Scheduled Replies
Compose a reply now and schedule it to deliver to the customer at a future date and time.
Scheduled replies let you write a response while the context is fresh and have Workestra deliver it later — useful for waiting until a customer's business hours, spacing out follow-ups, or queuing a reply to go out after a planned maintenance window.
Scheduling a Reply
- Open a ticket and write your reply in the comments composer
- Click the Schedule button next to Send Reply
- Pick a date and time in the dialog
- Click Schedule
The reply leaves the composer and joins the Pending scheduled replies banner above the comments. The customer doesn't see anything until the scheduled time.
Scheduled times are interpreted in your workspace's default timezone. Pick "tomorrow at 9:00 AM" and that's 9:00 AM in your team's timezone, not the customer's.
Pending Replies Banner
When a ticket has scheduled replies waiting, a banner appears at the top of the comments section showing:
- Scheduled time (e.g., "Tomorrow at 9:00 AM")
- Author — who composed it
- Preview — the first ~80 characters of the reply
- Edit — open the reply for changes (still pending)
- Cancel — discard the scheduled reply without sending
You can have several scheduled replies on the same ticket. Each fires independently at its own time.
Editing a Pending Reply
- Click Edit on the pending reply in the banner
- Change the date, time, or message body
- Click Save — the schedule updates
If you change the time to the past, Workestra rejects it with an error. To send immediately, cancel the scheduled reply and use Send Reply instead.
Cancelling a Scheduled Reply
- Click Cancel on the pending reply
- Confirm the cancellation
The reply is discarded — no comment is created, no email is sent.
How Delivery Works
When the scheduled time arrives:
- A daily delivery job picks up the reply
- The reply becomes a real public comment on the ticket
- The customer receives an email with your message
- The ticket's first-response time is recorded if this was the first agent reply
- If the ticket was Open, it moves to In Progress
- CCs on the ticket receive the email
The same fields that govern manual replies also govern scheduled ones — internal notes can't be scheduled (they don't trigger the email path), and the reply uses your name as the author.
Delivery Cadence
Scheduled replies dispatch on a daily schedule on the current Workestra plan. A reply scheduled for 9:00 AM may deliver any time within ~24 hours of that target. If you need precise minute-level scheduling, use the public API to insert a comment at the exact moment from your own scheduler.
This cadence is a Vercel Hobby-tier limitation. Higher tiers will dispatch hourly or sub-hourly.
When Scheduling Fails
If sending the email fails when the scheduled time arrives:
- The comment is still created on the ticket (so the work isn't lost)
- The scheduled-reply row is marked failed with the error message
- An admin notification fires
Re-send manually by opening the ticket and clicking Send Reply with the same message.
Best Practices
- Use it for time-zone politeness. Don't ping a US East Coast customer at 3 AM their time just because your Sydney shift ends.
- Respect customer pacing. If a customer asks for "an update in a week", schedule the update — don't trust your memory.
- Don't schedule resolutions. Resolving a ticket should be acknowledged in real time. Schedule status updates and follow-ups, not closures.
- Cancel before editing the ticket extensively. If you change the customer or status while a reply is pending, the pending reply still goes out with its original content.
Next Steps
- Tickets — Single-ticket reply workflow
- Bulk Actions — Bulk reply (no scheduling)
- Canned Responses — Templates for common replies