The discussion revolves around using private messages (PMs) as a support ticket system in Discourse, with a focus on automating closure and reminders. Parker1090 asks if PMs can be auto-closed like categories and if reminders can be sent before closure. maiki confirms that this isn’t currently possible within Discourse but suggests exploring alternative approaches. jordan-violet proposes using external tools like n8n or Airtable with webhooks and API calls to automate PM closure. Heliosurge mentions the Private Topics plugin, which enables category-like features for PMs, including auto-closure, if the user is self-hosting.
I have two questions if that’s OK, relating to PMs.
We use PMs as part of a support system, tied in with staging emails. So a user can email a set support@ email address which is fed into a group PM with the support team. It works really well for us.
Is there a way to set an auto-close on these PMs like you can with categories? We typically set it so it closes x days after the last reply, but currently doing this manually.
Are we able to do a reminder before the PM is closed (e.g. “This thread will close in 48 hours, please reply if you want to keep it open”)?
If it’s not possible as is, that’s no problem - just thought I’d ask! The wider site is a support site, but the PMs are for more individual support relating to accounts.
We use Discourse for our support inbox as well, and I’ve had various inboxes in Discourse over the years, so I’m fairly confident it is not currently possible to automate closing PMs in this way.
However, please share more details about your objective, there may be another approach.
For instance, it seems you want those discussions to definitely end at some point, but it is not apparent to me why. Let us know.
You could do this outside of Discourse with webhooks. I’d recommend a platform like n8n or Airtable to receive the webhooks, then create an automation to send an API request to close the topic at a time interval of your choosing (eg a relative time of 30 days).
We don’t close topics like this, but we do many other automations outside of Discouse similar to this, and we get around these limitations often by sending webhooks out and API calls back in.
If your self hosted Richard has a plugin called Private Topics that may help to accomplish what your looking for. Each Op in a configured category can only see their topic with a configured group. So you can use the category settings like auto close topic
