Custom Statuses
Define your own ticket lifecycle beyond Workestra's defaults — add stages like "Pending Customer", "Awaiting Vendor", or "Quality Check".
Every ticket starts with one of five built-in statuses: Open, In Progress, Waiting, Resolved, Closed. Most teams need more granularity than that — a billing team might want a "Pending Refund" stage, a hardware team an "RMA Issued" stage, a SaaS team a "Customer Verifying" stage.
Custom statuses let you add as many stages as you need without losing the underlying lifecycle Workestra uses for SLA, automation, and reporting.
How Statuses Work
Each status has a kind that maps it to the underlying lifecycle. SLA timers, automation triggers, and dashboard counts all read the kind, not the label:
| Kind | Built-in label | When the SLA clock counts |
|---|---|---|
| open | Open | Yes |
| in_progress | In Progress | Yes |
| waiting | Waiting | Paused — waiting on the customer |
| resolved | Resolved | Stopped |
| closed | Closed | Stopped |
When you create a custom status, you pick the kind it belongs to. A "Pending Refund" status with kind waiting will pause the SLA clock the same way the built-in Waiting status does.
Creating a Status
Permission required: workspace Admin or Owner.
- Go to Support > Settings > Ticket Statuses
- Click the + button
- Fill in the fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Label | The name agents and customers see (e.g. "Pending Refund") |
| Kind | Which built-in lifecycle stage this status belongs to |
| Color | Background color for the status badge |
| Icon | Optional icon shown in the badge |
| Order | Position in dropdowns and the kanban view |
- Click Save
The new status appears immediately in every status dropdown across the support module.
Editing & Reordering
- Click the Edit icon to rename, recolor, or change the kind of an existing status
- Drag the handle on the left of any row to reorder — order applies to dropdowns and grouped views
- The five built-in statuses can be renamed but not deleted
Archiving a Status
Archiving hides a status from new pickers without deleting historical data:
- Click the Archive icon next to the status
- Tickets that already use the status keep their value
- The status no longer appears in dropdowns when creating or editing tickets
To bring it back, toggle the Show archived switch and click Unarchive.
Don't delete a status that's currently in use on open tickets. Archive it instead — that way history stays intact and reports still work.
Best Practices
- Start small. Two or three custom statuses cover most teams. More than ten quickly becomes confusing.
- Map kinds carefully. A "Pending Customer" status with kind in_progress will keep the SLA clock running — usually not what you want. Use kind waiting instead.
- Use color consistently. Reserve red for breach states, amber for waiting states, green for resolved states.
- Don't recreate priority. Statuses describe where the ticket is in the lifecycle. Use priority for how urgent it is.
Where Custom Statuses Appear
| Surface | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Ticket detail status selector | All non-archived statuses, grouped by kind |
| Tickets list filter | Filter by any specific status or by kind |
| Bulk action bar | Set status applies to all selected tickets |
| Saved views | A view can pin a specific status as a filter |
| Dashboard charts | Status distribution chart shows your custom labels |
| Webhooks & automations | Triggers like ticket.status_changed carry the new status label |
Next Steps
- Tickets — How statuses surface in the ticket detail view
- SLA Policies — How status kind affects the SLA clock
- Saved Views — Pin a status as a saved filter