct DNS config for mail after moving domain to another provider

  I have moved my domain from one provider to another and after that zoho mail stopped working (expected). Problem is, zoho mail admin panel still shows (10 hours after move) that all records are correct while I haven't changed anything in my domain DNS

• Proactive Alert for Existing Open Tickets per Contact / Account

  Hello Zoho Desk Team, Greetings, and hope you’re doing well. We would like to submit a feature request aimed at improving agent awareness and efficiency when handling tickets in Zoho Desk. Use case When an agent opens a ticket (new or existing), it is

• Ticket resolution field - can you add links, video, and images?

  Seems like the ticket resolution fields is just a text field. Any plans to add the ability to add links, images...the same functionality in the problem description box? I would like to send the customer a link to a KB article, a link to our Wiki, embed

• Ticket Resolution - Add rich formatting, screenshots and attachments

  The resolution field only allows plain text at the moment. Many of our resolutions involve posting screenshots as evidence, it would be great for us to be able to have rich text formatting, be able to paste screenshots and add attachments in the solution

• CRUD actions for Resources via API

  Hello, is it possible to perform CRUD actions through the API for Resources? We want to create a sync from Zoho CRM Car record to Bookings resources to create availabilities for Car bookings. For Test drives, not only the sales person needs to be available,

• Kaizen #140 - Integrating Blog feed scraping service into Zoho CRM Dashboard

  Howdy Tech Wizards! Welcome to a fresh week of kaizen. This week, we will look at how to create a dashboard widget that displays the most recent blog post of your preferred products/services, updated daily at a specific time. We will leverage the potential

• Convert Lead Automation Trigger

  Currently, there is only a convert lead action available in workflow rules and blueprints. Also, there is a Convert Lead button available but it doesn't trigger any automations. Once the lead is converted to a Contact/Account the dataset that can be fetched

• I'm getting this error when I try to link an email to a deal inside the Zohomail Zoho CRM extension.

  When I click "Yes, associate," the system displays an "Oops!! Something went wrong" error message. I have attached a screenshot of the issue for reference.

• Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline

  Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.

• ZOHO add-in issue

  I cannot connect ZOHO from my Outlook. I am getting this error.

• Marketing Automation

  L.S. Marketing Automation is and has always been part of the Zoho One bundle - according to the information provided on the Zoho Website. Why when I open Marketing Automation do I get the following message?: "Your trial has expired. We hope you enjoyed

• What's New in Zoho Analytics - January 2026

  Hello Users! We are starting the year with a strong lineup of updates, marking the beginning of many improvements planned to enhance your analytics experience. Explore the latest improvements built to boost performance, simplify analysis, and help you

• Translation from Chinese (Simplified) to Chinese (Traditional) is not working. It randomly translated. Google Translate accurately but zoho translate is not working at all

  Hi friends, The newly added language for translation. https://www.zoho.com/deluge/help/ai-tasks/translate.html "zh" - Chinese "zh-CN" - Chinese (Simplified) "zh-TW" - Chinese (Traditional) my original text: 郑这钻 (and it is zh-CN) translated traditional

• Next Page