The discussion revolves around implementing an automatic response feature for new topics in a Discourse forum, similar to an out-of-office email reply. tknospdr seeks a way to auto-reply to new topics created via the web interface, based on the user’s last activity, with a generic troubleshooting message if no specific keywords are matched. ondrej suggests using the Automation plugin, which includes an auto-responder feature. tknospdr initially doubted its applicability but later reconsidered, noting that the auto-responder can use keywords and wonders if a wildcard can be used for generic responses and how it handles multiple keywords. tobias eigen confirms the idea is feasible with automation and suggests creating a custom plugin if needed, pointing to the Marketplace channel for help.
In our current ticket system, if someone e-mails in to create a new topic, I have the ‘out of office’ feature of the mail account automatically reply, but only once per any 7 day period per unique address.
Is there a way to duplicate this feature if someone creates a ticket in the web interface?
Customer creates new topic in the tickets category.
If customer has not created a new post or topic in this category in X days, then…
Auto reply to new topic with whatever I want the response to be. In our case it’s general troubleshooting advice.
I had looked at it before posting, and didn’t think it would work for what I wanted to do.
When I rethought how to use it, I think it’ll work for the most part.
I was coming at it from the mindset of a single generic response, but with the auto responder I can tailor the responses based on keywords, the problem is if none of the keywords are mentioned, can I use a wildcard to send my generic response?
And does it just parse from the top down, so if there’s multiple keywords it just hits on the first one?
This does seem to be a case for automation and it’s a good idea, but I am not aware of an existing automation script for it. It’s possible to create a plugin to add to the core provided automations, so you could create this yourself or ask in Marketplace.