Conversation statuses

Every conversation in Atender lives in one of four statuses. Understanding these statuses and how conversations flow between them is fundamental to managing your inbox.

• Active — Ongoing, needs attention — (default) — You work on it
• Snoozed — Parked for later — Z — Returns to Active automatically
• Done — You’ve done your part — D — May reopen if customer replies
• Archived — Locked and final — (auto, see Resolution) — Customer must start a new conversation

Active

This is where you spend your day. Active conversations need attention now — new messages, ongoing threads, anything awaiting a response.

When a conversation first arrives — from web chat, email, SMS, voice, or any other channel — it starts as Active.

Snoozed

Sometimes you need to wait — for a customer to try something, for a colleague to get back to you, or simply because it’s not the right time. Snoozing parks the conversation out of your Active inbox and brings it back automatically.

Two triggers bring a snoozed conversation back to Active, whichever happens first:

1. The snooze timer expires
2. The customer sends a new message

So you never miss a customer who responds while you’re waiting. The moment they write back, the conversation is back in your Active queue.

Snooze accepts natural-language durations like 1 hour, tomorrow morning, next Monday, or 3 days, plus quick presets. See Snooze a conversation.

Done

Marking a conversation as Done means you’ve done your part. The customer’s question has been answered, the issue resolved, or you’re waiting to see if they need anything else.

The most common way to mark Done is Send and Close (Cmd+Shift+Enter) — sends your reply and marks Done in one action.

Done is NOT terminal. If the customer replies, the conversation reopens to Active. This makes Done the right resting state for most resolved conversations — you’re saying “I think we’re finished, but I’m here if you need more.”

This is critical to understand. A “Done conversation” is not a “closed conversation” in the traditional ticketing sense. It’s “Done from my side, but the door’s open.”

Archived

Archived is the true end of a conversation. Once archived:

• The conversation is locked — no more messages can be added
• The customer cannot reply
• If they reach out again, a brand-new conversation is created
• The archived record stays in the system for history and reporting

You don’t typically archive manually. The conversation resolution timer handles this automatically — after a configurable period in Done (typically 1-3 days), the conversation auto-archives.

Archiving is often the trigger for CSAT surveys — when the conversation is truly resolved and locked, that’s the moment to ask the customer how it went.

How conversations flow

[New conversation]                                  
       ↓                                            
   ┌────────┐                                       
   │ Active │                                       
   └────┬───┘                                       
        │                                           
   Z    │   D / Send & Close                        
        │                                           
        ↓                                           
   ┌────────┐                  ┌──────┐             
   │Snoozed │←─ customer reply │ Done │← customer reply
   └────┬───┘   timer expires  └───┬──┘             
        │                          │ resolution timer
        └──────→ Active ←──────────┘ expires        
                                    │               
                                    ↓               
                                ┌──────────┐        
                                │ Archived │        
                                └──────────┘        
                                  (terminal)        

Key transitions

• Active — Snoozed — You snooze (Z)
• Active — Done — You mark Done (D or Send & Close)
• Snoozed — Active — Timer expires OR customer replies
• Done — Active — Customer replies
• Done — Archived — Resolution timer expires (no customer reply during the window)
• Archived — (none) — Terminal — new conversation required

The typical lifecycle

Most conversations follow a simple path:

Active (you work on it) → Done (you resolve it) → Archived (resolution timer locks it)

Snooze is for the conversations that don’t fit that neat pattern — needs follow-up, waiting on customer, scheduled response.

Status vs Engagement

Status answers “where is this conversation in the lifecycle?” — Active, Snoozed, Done, Archived.

But you also need to know “is the ball in our court right now?” — that’s engagement state, a separate axis.

A conversation can be Active + Engaged (we just replied, waiting on customer) or Active + Pending (customer just replied, needs us). The two together tell you what to actually work on.

See also

• Engagement state — the orthogonal axis
• Conversation resolution — Done → Archived auto-flow
• Snooze a conversation
• Mark Done or reopen