Auto-Close Settings in Smart Support

Smart Support lets you auto-close support tickets in WordPress after a configurable period of inactivity. This built-in ticket automation helps keep your WordPress help desk organized by closing inactive requests that no longer require attention.

You can choose how long tickets remain inactive before closing, limit automatic closing to tickets waiting for a customer response, manage attachments when tickets close, and manually run the auto-close process when required.

Access the Ticket Closing Settings

From your WordPress dashboard, go to: Smart Support → Settings → General → Ticket Closing

The Ticket Closing area contains the settings used to manage automatic ticket closure and related closed-ticket workflows.

Automatically Close Inactive Support Tickets

Enable Automatically close tickets after period of inactivity to automatically close eligible support tickets when there has been no activity for the configured number of days.

When this option is disabled, inactive tickets remain open until an authorized user closes them manually.

Using this feature can help support teams prevent abandoned requests from remaining indefinitely in the active ticket queue.

Set the Auto-Close Inactivity Period

Enter the number of inactive days a ticket should remain open before Smart Support automatically closes it.

For example, if you configure: Auto-Close Days: 7

an eligible ticket can be closed after seven days without qualifying activity.

Choose an inactivity period that matches your customer support workflow. Teams that give customers longer response windows may prefer a longer auto-close period.

Only Close Tickets Waiting for the Customer

Enable Only close tickets waiting for customer response when you want Smart Support to auto-close only inactive tickets where your support team is waiting for the customer.

When enabled:

• Tickets waiting for a customer response can be automatically closed.
• Tickets waiting for an agent or support response remain active.
• Your team is less likely to accidentally close requests that still require staff attention.

This is a useful option when you auto-close support tickets in WordPress, because inactivity alone does not always mean that a customer request has been completed.

Delete Attachments When Tickets Are Closed

Smart Support can optionally delete ticket attachments when a support ticket is closed.

Enable Delete attachments when ticket is closed if your support workflow does not require files to remain stored after closure.

This can help reduce storage usage on WordPress websites that receive a large number of screenshots, documents, ZIP files, or other ticket attachments.

Important: Deleted attachments cannot be recovered through Smart Support. Keep this option disabled when files need to be retained for auditing, record keeping, compliance, or future troubleshooting.

Run Auto-Close Manually

Click Run Auto-Close Now when you want Smart Support to immediately check existing tickets against your configured auto-close rules.

The manual process is useful when:

• Testing your auto-close configuration.
• Cleaning up an existing inactive ticket queue.
• Applying new inactivity settings immediately.
• Confirming which tickets qualify for automatic closure.

Tickets must still meet the configured auto-close conditions before they are closed.

Archive Closed Support Tickets

Current versions of Smart Support also include built-in ticket archiving for closed tickets.

Ticket archiving helps keep your normal WordPress help desk views focused on current customer requests while preserving older closed tickets separately.

Smart Support can:

• Archive individual closed tickets.
• Archive multiple closed tickets in bulk.
• Automatically archive closed tickets after a configured period.
• Keep archived tickets separate from normal ticket lists and reports.
• Search archived tickets.
• Restore archived tickets when needed.
• Permanently delete archived tickets.

Review the archive options available under Ticket Closing if you want to combine automatic ticket closure with a cleaner long-term ticket management workflow.

Auto-Close vs Ticket Archive

Auto-closing and archiving perform different jobs in the Smart Support ticket system.

Auto-Close changes an inactive ticket from an active state to closed.

Archive moves an already closed ticket out of normal ticket management views while preserving it for later reference or restoration.

Using both features can help keep a busy WordPress customer support ticket system organized as ticket volume grows.

Optional Auto-Close Alert Add-on

The free Smart Support core plugin already includes automatic ticket closing.

For teams that need more control over the process, the optional Auto-Close Alert add-on extends the built-in functionality with features such as:

• Warning emails before a ticket closes.
• Reminder notifications.
• Batch-processing controls.
• Auto-close processing frequency controls.
• Additional auto-close email configuration.

The standard ability to auto-close support tickets in WordPress continues to work without this add-on.

After configuring the options, click Save Changes.

Smart Support will then use your rules to auto-close support tickets in WordPress and help keep inactive requests from cluttering the active help desk queue.