Thena (B2B helpdesk) and Podium (SMS-first local business platform) share almost no data model overlap. Tickets become Conversations, Accounts flatten to Tags, custom fields coerce to strings. API-based ETL is the only reliable path for full-fidelity migration.
Migrating from Thena to Podium requires a fully custom API-based ETL pipeline, as no native migration path exists between the two platforms. Thena is an account-based, multi-channel B2B helpdesk operating on a Account → Contact → Ticket model with SLAs, workflow automations, and AI agents, while Podium is a location-centric, SMS-first customer interaction platform built around an Organization → Location → Contact → Conversation hierarchy. These fundamentally incompatible data models mean that Thena Accounts have no direct Podium equivalent and must be flattened into Contact Tags or Attributes, Thena Tickets must be transformed into Podium Conversations with significant context loss, and constructs such as knowledge base articles, SLA configurations, and AI agent definitions cannot be transferred at all. Custom transformation logic is required for every record type, with mid-size datasets of 10K–50K tickets estimated to require 80–160 engineer-hours across extraction, transformation, load handling, and validation phases.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
TL;DR: Thena → Podium Migration
Thena is an AI-native B2B helpdesk built around Slack, MS Teams, email, and live chat. Podium is a local-business customer interaction platform centered on SMS messaging, webchat, reviews, and payments. They share almost no structural overlap. Thena Tickets become Podium Conversations (with significant context loss). Thena Contacts map to Podium Contacts. Thena Accounts have no direct Podium equivalent — flatten them to Contact Tags or Attributes. Knowledge base articles, workflows, SLAs, and AI agent configurations do not transfer. There is no native migration path. A custom API-based ETL pipeline is the only reliable approach for full-fidelity migration. Budget 80–160 engineer-hours for a mid-size dataset (10K–50K tickets) — broken down as: extraction ~20 hrs, transform logic ~40–60 hrs, load and retry handling ~20–30 hrs, validation and QA ~20–30 hrs — and expect 2–4 weeks elapsed time.
Thena API caveat
Thena's search docs list customer_contacts support as "coming soon," so contact data may need to be derived from accounts plus ticket requestors. Thena's comments endpoint is also documented as standard/enterprise tier only. Validate your available endpoints before starting. (docs.thena.ai)
No clean 1:1 destination exists in Podium for Thena Accounts, company hierarchies, or
No clean 1:1 destination exists in Podium for Thena Accounts, company hierarchies, or opportunity-style custom objects. Preserve source IDs in Podium attributes, tags, or note metadata, and keep a cross-reference table outside Podium. (docs.thena.ai)
Podium's Location Requirement
Every contact creation, message send, and conversation update requires a valid locationUid. If your Podium account has multiple locations, you must decide which location each migrated contact belongs to before starting the load phase. There is no "global" contact pool.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
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Pull the real numbers out of Thena
Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Decide what history actually moves
Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.
A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off -
Confirm Podium can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through Podium: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.
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Build the business case
Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Thena → Podium timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.
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Review and reputation management
Podium's automated review solicitation via Google and Facebook has no equivalent in Thena. Companies prioritizing online reputation move for this capability alone. Podium reports that businesses using its review automation see 2–3× increases in review volume.
Thena → Podium specifics
- Channel realignment
- The business has shifted from B2B Slack-native support to SMS-first local customer engagement. Podium's core strength is text messaging and review management for brick-and-mortar and service businesses. This is the most common driver — a company that started as B2B SaaS pivots to (or acquires) a local-services model.
- Payments consolidation
- Podium handles text-to-pay invoicing natively. Teams that need support and payments in one platform see this as a simplification — one fewer vendor and one fewer integration.
- Cost model mismatch
- Teams that over-provisioned Thena's B2B-grade features (AI agents, SLA engines, workflow builders) for a simpler use case find Podium's SMB-focused model cheaper to operate. However, cost comparison requires careful modeling: Thena uses seat-based pricing, while Podium uses custom quotes based on locations, SMS volume, and add-ons. "Cheaper" is only real after you model your actual usage pattern. (podium.com)
- Multi-location management
- Podium's location hierarchy suits franchises and multi-site businesses that need per-location messaging, review management, and staff assignment.
Don't move on until
- Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
- Success criteria signed off by the support lead
- Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full Thena export and profile it
Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.
Data Profiler Profile the Thena export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.
A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.
CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export -
Inventory PII and set retention
Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.
Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in Thena where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.
PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing
Thena → Podium specifics
- How it works
- Export Thena views; split ticket columns from contact columns; normalize emails and phones; trim fields to Podium's contact schema; upload contacts; rebuild statuses and tags manually.
- When to use
- Small datasets (under 5K contacts), contact-only migrations where conversation history is not required.
- Scalability
- Small datasets only. Breaks down above 10K records due to manual transformation effort.
