Set conversation/ticket status with tag workflow rules
Overview
Teams that come from traditional ticketing solutions have leveraged 'ticket status' to organize, categorize, and prioritize their work. While Front isn't a ticketing solution, teams can leverage the rules engine to create this workflow.
Getting started
Create status tags
Create tags based on the statuses your team is interested in tracking. For this article we created the following tags:
- New - A new conversation is created and a response is needed
- Waiting on Customer - An internal reply has been sent to the customer
- Customer Replied - Customer replied to an existing conversation
- Closed - Teammate marks the conversation as complete
- Closed - Inactive - Conversation goes inactive after internal reply
How it works
Now, create rules to apply your status tags. Below are five examples of rules that utilize the status tags we created to change the conversation status.
Rule #1: Apply New tag to all new conversations
This rule applies the New tag to new inbound messages when the conversation does not yet have a status tag.
Rule #2: Replace with Waiting on Customer tag after teammate replies
After your teammate replies to the customer's message, change the status from New to Waiting on Customer.
Rule #3: Add Customer Replied tag when a customer responds
Once your customer replies, reflect the status change by replacing the Waiting on Customer tag with the Customer Replied tag.
Rule #4: Archive conversation when teammate applies Closed tag
There are multiple ways you can accomplish this. The rule below functions so that when a teammate applies the Closed tag, it archives the conversation and removes the Customer Replied tag.
Alternate methods could be, for example, a rule that closes the conversation by a teammate leaving a comment that says: "closed."
Rule #5: Conversations auto-close after 5 days of inactivity and Closed - Inactive tag added
This rule adds the Closed - Inactive tag and removes the Waiting on Customer tag when your team has been waiting five days for your customer to respond.