# Assign topic on staff reply
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417
**Category:** Bug
**Tags:** assign
**Created:** [November 7, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417 "2017-11-07T20:46:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@charliel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charliel)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/1 "2017-11-07T20:46:08Z")
Could a setting be added so that if a moderator replies to a topic he is automatically assigned to it? Because if he replies the assumption is that he is the one now dealing with it. Would save our guys having to self-assign all the time.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/2 "2017-11-07T20:47:29Z")
Would definately have to be a setting, this is not a common workflow.
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2017, 8:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/3 "2017-11-07T20:58:23Z")
Could the `assign self regex` work? Your moderators would simply need to ensure that they include a certain phrase in their reply. For example, here on meta if I were to write “my list” the topic would be assigned to me.
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### Author:  [@jordan1909](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan1909)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/4 "2018-05-02T20:03:23Z")
We had a need in our installation to auto assign the first staff member to reply to a topic, I saw this had been requested before so I submitted a PR to add this feature.
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse-assign/pull/14](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-assign/pull/14)
If you enable the site setting: assign first staff it will assign the first staff member to post (after enabling) to a topic.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/5 "2018-12-04T00:17:55Z")
Yes I am rejecting this based off `assign self regex` it is a far safer workflow and if you need to go into automatic assignment world I would recommend simply creating another plugin that takes care of it.
I don’t think this is a setting I want to carry.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/assign-topic-on-staff-reply/103417/6 "2018-12-04T00:17:57Z")