On a schedule

Find tickets no agent has picked up

Tickets still without an agent after 2 hours land in Slack, each one only once.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Freshdesk
AI: Not needed
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 30 minutes, find Freshdesk tickets with no agent assigned that are more than 2 hours old and send the list to #helpdesk in Slack.

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

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

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

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Tickets that nobody owns are the quiet failures of a support team. Email creates a ticket, the round-robin misses it or the group has no agent online, and it lies in the queue with no responder. Each agent assumes someone else saw it. A customer who wrote in on Monday morning is still waiting on Tuesday, and what started as a simple question has become a complaint that needs a manager's apology.

On a regular check, ClickRuntime filters Freshdesk tickets that have no responder, looks at how long each has been open, and posts a message to Slack for each one that has waited longer than your limit. It remembers each ticket it has mentioned, so a given ticket produces one warning.

It suits teams with shared inboxes, rotating shifts or several groups where ownership can slip.

What you get out of it

Find tickets nobody owns
The check looks for the absence of a responder, which is exactly the situation people cannot see in a busy list. A ticket without an owner gets one before the customer has waited long.
Warn at the right moment
Only tickets older than your limit are mentioned, so new ones that are being handled are left alone. The alert means a ticket has genuinely been waiting, not that it just arrived.
Cover shift changes and time zones
Handovers are when tickets fall through. An alert at the start of a shift lists what was left unassigned overnight, so the new team starts with the neglected items. A good handover habit starts with a list.
Reduce escalations to managers
Customers who wait a day for a first reply often escalate. Catching unowned tickets early prevents many of those messages and the apologies that follow. That saves the manager time and the customer frustration.
Give each ticket one clear warning
Posting once per ticket stops the channel from filling with repeated notices. People learn to take each message seriously instead of treating the alert as noise. Fewer notices carry more weight.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 30 minutes ClickRuntime checks Freshdesk for open tickets that have no agent assigned.
It keeps the ones that have been waiting more than 2 hours.
It skips any ticket it has already posted, so each one is flagged only once.
The list goes to your #helpdesk Slack channel with each ticket's number, subject and a link to open it.

Before it runs live

Connect Freshdesk

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Find tickets no agent has picked uptoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #helpdeskUnassigned for 2h+: #5821 Can't export invoices https://acme.freshdesk.com/a/tickets/5821

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 Freshdesk 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.

unassigned_unattended_ticket_alert.pyexample

from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

DOMAIN = "acme"  # acme.freshdesk.com

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    key = credentials.secret("FRESHDESK_API_KEY")
    resp = http.get(f"https://{DOMAIN}.freshdesk.com/api/v2/search/tickets",
                    params={"query": '"status:2 AND agent_id:null"'}, auth=(key, "X"))
    resp.raise_for_status()
    cutoff = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(hours=2)
    posted = set(state.get("posted") or [])
    old = [t for t in resp.json()["results"]
           if datetime.fromisoformat(t["created_at"].replace("Z", "+00:00")) < cutoff and t["id"] not in posted]
    report_fetched(len(old))
    if not old:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    lines = [f"#{t['id']} {t['subject']}  https://{DOMAIN}.freshdesk.com/a/tickets/{t['id']}" for t in old]
    notify.slack("Unassigned for 2h+:\n" + "\n".join(lines), channel="#helpdesk")
    state.set("posted", list(posted | {t["id"] for t in old})[-1000:])
    return {"posted": len(old)}

FAQ

Common questions

How long counts as unattended?

You choose. Many teams use one or two hours during working hours, and longer overnight. The check compares the ticket's creation time with the current time and posts only when it passes your limit. Start strict, then relax.

Does assigning a group count as an owner?

A ticket assigned to a group but not to an agent has no responder, so it is still flagged. If your process works through group queues, you can also treat group assignment as ownership and flag only tickets with no group.

What if an agent replies without being assigned?

Replying in Freshdesk normally makes the agent the responder. If a ticket has a reply but no responder, the check can use first response time too, so it does not warn about tickets that have been answered.

What permissions does it need?

read. 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.

Hourly