Open / Close Conversation

Getting here

Automate → Workflows, open a workflow, click + on the canvas, then pick Open / Close Conversation under Add Steps.

Before you start

• An owner, admin or agent can add this step and save the workflow. Publishing it is an owner or admin action.
• Building and running workflows depends on your plan; see pricing.
• Nothing outside Inchat has to be connected. A closing category is optional and, if used, must already exist in the workspace's closing-note settings.

Set up

1. Open the workflow and click + where the status change belongs.
2. Pick Open / Close Conversation.
3. Choose the new status: Open Conversation, Pending, Snoozed or Close Conversation.
4. If closing, optionally choose a Conversation category and write a Summary — both become part of the closing note.
5. Save the step, then publish the workflow.

Fields

Status

The conversation's new status: Open, Pending, Snoozed or Closed.

Default: Close Conversation

Conversation category

An optional closing-note category from the workspace's own list, shown only when closing. This step is the only place in the product that sets it — closing a conversation by hand from the Inbox has no category field.

Limits: If the chosen category no longer exists in this workspace when the step runs, it is left off the close rather than failing it.

Summary

Optional free text, shown only when closing, written as an internal note just before the conversation closes. Closing by hand from the Inbox has no equivalent field.

Limits: Up to 2,000 characters.

How it works

• This one step covers all four statuses, not only opening and closing — the menu's name names the two most common, but Pending and Snoozed are the same step.
• The Conversation category and Summary on a close are set by THIS step only — closing a conversation by hand from the Inbox has no category or summary field at all, so there is no manual equivalent to match or fall short of.
• Closing can trigger the workspace's own CSAT survey to the customer afterward, if CSAT is turned on for the workspace and the contact has not been surveyed too recently — the survey itself goes through the same underlying function the Inbox's own close button uses, tagged as coming from a workflow rather than from a person.
• A Summary is written as an internal note on the thread before the conversation closes, so the reason for closing it is visible to the team on the timeline, not only in the closing note.
• Reopening a closed conversation marks the record with when it had been closed — this is a note for the AI's own next turn on the thread (so it can tell it is answering after a reopen), not something the Inbox displays to an operator; it is cleared once the AI's next turn reads it.

When it fails

• Reopening a conversation whose contact already has another open conversation on the same channel is refused by the database — the step fails quietly, and nobody is paged about it.
• A general write failure fails the step; the reason is in the workflow's Activity tab, under Execution log.
• A chosen closing category that no longer exists when the step runs does not fail the step — the close still happens, just without that category.

Limits

• Unlike a manual close, closing this way does NOT fire a Conversation Closed trigger on other workflows, and writes no "X closed the conversation" line on the timeline — a manual close writes that line, this step does not. A Conversation Closed workflow (built for CSAT follow-up, tagging, or a summary) runs when a person closes the thread by hand; it does not run when a workflow closes it with this step.
• Whether a CSAT survey actually goes out depends on more than just the workspace's CSAT toggle: it also skips silently if the conversation has no contact, if there is no way to send it a message right now, or if the actual send attempt fails — none of those show up as a failure of this step.
• It is a single pass-through action with no Success or Failure branch of its own — the run continues to whatever comes after it on the canvas either way.
• The internal note from Summary and the status change happen independently — if writing the note fails, the status change still goes through.
• Snoozed writes only the conversation's legacy status column — it sets no wake time. The Inbox's own Snoozed view is keyed on a separate snooze timer, not this status, so a conversation snoozed by this step does not appear there and nothing brings it back to the team's attention later on its own.

Use cases

• A self-serve path resolves the customer's request and closes the conversation with a category and a short summary for whoever reviews closed threads later.
• A workflow that hands a thread off to Pending marks it that way to distinguish it in reports from a thread still genuinely open — without relying on Snoozed, which needs a wake time this step cannot set.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Does closing this way send the customer anything?

Only if the workspace's CSAT survey is turned on, the conversation has a contact, and the survey send itself succeeds — in that case the same survey the manual close button can trigger may go out. The summary you type is an internal note, never sent to the customer.

Can this step do more than just Open and Close?

Yes — the same step also covers Pending and Snoozed, even though the menu names it after the two most common choices.

Does closing a conversation with this step fire a Conversation Closed workflow?

No. That trigger runs when a person closes the thread by hand, not when a workflow closes it with this step — a real gap between what the trigger's own description promises and what the code does today.

If I set the status to Snoozed, will it show up in the Inbox's Snoozed view later?

No. Snoozed there means a wake timer is running; this step only writes the older status value, with no timer, so the conversation neither appears under Snoozed nor comes back to anyone's attention on its own.

Related

• Assign To (human) — Hand the conversation to one named teammate, or spread it across the workspace by round robin or fewest open contacts, with an optional timeout message if nobody answers.
• Escalate — Pause the AI on this thread and page a human right now — the safety net at the end of a path the AI could not, or should not, finish alone.
• Create a Task — Put an item with the thread attached onto the workspace's Tasks list — the thing that survives the end of a shift, which an internal note does not.
• Workflows: how a flow runs — A workflow is one trigger, optional conditions and an ordered list of steps; only a published workflow runs, and this article explains how a run starts, forks, pauses, fails and stops.