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

• How to Customize & Reorder Spaces in Zoho One 25 (Spaces UI) — Admin Tips Not in the Docs

  Hey Zoho Community, After digging around in the new Spaces UI, I found a couple of admin features that aren't well documented yet but are really useful. Sharing here in case others are looking for the same things. 🔁 How to Change the Default Space Users

• Dark Mode - Font Colors Don't Work

  When editing a document in Dark Mode and selecting font colors, they don't show up on screen.  Viewing/editing the same document in Light Mode shows them just fine.

• New 2026 Application Themes

  Love the new themes - shame you can't get a little more granular with the colours, ie 3 different colours so one for the dropdown menu background. Also, I did have our logo above the application name but it appears you can't change logo placement position

• Including attachments with estimates

  How can attachments be included when an estimate is sent/emailed and when downloaded as a .pdf? Generally speaking, attachments should be included as part of an estimate package. Ultimately, this is also true for work orders and invoices.

• Trying to access records in a custom module in Zoho Desk and not having luck

  I've built a custom module in Zoho Desk and am using a custom function to query the records in the module and I'm not having any luck. The only way I have found to retreive a record is by getting it by its recordID (the long zoho assigned one). The function

• Detailed list of scoring rules in Zoho CRM

  Good morning Zoho community, warm greetings The reason for my message today is that I have a problem with my CRM, which I will explain below: Our organization has scoring rules designed to rate our potential customers or leads in the application based

• System Components menu not available for Tablet to select language

  I have attached a screenshot of my desktop, mobile, and tablet menu builder options. I am using 2 languages in my application. Language Selection is an option under the System Components part of the menu, but only for my desktop and phone(mobile). My

• Placeholder format in Number field does not reflect Max Digits configuration

  When the Max Digits (Maximum digits of number) property is set to a smaller value (for example, 2 digits), the placeholder in the input field still displays a 7-digit format (#######). The same behavior can also be observed in Decimal and Currency field

• Approvals in Zoho Creator

  Hi, This is Surya, in one of  my creator application I have a form called job posting, and I created an approval process for that form. When a user submits that form the record directly adding to that form's report, even it is in the review for approval.

• How Zoho Desk contributes to the art of savings

  Remember the first time your grandmother gave you cash for a birthday or New Year's gift, Christmas gift, or any special day? You probably tucked that money safely into a piggy bank, waiting for the day you could buy something precious or something you

• Estimate PDF Templates - logo too large

  Hello, I cloned a standard estimate template, but my logo is showing up much larger than intended. This doesn’t happen with the standard invoice template, where the logo displays correctly. How can I adjust the logo size in the estimate template? Thank

• Select CRM Custom Module in Zoho Creator

  I have a custom module added in Zoho CRM that I would like to link in Zoho creator.  When I add the Zoho CRM field it does not show the new module.  Is this possible?  Do i need to change something in CRM to make it accesible in Creator?

• Invoice emails not sending but reminders are

  I am a new user. I have been creating some dummy invoices before I go live and have struck a block. Emails for the invoice are not being recieved by the recipient, however, when I send a reminder for the same invoice the email is sent. NOTE: I have checked

• How to close an estimate ?

  Hello, I have created estimates, and converted them to invoices to get 50% payment. Now I have 2 cases where the estimate stills shows status partially invoiced, however: 1. for one of them, project stopped half way, so the remaining part will never be

• Deleted account recovery

  I ended up accidentally deleting our Zoho invoice account while trying to work something out. Emailed support for recovery and restoration of the deleted account, if possible, but they responded by saying they can't find an account associated with that

• Organization wide Account and Contacts Visibility/Sharing Capabilities?

  Has anyone figured out a way to make visibility or sharing of Accounts and Contacts to be available across the entire organization without having to have every individual user edit their Sharing permissions? For our sales folks they need to be able to

• CRM Cadences - working timesThe Friday afternoon? The next Monday morning? Not at all?

  I think I’m writing saying that cadence emails are only sent during the organisations set working hours in CRM. So if a particular email is set to send for example in three days and that lands on a Sunday (when working hours are not operational) when

• CRM Cadences - working times

  I think I’m right in saying that cadence emails are only sent during the organisations set working hours in CRM. So if a particular email is set to send for example in three days and that lands on a Sunday (when working hours are not operational) when

• Cannot find zpuid for Zoho Projects user

  I'm using the Zoho Projects v3 API to create a task. The task is created successfully, but in order to assign the task owner, the "Create a Task" API also requires the zpuid of the task owner. Unfortunately I cannot find any user-related API calls that

• Devis et factures multipage coupées

  Bonjour, je suis sur Zoho invoice et je rencontre un problème sur mes devis et factures lorsqu'ils dépassent 1 page. je me retrouve souvent avec des lignes coupées ou le sous total page 1 et le total page 2. j'aimerai savoir s'il existe une possibilité

• Zoho Desk View Open Tickets and Open Shared Tickets

  Hi, I would like to create a custom view so that an agent can view all the open tickets he has access to, including the shared tickets created by a different department. Currently my team has to swich between two views (Open Tickets and Shared Open Tickets).

