Recipe — Auto-close inactive Done conversations
The outcome you want: every conversation that has been sitting in Done for 14 days gets archived, and nobody has to sweep the inbox. Atender ships this as one workspace setting. It is not something you build as an automation rule — and this recipe used to say it was.
Why this is not an automation rule
A Scheduled (Time-based) trigger starts a rule on a clock, not because a particular conversation changed, so the rule runs with no conversation in hand:
- Conversation conditions have no conversation to evaluate.
- Update Conversation Status has no conversation to update, so it does nothing.
A scheduled rule that combines those parts saves without complaint and archives nothing. Automations still do conversation-scoped work well — a rule that fires when a conversation is moved to Done, tagged, assigned or receives a message can check that conversation and act on it — but “find every old Done conversation and archive it” is a sweep across the inbox, and that is what auto-archive is for.
Build it
- 1 — Open — Settings → Conversation handling
- 2 — Tick — Enable auto-archive
- 3 — Days / Hours / Minutes —
14/0/0— Days accepts 0–365 - 4 — Click — Save
What the setting does, in the page’s own words: conversations marked as Done are automatically archived after the specified time period. The timer starts when a conversation is marked Done and resets if the conversation is reopened. Atender checks for due conversations every few minutes, so there is no 02:00 run to wait for.
The time is counted in business time, not wall-clock time:
- Days count as full 24-hour periods, but only on days when the assigned team is open according to its opening-hours rule. If the team has no opening-hours rule, clock time is used.
- Hours and Minutes only count during the configured opening hours.
- Days when the team is completely closed are not counted.
So “14 days” is 14 working days — with weekends, closer to three calendar weeks. Set fewer days if you mean two calendar weeks.
Variants
- One timer for the whole workspace. There is no per-team, per-channel or VIP override on this page. If different cohorts need different rhythms, keep one sensible default here and express the distinction with SLA policies.
- Tag or note on archive. For an audit trail, build a rule on the Conversation Archived trigger — auto-archive fires it for every conversation it archives — and add a tag such as
auto-archivedor an internal note. - Shorter windows. Chat-heavy teams often archive after a day or two; see Configure the resolution timer for how to pick a duration.
First run with a backlog
If you enable this with hundreds of Done conversations already older than 14 days, the first few cycles archive that whole backlog in batches. A Done conversation is not terminal — a customer reply reopens it — while Archive is: archived conversations don’t reappear in Active queues even if the customer writes again. (A new message creates a new conversation linked to the contact.) If any of that backlog is still in progress, reopen those conversations before you tick the box.
To clear a backlog by hand instead: open the inbox’s Done tab, sort by Last activity so the oldest sit together, select the conversations, and change their status to Archived (see How to archive a conversation). There is no “inactive for N days” filter in the inbox — the sort is what you have.
Verify it worked
The next working day, open the command palette and choose Go to archived conversations (archived conversations do not appear in any of the inbox tabs). Conversations that had been Done for more than 14 working days should be there, and the Done tab should hold only newer ones. Open a few and confirm they were truly inactive.
Troubleshooting
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Symptom: Nothing is being archived. Fix: Confirm Enable auto-archive is ticked and saved, and that Days/Hours/Minutes are not all zero. Remember only conversations in Done count — Active and Snoozed conversations are never touched. Days are working days, so a 14-day threshold takes closer to three calendar weeks to fall due.
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Symptom: Conversations archive too soon. Fix: Raise the number of days. Reopening a conversation resets its timer, and the timer only starts from the moment it was marked Done.
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Symptom: A conversation that was still waiting on the customer got archived. Fix: The timer does not look at engagement state — it only counts time since Done. Don’t mark a conversation Done while you are still waiting for an answer; snooze it or leave it Active.