Hourly

Check suspended tickets so real customers aren't missed

Every hour you get the new emails Zendesk suspended, with the sender and the reason.

Runs: Hourly
Apps: Zendesk
AI: Not needed
Access: read (admin/agent with access)

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, email me any new suspended tickets in Zendesk with the subject, sender and why they were suspended.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Zendesk puts incoming emails in the suspended queue when it is unsure about them: a sender who is not a known user, an email that looks like spam, or a message that failed a loop check. Among the spam sits a real customer who emailed from a new address about a refund, and the message never becomes a ticket. Nobody checks the suspended tab regularly, so the customer is ignored, and from their side your company simply did not reply.

Every hour, suspended tickets are listed and compared with ones already reported. For each new one, an email is sent with the subject, sender and the cause Zendesk gave for suspending it. A reviewer scans the list in seconds and recovers real messages with one click in Zendesk.

A strong fit for teams whose customers write from many addresses.

What you get out of it

Real customers are rescued
With the sender and cause in the email, a reviewer separates customers from spam in seconds and recovers the real ones. The refund request from a new address becomes a ticket before the customer gives up on you.
Lost sales leads are recovered
New prospects often write from addresses Zendesk has never seen. Catching those pre-sales questions in the suspended queue stops quiet losses of potential revenue that nobody would ever know about.
The reviewing habit does not depend on memory
The suspended tab is somewhere everybody means to check and rarely does. A scheduled email builds the review habit that good intentions failed to build, and it runs whether or not anyone remembers.
Spam stays out of sight
Only new suspended items are reported, and the cause is shown, so obvious spam is dismissed at a glance. Nobody reads the same junk twice, which keeps the hourly email short and worth opening.
Cause information guides setup fixes
If many messages share a cause, such as an unrecognized sender domain, you learn which Zendesk setting to adjust. A few minutes of tuning can stop the losses at the source.
Customers feel heard
Someone who wrote in and gets a reply a day later has a better experience than someone who never hears back. The alert closes that gap, even for messages that the filter caught first.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every hour, ClickRuntime checks your Zendesk suspended tickets, where emails flagged as spam end up.
It skips the ones it has already shown you.
You get an email with each new suspended email's subject, sender and why it was held, so real customers are not missed.

Before it runs live

Connect Zendesk

What you get

RunsHourly

Check suspended tickets so real customers aren't missedtoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Suspended ticketsRe: Northwind invoice From: billing@northwind.example Why: Detected as spam

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Zendesk steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

suspended_ticket_review_alert.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, notify, state, report_fetched

ZD = "https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2"
AGENT_EMAIL = "you@yourcompany.com"

def zd(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, f"{ZD}{path}", auth=(f"{AGENT_EMAIL}/token", credentials.secret("ZENDESK_API_TOKEN")), **kw)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json() if r.content else None

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    last = state.get("last_id") or 0
    tickets = [t for t in zd("GET", "/suspended_tickets.json")["suspended_tickets"] if t["id"] > last]
    report_fetched(len(tickets))
    if not tickets:
        return {"new": 0}
    lines = [f"{t['subject']}\n  From: {t['author'].get('email')}\n  Why: {t['cause']}" for t in tickets]
    notify.email_me(f"{len(tickets)} new suspended tickets", "\n\n".join(lines))
    state.set("last_id", max(t["id"] for t in tickets))
    return {"new": len(tickets)}

FAQ

Common questions

What does the cause field mean?

Zendesk records why a message was suspended, such as a sender who is not a known user, a detected auto-reply or a possible mail loop. The email shows that cause so you can judge the message quickly. Zendesk deletes suspended items after its own retention period, so hourly alerts help you act well before that.

Does it recover the ticket automatically?

No. It alerts you so a person decides, because some suspended messages are spam or automated mail. Recovery is a click in Zendesk, which turns the message into a regular ticket. Recovery stays a human decision, and it takes a click in Zendesk.

How long does Zendesk keep suspended tickets?

Zendesk deletes suspended tickets after a retention period, so they cannot be reviewed forever. Hourly alerts help you act well before the messages are removed. The cause field comes from Zendesk and explains why a message was held.

What permissions does it need?

read (admin/agent with access). Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

On a schedule