• Custom Related List Inside Zoho Books

  Hello, We can create the Related list inside the zoho books by the deluge code, I am sharing the reference code Please have a look may be it will help you. //..........Get Org Details organizationID = organization.get("organization_id"); Recordid = cm_g_a_data.get("module_record_id");

• Add the same FROM email to multiple department

  Hi, We have several agents who work with multiple departments and we'd like to be able to select their names on the FROM field (sender), but apparently it's not possible to add a FROM address to multiple departments. Is there any way around this? Thanks.

• How does SKU work when selling products in parts in Zoho Inventory

  Hello everyone, Zoho Inventory does not understand the physical cutting of the piece.. It only tracks quantities of the unit (like feet ). So when you sell part of an item, the system simply reduces quantity for that SKU. Assume that i have a 50 ft long

• Zoho Meeting - Feature Request - Introduce an option to use local date and time formating

  Hi Zoho Meeting Team, My feature request is to add an option for dates to be displayed in the users local format. This is common practice across Zoho applications and particularly relevant to an application like Zoho Meeting which revolves around date

• Incorrect Functioning of Time Logs API (Version 3)

  We need to fetch the list of time logs for each task for our company internal usage. We are trying to achieve it by using the next endpoint: https://projects.zoho.com/api-docs#bulk-time-logs#get-all-project-time-logs Firstly, in the documentation the

• Cannot give public access to Html Snippet in Zoho Creator Page

  Hi, I created a form in Zoho Creator and published it. The permalink works but I want to override the css of the form. (style based URL parameters is not good enough) So I created a page and added an Html snippet. I can now override the css, which is

• How can Outlook 365 link back into Zoho Projects so meetings and events in Outlook calendar show in Zoho?

  We use Outlook 365 for our emails and diaries and have integrated Zoho Projects with Office 365. One challenge we face is getting Zoho Projects to recognise when we have meetings and events in Outlook and not allow project managers to assign tasks over that period. Is there a way to resolve this? Thanks

• IMPORTANT: It doens´t show full article name on search - Should add line break

  When we search for articles, it doesn´t show the full name. There should be a line break so the user can see the full article name, otherwise the user can´t know if that´s the article he/she is looking for. This is very important, otherwise the user has

• IMPORTANT: It doesn´t search for letters with portuguese characters.

  Some of my articles have for example the word "vídeo". But if I search for "vídeo" it doesn´t find them. If I search for "video" it does find them. Idealy, it should find the articles either way. But if I have to choose, it would be better to find the

• On Edit Validation Blueprint

  Hello, I have a notes field and a signature field. When the Approve button is clicked, the Signature field will appear and must be filled in. When the Reject button is clicked, the Notes field will appear and must be filled in. Question: Blueprint will

• Zoho Invoice en Navarra (Spain)

  Hola, ¿Alguien usa Zoho Invoice en la Comunidad Foral de Navarra? En Navarra tenemos un sistema tributario diferente y no aplica Verifactu (la Hacienda Foral de Navarra ha anunciado su alternativa, NaTicket, pero no ha informado cuándo entrará en vigor).

• Conect chat of salesiq with zoho cliq

  Is there any way to answer from zoho cliq the chat of salesiq initiated by customers?

• Emails from Zoho are getting blocked due to Zoho IP address being blacklisted

  This is the info I got from my hosting provider – please address this issue immediately. I don’t expect this from such a big household name. Every single invoice I have sernt it not being received by my clients, all being blocked. All of a sudden. As

• agentid : Where to find?

  I've been looking around for this agenId to check for the total ticket assigned on a specific agent url :"https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/ticketsCountByFieldValues?departmentId=351081000000155331&agentId=35108xxxxxx132009&field=statusType,status" type :GET

• Zoho DataPrep integration with OpenAI (beta)

  We are thrilled to announce Zoho DataPrep's integration with OpenAI. The public beta roll-out opens up three features. Users who configure their OpenAI Organizational ID and ChatGPT API key (Find out how) will be able access the features. The features

• Ability to Attach Record-Specific Files Automatically in Workflow Email Templates

  Currently in Zoho CRM, email templates allow attachments to be added, but these attachments are static and remain the same for every recipient. There is no straightforward option to automatically attach a file that is stored within the specific CRM record

• Restrict employees to take only one day holiday from a multi-day festival holiday

  Hi everyone, I have a requirement related to Optional/Festival Holidays in Zoho People. For example, in the month of May there are three optional holiday dates: May 11, May 12, and May 13. Employees can choose one of these days as their optional holiday.

• AI Bot and Advanced Automation for WhatsApp

  Most small businesses "live" on WhatsApp, and while Bigin’s current integration is helpful, users need more automation to keep up with volume. We are requesting features based on our customer Feedbacks AI Bot: For auto-replying to FAQs. Keyword Triggers:

• Related lists New option in missing

  hi I have created quite a few modules and added as related lists to my main module. Some have new, some dont I can not see why?

• Next Page