Today we’re excited to release new statuses in Plain. We’ve heard and implemented these changes based on feedback we’ve received over the past couple of months – and you’ll now have a better overview of the progress you’re making on your support threads. The new statuses better reflect how support teams work.

Previously, there were 3 statuses in Plain: Todo, Snoozed and Done. These covered the basics, but didn’t help you understand the status of in progress threads without some digging.

Today we’re introducing several new statuses to bring more structure to your support queue. 

Todo is now broken down into more relevant statuses, so you know what a thread is waiting on: 

• Needs first response – a customer got in touch over a new issue and they are waiting for you to reply 

• Needs next response – this status indicates that this isn’t a new thread, and there’s already been some back-and-forth with your customer 

• Investigating – threads that your team are actively finding the root cause for

Snoozed is now broken up into 2 sections, making the purpose behind the snooze clearer for your team:

• Waiting for customer – you are waiting for the customer to reply

• Paused for later – the thread is snoozed because your team are doing the work required to actually close the thread and solve the issue for your customer

With these new statuses come some improved workflow upgrades for you and your team:

• Improved status picker UI
  Previously to change the status of a thread, you had to choose it from the sidebar. Statuses can now be changed from the quick action bar below the composer (keyboard shortcut: S)

• Improved status syncing between Slack and Plain:
  When you respond to a support request in Slack, the thread will automatically move to “waiting for customer” – meaning you don’t need to make updates in Plain and Slack. Your customer support queue will accurately represent the status of each thread, regardless of whether you’ve replied in Plain or Slack.

• Bulk actions on statuses are here
  You can now change the status of your customer threads in bulk, rather than updating them one-by-one. 

If you are currently consuming status transition webhook events, there are no required changes you need to make right now. However, in the coming weeks, we will get in touch with you to offer a migration path to get webhook events including the new statuses.

Today’s release is just the start of some really exciting UI and workflow changes that we’ll be making over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more updates.  🎉