- Authentication
- API key passed via x-api-key header. Keys are generated from Dashboard → Organization Settings → Security and Access. Note: some Thena endpoint docs show bearer-token examples — validate the auth scheme in your tenant before automating. (docs.thena.ai)
- Pagination
- Cursor-based. Responses include pagination metadata for iterating through large datasets. Streaming supports up to 250 results per page.
Don't move on until
- Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
- PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
- Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass Thena → Podium field map
Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Thena → Podium field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.
Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where Podium has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.
Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.
Thena → Podium specifics
- Multi-select
- → comma-separated string (watch for Thena's semicolon-separated CSV export behavior — normalize delimiters before loading)
Don't move on until
- Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
- Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
- Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice.
Objective A pilot load into a Podium sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a Podium sandbox that matches production config
Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.
PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under Podium's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.
Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.
Don't move on until
- Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
- Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
- Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window.
Objective All in-scope data live in Podium, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Thena stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from Podium's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.
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Freeze Thena and take the final delta
Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.
Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.
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Load the delta and open tickets
Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.
Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep Thena read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.
Don't move on until
- Full historical load complete and counts matched
- Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
- Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Thena and Podium record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.
SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in Podium, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Thena read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
- Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
- Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled
Field mapping reference
The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.
Phase Hours
| Thena field | Podium field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Extraction scripts + pagination handling | 15–20 | Thena cursor pagination, auth validation, rate-limit backoff |
| Transform logic (schema mapping, field coercion) | 40–60 | Slack markdown stripping, E.164 normalization, account flattening, deduplication |
| Load scripts + retry handling | 20–30 | Podium OAuth refresh, rate limiting (especially 10 rpm message cap), idempotency |
| Validation and QA | 20–30 | Count reconciliation, field-level spot checks, UAT with end users |
| Edge case handling and debugging | 10–20 | Duplicates, missing phones, multi-participant threads, attachment decisions |
| Total | 80–160 | Lower end for clean data; upper end for complex custom fields and large attachment volumes |
Object Equivalent
| Thena field | Podium field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Contact Tag + Contact Attribute | Podium has no Account object. Flatten to a tag (e.g., account:acme-corp) and a custom Contact Attribute (e.g., company_name: Acme Corp). Preserve thena_account_id as an attribute for traceability. |
| Contact | Contact | Direct map. Ensure phone number or email exists — Podium requires at least one. Phone numbers must be E.164 format. |
| Ticket | Conversation (imported messages) | Thena tickets become Podium conversation threads. Status metadata is simplified to open/closed. |
| Ticket Messages | Messages within a Conversation | Map as imported messages via Podium's message import endpoint. Strip Slack markdown. |
| Internal Notes / Private Comments | Conversation Notes | Internal-only markers attached to the Contact or Conversation. Prefix with source ticket ID. |
| Custom Ticket Fields | Contact Attributes | Ticket-level custom fields must be flattened to contact-level attributes. All non-string types must be coerced to strings. Max 8 custom fields in Podium. |
| Tags | Contact Tags | Direct map. Create tags in Podium first, then associate with contacts. |
| Knowledge Base Articles | ❌ No equivalent | Archive externally. |
| Workflows | ❌ No equivalent | Rebuild manually in Podium. |
| SLAs | ❌ No equivalent | Document and discard. |
| CSAT Responses | Feedback (Surveys) | Partial map — Podium's Feedback object tracks survey responses but schema differs. Podium Feedback stores rating (1–5), reviewBody, and source, which does not map cleanly to Thena's CSAT scale or channel-specific response metadata. |
| Attachments | Message Attachments | Podium's documented historical message import route does not accept attachment payloads. Re-upload via the live attachment send endpoint, or keep an archive with hosted links in notes. (docs.podium.com) |
Thena Podium
| Thena field | Podium field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| contact.name | contact.name | Direct map |
| contact.email | contact.emails [].value | Podium supports multiple emails |
| contact.phone | contact.phoneNumbers [].value | Must be E.164 format (e.g., +14155552671) |
| account.name | contact.tags [] + contact.attributes [] | Create tag account:acme-corp and attribute company_name |
| account.primaryDomain | contact.attributes [] | Lowercase domain — useful for segmentation |
| ticket.status | Conversation status | Map OPEN → open, RESOLVED → closed |
| ticket.created_at | conversation.startedAt | Direct map |
| ticket.assignee_id | conversation.assignedUser.uid | Lookup via user mapping table |
| ticket.tags [] | contact.tags [] | Create tags first, then associate |
| ticket.custom_field (dropdown) | contact.attributes [].value | Selected option as string |
| ticket.custom_field (date) | contact.attributes [].value | ISO 8601 string |
| ticket.custom_field (checkbox) | contact.attributes [].value | "true" / "false" |
| ticket.id / ticketIdentifier | Note metadata or attribute | Preserve source IDs for audit and rollback |
| message.text | message.body | Strip Slack markdown, resolve user tags |
| message.created_at | message.createdAt | Convert UNIX to ISO 8601 if needed |
| message.sender_type | message.direction | customer → inbound, agent → outbound |
Risk matrix
Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.
