Statuses and lifecycle — Tickets

Every ticket sits in exactly one of five statuses:

Status	Meaning
Open	New or reopened, no agent has replied yet.
Pending	Waiting on something external (customer reply, third-party fix).
In progress	An agent has replied at least once; active conversation.
Resolved	Agent thinks it's done; customer hasn't confirmed.
Closed	Done. No longer active.

Default transitions

Create → Open (or In progress if it came from chat-to-ticket conversion — see Convert chat to ticket).
First public reply by agent → Open → In progress. Also stamps first_response_at.
Customer reply while Resolved or Closed → reopens to Open. Clears resolved_at / closed_at.
Agent sets status manually to any of the five values. We auto-stamp resolved_at / closed_at if those weren't already set.

Internal notes never change status. They're conversation state, not lifecycle state.

When to use each

Open — nobody has touched it yet. Useful as a filter ("who hasn't been responded to?").

Pending — there's nothing for you to do until something external happens. Use it generously: it's the difference between "waiting on the customer" and "stalled because nobody noticed". Marking a ticket Pending takes it out of your active queue without closing it.

In progress — active back-and-forth. Most of your tickets live here.

Resolved — you believe the issue is fixed, but the customer hasn't confirmed. Useful for SLA reporting (resolved-time isn't necessarily closed-time).

Closed — done done. Customer either confirmed, or you waited long enough that you're declaring victory.

What about auto-resolve and auto-close?

Not built yet. Tickets stay in their current status until someone moves them. Two rules we'll likely add later:

Auto-resolve after N days in In progress with no customer reply.
Auto-close after N days in Resolved with no customer reply.

Until then, set up a weekly cleanup hour to walk the queue.

Tracking time

The first_response_at, resolved_at, closed_at timestamps are stamped automatically. They're shown on the ticket page and included in the CSV export. SLA reporting from these is on the roadmap.

What changes when a ticket hits Resolved or Closed

The customer portal renders a 1-5 star "How did we do?" prompt — see Customer feedback (CSAT). One rating per ticket.
Closed tickets remove the reply form on the customer portal entirely. Resolved tickets still allow replies (a reply reopens the ticket).
If the customer sends a follow-up after Resolved or Closed, the ticket auto-reopens to Open and resolved_at / closed_at are cleared. Any existing CSAT rating stays on the ticket; the customer can't re-rate the new round of work.