FAQ — I Marked a Conversation Done but It’s Back in Active
This is usually by design, not a bug: the customer came back on the same conversation, and that moves it from Done to Active. Check the latest message — in most cases, you’ll find inbound activity after your Done timestamp.
There are four ways a Done conversation goes back to Active on its own:
- The customer came back. An inbound message on the conversation reopens it. A returning caller matched to the same conversation does the same thing.
- A side conversation got a reply. An inbound reply on one of the conversation’s side conversations reopens the parent ticket, so the answer doesn’t stay buried under Done.
- An automation reopened it. A rule with the Reopen Conversation action moves a Done conversation to Active.
- An outbound send failed for good. If an agent or AI message never reached the customer after the last attempt, Atender reopens the conversation so the Failed to send marker and the resend controls are visible. Two sends are excluded — a message sent by an automation rule, and a manual resend of a message that already went out once — and an Archived conversation is never reopened this way.
Archived is terminal in all four cases: nothing on this page reopens an archived conversation.
The exception: detected automatic replies
An out-of-office answer or a bounce doesn’t have to reopen a closed ticket, but you have to switch that on — it is off out of the box.
Go to Settings → Email → General → Filter. Turn on Detect automatic replies, and leave Keep closed conversations closed on underneath it. With both on, an inbound email that Atender recognises as machine-written leaves a Done conversation in Done.
Recognition is header-based and deliberately narrow: the Auto-Submitted header a real out-of-office sets, the older X-Autoreply / X-Autorespond autoresponder markers, or the empty return path of a bounce. Mailing-list traffic is not treated as automatic, so a person writing from a group or distribution-list address still reopens the ticket. This setting covers email only — it does not affect other channels.
How to confirm
Open the conversation and look at the message log and the info panel. Check for:
- an inbound customer message dated after the moment you marked it Done
- an inbound reply on one of the conversation’s side conversations
- a message carrying the Failed to send marker after the Done timestamp
- an entry under Automation history for a rule that reopened it
If Detect automatic replies and Collapse them in the conversation are both on, a machine-written email appears as a single Automatic reply from … line you can click to open. It is easy to scroll past, so check for it before concluding nothing arrived.
If none of those explain it
If the conversation reopened and there’s no inbound message, side-conversation reply, failed send, or automation entry after your Done timestamp, that’s worth flagging to Atender support — capture the conversation ID.