| Object | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | high | Thena tickets require full schema translation into Podium Conversations, with significant loss of lifecycle status metadata, SLA fields, and multi-participant thread context that has no target equivalent. |
| Contacts | low | Thena Contacts map directly to Podium Contacts and can be upserted via API or CSV import, though phone number normalization is required since Podium treats phone as the primary SMS identity. |
| Accounts | high | Thena Accounts are a first-class object with no direct Podium equivalent and must be entirely flattened into Contact Tags or Attributes, resulting in permanent loss of account-level relational structure. |
| Conversation History / Comments | high | Full message-level conversation threading from Slack, MS Teams, and email channels cannot be faithfully reconstructed in Podium's flat 1:1 SMS conversation model, and Podium's message import endpoint has documented threading restrictions. |
| Custom Fields | medium | Thena's multi-type custom ticket fields must be mapped to Podium's key-value Contact Attributes under a hard cap of 8 fields per contact, requiring explicit prioritization logic that may result in data being archived rather than migrated. |
| Tags | medium | Thena tags can be carried over as Podium Contact Tags or folded into Attributes, but automated tag mapping requires a crosswalk table and manual validation to ensure taxonomy consistency in the target system. |
| Attachments and File Uploads | high | Thena's CSV export explicitly excludes file upload fields, and binary attachments from Slack threads require separate extraction and hosting decisions since Podium's SMS-centric model has no native file attachment store. |
| Workflows and Automations | high | Thena's canvas-style workflow builder, AI agent configurations, and SLA routing rules have no structural equivalent in Podium and cannot be migrated; all automation logic must be rebuilt natively in Podium post-cutover. |
| Knowledge Base Articles | high | Thena's built-in help center has no corresponding feature in Podium, meaning all knowledge base content must be exported separately and hosted on an external platform or archived outside the migration scope. |
| Internal / Private Notes | medium | Thena internal comments can be imported as Podium conversation notes via the API, but the distinction between public customer-visible messages and private agent notes must be explicitly preserved in the transformation logic to avoid accidental exposure. |
The hard parts
What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.
Account Object Has No Equivalent
Thena's first-class Account object — including its fields, notes, and activities — does not exist in Podium, requiring engineers to flatten account-level data into Contact Tags or custom Contact Attributes before import.
Ticket-to-Conversation Schema Mismatch
Thena tickets carry discrete lifecycle statuses, SLA metadata, custom fields, and multi-participant threading that must be lossy-translated into Podium's flat, chronological 1:1 conversation model.
Custom Field Volume and Cap
Thena supports extensive custom ticket fields across multiple data types, while Podium enforces a hard limit of 8 custom Contact Attributes stored as key-value strings, requiring prioritization and consolidation of field data.
Authentication Architecture Divergence
Thena's REST API v2 uses x-api-key authentication while Podium's REST API v4 requires OAuth 2.0, meaning the ETL pipeline must manage token refresh and credential lifecycles independently for each platform.
Incomplete Thena API Surface
Thena documents customer_contacts search support as 'coming soon' and restricts the comments endpoint to standard and enterprise tiers, requiring engineers to validate available endpoints and derive contact data from accounts and ticket requestors as a fallback.
Rich-Text and Thread Context Loss
Thena supports multi-participant Slack threads with rich text, code blocks, and inline file attachments, none of which map to Podium's SMS-native flat message format, resulting in irreversible context degradation during message import.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
Can I migrate Thena tickets directly into Podium?
There is no native migration path between Thena and Podium. You need a custom API-based ETL pipeline to extract tickets from Thena's v2 API and load them as Conversations and imported Messages into Podium's v4 API. CSV export covers contacts but not full conversation history.
What Thena data cannot be migrated to Podium?
Podium has no equivalent for Thena's knowledge base articles, SLA policies, workflow automations, AI agent configurations, or Account-level CRM features (notes, activities, health tracking). These must be archived externally or rebuilt manually.
How do Thena Accounts map to Podium?
Podium has no Account object. Flatten Thena Accounts into Podium Contact Tags (e.g., 'account:acme-corp') and Contact Attributes (e.g., 'company_name: Acme Corp') to preserve grouping and filtering capability.
What are Podium's API rate limits for data migration?
Podium enforces 300 requests per minute on most API routes, with the message sending endpoint capped at 10 requests per minute. HTTP 429 responses include a Retry-After header. Build exponential backoff with jitter into your migration scripts.
What is the biggest technical risk in a Thena to Podium migration?
Silent data compression. Account context, custom objects, internal comments, and attachments do not have clean 1:1 destinations in Podium's simpler contact/conversation model. Podium also limits contacts to 8 custom fields, so heavily customized Thena datasets require hard choices about what to preserve.