Support Ticket Escalations

Ticket escalation rules allow you to specify actions to take automatically if a support ticket is in a specified state for a set period of time.

You can access this feature at Configuration () > System Settings > Escalation Rules or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Support > Escalation Rules.

Configuring Escalation Rules

You can select the departments, statuses, and priorities that an escalation rule applies to. For example, in the example below, low and medium priority tickets will change to high priority, an automatic response will go to the client, and members of the relevant support department will receive an email after four hours with no response.

The following merge fields are in the Add Reply box:

[NAME] - Ticket Submitter Name
[FIRSTNAME] - First Name
[EMAIL] - Ticket Submitter Email

Setup

WHMCS 7.0 and earlier require a dedicated cron task entry for escalations:

php -q \path\to\home\public_html\whmcspath\crons\cron.php do_escalations

Note the space between cron.php and do_escalations. The command will only run the escalations task for the cron job. Configure this to run once every few minutes (we recommend every 3–5 minutes).

If you are running WHMCS 7.1 or later, this is NOT necessary.

Escalation Behavior

Escalation rules only apply to tickets that customers submitted after the escalation rule's creation. Existing tickets will not escalate automatically.

Escalation rules apply to every ticket that meets the specified conditions. If nothing happens to ensure that the ticket doesn't meet the conditions, the escalation rule will continue to affect the ticket. It will only stop affecting the ticket when it no longer matches the escalation rule conditions.