Support Ticket Pre Closure Message

[WHMCS John]

It may be desirable to send clients a reminder message before their support ticket is automatically closed due to inactivity. This can be achieved natively in WHMCS using a combination of Custom Ticket Statuses and Escalation Rules. This guide demonstrates how to do so:

 

Create the Custom Ticket Status

1. Go to Configuration > System Settings > Ticket Statuses.

2. Add a Ticket Status into which tickets will transition between the reminder message and closure:

• Name: Use any value for the name you like
• Status Colour: Any colour you desire
• Include in Active Tickets: Yes
• Include in Awaiting Reply: No
• Auto Close?: Yes
• Sort Order: Any value you prefer

3. Click Save Changes.

 

Create the Escalation Rule

4. Go to Configuration > System Settings > Escalation Rules.

5. Click Add New Rule:

• Name: User any value for you name you like
• Departments: Select all the Support Departments which should receive this pre-closure message
• Statuses: Select Answered
• Priorities: Select all Priorities
• Time Elapsed: Enter the time since last reply for the message to be sent. This should be less than the Close Inactive Tickets time in Configuration > System Settings > Automation Settings.
  • Eg. If Close Inactive Tickets is configured for 48 hours, you might specify 1440 minutes (24 hours) in the Escalation Rule.

• Status: Select the new Ticket Status created in step 2.
• Add Reply: Specify the message to be sent to clients before their ticket is closed.

6. Click Save Changes.

 

New tickets opened from now on will receive the pre-closure message, if the ticket remains in the Answered status for 24 hours. If no further response is made by the client, the ticket will be closed after a further 24 hours.

 

At the time of writing this post, this process was tested on versions of WHMCS from 7.10 to 8.7.

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reply to this thread!