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Follow up on pending Zammad tickets automatically

A ticket goes to pending reminder while you wait for the customer, and a week later its reminder fires and a person has to reread the thread to see who owes whom an answer.

Cotlet does it in your own Zammad account with list_overview_tickets, list_ticket_articles, reply_to_customer and update_ticket, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

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Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Zammad do this on its own?

Zammad's pending states and its overviews tell you when a reminder is due, and Pending Close closes a ticket at the date you set (checked 22 Oct 2026). A trigger can email the customer with text written in advance. Nothing reads the thread to see who owes an answer, and nothing writes the follow-up.

How you do it in Zammad today

  1. Pending Reached Tickets and My Pending Reached Tickets are overviews Zammad ships by default. They list tickets in the pending reminder state whose reminder time has been reached.
  2. The agent opens each ticket and reads the thread to see whether the customer answered or the last message is still the agent's question.
  3. To chase, the agent picks the Email article type, clicks Reply under the last article, which works like an email client, writes the follow-up and clicks Update.
  4. To let a silent ticket end, the agent sets the state to Pending Close and enters a date and time; Zammad switches the ticket to closed on its own then.
  5. The reached reminders pile up on busy days, and the ones with a customer reply are mixed in with the ones where nothing happened.

How to follow up on pending Zammad tickets automatically

Prompt

Open Pending Reached Tickets in Zammad. For each one where the customer still owes an answer, send a short follow-up on the thread, then set the ticket to pending close for 3 days. Leave tickets where the customer replied for me.
  1. 01

    List the reached reminders

    list_overview_tickets reads Pending Reached Tickets, or My Pending Reached Tickets if you want only your own, and follows next_cursor to the end of the list.

  2. 02

    Find who owes an answer

    list_ticket_articles returns the thread oldest first with the sender of each article. If the last article is from the customer, the ticket is left for you with a one-line summary. If it is from an agent, the customer still owes an answer.

  3. 03

    Chase on the thread

    reply_to_customer sends one short follow-up per ticket on the ticket's own email thread, so the customer answers in the same conversation. Each follow-up waits for your OK until you switch confirmation off for this tool.

  4. 04

    Set the end date

    After the reply, update_ticket sets the state to pending close with a pending_until date from your prompt, 3 days out in the example. If your prompt gives no date, the state stays and the agent only reports.

  5. 05

    Skip what changed

    Right before replying, the agent reads the thread again. A customer reply or a colleague's note that arrived in the meantime moves the ticket to the left-for-you list.

What you get back

Example data

Pending Reached Tickets: 9
Followed up 5, set to pending close until Oct 25:
- Invoice address change (Dana Hill)
- VPN setup question (Leo Brandt)
Customer replied, left for you 3:
- Cannot export report (Mia Chen)
Skipped 1: colleague noted a call planned

Other ways to ask

  • Only follow up on tickets that have been pending for more than 5 days.
  • Draft the follow-ups in this chat and send nothing until I say so.
  • Close pending tickets where the customer ignored two follow-ups, and list them.
  • Run weekly on My Pending Reached Tickets and report how many customers answered.

What Zammad allows, and what to know first

  • Zammad's Pending Reminder state is for open tickets you want a reminder about, and it needs a date and time to notify you.
  • Pending Close is for tickets that are basically resolved: it needs a date and time, and the ticket switches to closed then.
  • Zammad uses the ticket title as the subject of an email article, so a renamed ticket changes the subject of the follow-up.
  • An article can be deleted only by the user who wrote it and only within 10 minutes, so a sent follow-up cannot be taken back through Cotlet.
  • Zammad marks pending tickets as paused, no action needed right now, so a reached reminder is the point where they come back into the queue.

reply_to_customer and update_ticket ask for your OK by default. To run it daily without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: Zammad User docs: Ticket Basics · Zammad User docs: Find Tickets · Zammad User docs: Work with Tickets · Zammad API: Ticket articles

Call reply_to_customer from a script

curl

curl -X POST https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/zammad/tickets/4790/customer/replies \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"body":"Hi Dana, a quick follow-up on your invoice address change. Could you send us the new address? If we do not hear back by Friday we will close this ticket, and you can reopen it by replying."}'

Example response

{
  "article_id": 9071,
  "ticket_id": 4790,
  "type": "email",
  "sender": "Agent",
  "internal": false,
  "to": "dana.hill@example.com",
  "subject": "Invoice address change",
  "created_at": "2026-10-22T08:05:00.000Z"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is zammad_write → reply_to_customer. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Zammad tools this automation uses

Cotlet Zammad tools used to follow up on pending Zammad tickets automatically
Tool Parameters
list_overview_tickets overview, limit, cursor
list_ticket_articles ticket_id, cursor
reply_to_customer ticket_id, body, cc
update_ticket ticket_id, state, priority, group, owner, pending_until, title
All 14 Zammad tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to connect Zammad to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Zammad yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Zammad once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

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