How to prevent "completed" tickets from being re-opened

[SET1]

I would like to stop completed emails from reopening. I see a rule that changes the status of tickets to “in progress” when a new note is added. Is there a way to only change the status to “in progress” is the ticket was NOT completed? Or should I just remove this so that the status is not changed and create a workflow rule in Autotask to catch new notes being added to completed tickets and stop them from being re-opened?

My history is MSPintegrations

[Alex.Ellingsen]

You are correct that your existing catch-all rule updates an existing ticket if an email comes with the ticket number in the subject line. It adds a note to the ticket and changes the ticket status to In Progress. If there is no ticket number it creates a new ticket.

So have you thought about how you really need this to work? You may not want to reopen the ticket but you likely do need to do something with the email.

Here are a few of the possible options:

1. Only add notes to open tickets, and if the ticket is closed create a new ticket from the email.

2. The same as above but allow a note to reopen the ticket within a set number of days of it being closed. For example, an email received with a ticket number within 7 days of the close date will reopen the ticket. But after 7 days it will create a new ticket. This gives the user some grace time to reopen a recently closed ticket.

3. Only add notes to open tickets, if the ticket is closed reply to the sender that they need to submit a new ticket.

One other item is what status you want a ticket moved to when a note is added. Currently, the rule uses “In Progress” but you might want use a status like “Client Added Note”. This allows you to build Autotask workflows or dashboards to bring these updated tickets to your resrouce’s attention.

Let me know the function you are interested in and I can give you an outline of how to accomnplish that in Email2AT.

[SET1]

We found a way to alert them 2 times before it closes from another tool, this will be at the 24 and 48 hr mark.

So step 3 is perfect. If they try to leave a note on a closed ticket it would by the rule remain closed and then email them that they have attempted to open a closed ticket and to submit a new ticket or call.

If you can send me some guidelines I will walk through it. Thank you!

[travis]

Hi @SET1 ,

Thanks for the great question and the additional information.

The suggestion you liked was:

Only add notes to open tickets, if the ticket is closed reply to the sender that they need to submit a new ticket.

Here is how you can accomplish that.

First, start by viewing your mailbox. Click the “Clone” button to the right of the existing “Catch-All” rule.

Change the name of the new rule to “Intercept and reject emails sent to completed ticket”

Delete step 2 (for creating a new ticket). This will leave just 1 rule for updating existing tickets in this mailbox.

Make a few changes to step 1:

1. Enter “result” after “custom.” to store the results of this step in a variable called “result”
2. Check the box for “Filter tickets”
3. Set the filter criteria to “Status equals Complete”
4. In the “Change Ticket Status” section, clear the status
5. At the very bottom, change “Action to take if we successfully add a new note?” to “Continue processing remaining acitons on this rule and other matched rules”.

Create a new step 2 to stop processing the email if no ticket was updated in step 1:

1. Click Add new Action
2. Title: Stop if no ticket was updated
3. Perform this Action: Stop processing this rule set
4. Only perform this action if the following conditions met: custom.result.Ticket.id is empty

At this point in the logic, step 1 will try to update a ticket. If step 1 does not update a ticket, then step 2 will stop this rule to allow the next ones to fire. But, if step 1 does update a ticket, then the rest of the rules in this action will fire.

Now, you should add a step to send an email back to the original sender.

1. Click Add new Action
2. Title: Send email to sender
3. Perform this Action: Send an Email

And, the last thing you need to do is ensure that no more actions or rules fire after this.

1. Click Add new Action
2. Title: Stop
3. Perform this Action: Stop processing this message completely

When you are done, your actions should look like this:

Now, save the rule.

In your mailbox, move that rule to above the “Catchall” rule by dragging the 3-bar icon. Be sure to save the rules order:

This new rule will intercept emails sent to tickets that are closed. When an email arrives for a closed ticket, this will add that note to the ticket, but it will not re-open the ticket. It will then send an email back to the sender to tell them that their email was rejected.

I hope this helps! If you have any further questions or want more help, just let us know.

Thanks!!

[SET1]

This worked perfectly! Thank you so much for your help.