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Reminders automatically nudge people who have not acted on work assigned to them. Ravenna handles the follow-ups, posting a public message on the ticket and @mentioning whoever still needs to respond. There are two types:
  • Approval reminders nudge approvers who have not yet responded to a pending approval round.
  • Assignment reminders nudge the current assignee of a ticket that has been sitting in an open state.
Both are configured per workspace in Settings → Workspace → Automation. Each workspace owns its own policies, so IT and HR can run on different cadences.

Approval reminders

Nudge approvers who have not yet responded to a pending approval round.

Assignment reminders

Nudge the current assignee of a ticket that has been sitting in an open state.

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Shared behavior

Approval and assignment reminders work the same way under the hood:
  • Each is a workspace-level policy with an Enable toggle, a reminder interval (hours, days, or weeks, default 24 hours), a maximum reminders count (1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited, default 3), an optional business schedule, and optional conditions that scope which tickets the policy applies to.
  • Each reminder is a public, system-authored message posted to the ticket from the Ravenna bot that @mentions whoever still needs to act. It is visible to everyone with access to the ticket and is delivered through the same channels as any other public ticket message (Slack thread, the Admin, email mirror).
  • The interval clock restarts after every reminder. It is measured from when the work started (or from the last reminder), not from ticket creation.
  • When the maximum is reached, the work itself is unaffected. Ravenna fires a Reminder Expired workflow trigger so you can escalate, reassign, or close the ticket in a workflow.

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Conditions

You can scope a policy to a subset of tickets by adding conditions. Each policy can have one or more condition groups built from the same ticket fields you use elsewhere in Ravenna (queue, priority, form, requester attributes, and so on).
  • Leave conditions empty to remind on every ticket the policy type applies to. This is the default.
  • Add one or more conditions and the policy only sends reminders for tickets that match. Within a group, all conditions must match (AND). Across groups, any group matching is enough (OR).
  • Conditions are re-evaluated every time a reminder is about to fire, not just when the work starts. A ticket that no longer matches is skipped for that cycle, but the schedule keeps running. If the ticket changes back into scope (for example, priority is raised back to High), reminders resume on the next interval.
  • Skipped fires do not count toward the Maximum reminders cap. Only delivered reminders count.
  • To prevent a never-matching ticket from rescheduling forever, a reminder chain is capped at 30 days from when it first scheduled. After that, the chain stops on its own without firing a Reminder Expired event.

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Business hours and weekends

Reminders respect the business schedule you select on the policy. If a reminder would fire outside the schedule’s working windows, Ravenna defers it to the next working window so people are not pinged overnight or on weekends.
  • If the policy has no schedule selected, reminders fire on a straight wall-clock interval, including nights and weekends.
  • The interval is measured in real time, not business time. A 24-hour interval still resumes 24 hours after the work started; the deferral only shifts the delivery moment forward to the next working window.
  • Only schedules that belong to the same workspace can be selected.
Automation settings are admin-only. Each workspace has its own policies. There is no per-queue, per-form, or per-ticket override. Disable a workspace’s policy to stop those reminders everywhere in that workspace.

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Approval reminders

When a round becomes active, Ravenna schedules the first reminder using your workspace’s interval setting. Each time the reminder fires:
  1. Ravenna looks up the round’s pending approvers (anyone who has not yet approved or declined).
  2. If there are no pending approvers, nothing is sent and no further reminders are scheduled. The round has either completed or been reset.
  3. Otherwise, Ravenna posts a public message that @mentions every pending approver:
    @Alice, @Bob, this is a reminder that your approval is pending on this ticket.
  4. If the round still has pending approvers and the cap has not been reached, Ravenna schedules the next reminder one interval out from the message it just sent.
  5. When the cap is reached, Ravenna fires a Reminder Expired workflow trigger of type Approval.
Reminders are tied to the round, not the ticket. A ticket with three sequential rounds gets up to three independent reminder cycles, one per round, each starting when the round activates.
Approvers who are added to a round mid-flight (for example, when an admin edits the round) are picked up automatically on the next reminder. They do not need to wait for a new cycle to start.
Approval reminders do not send a fresh Slack DM. They reuse the standard ticket message surface so the reminder shows up in the existing approval conversation, not a separate inbox. Approvers respond using the existing Approve and Decline controls in the ticket or the original approval Slack DM. To re-prompt via DM, reset the round.

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Configure approval reminders

1

Open Automation settings

Go to Settings → Workspace → Automation. The page is admin-only.
2

Enable approval reminders

Find the Approval Reminders card and toggle Enable approval reminders on.
3

Set the reminder interval

Set how long Ravenna waits after a round opens (or after the last reminder) before sending the next nudge. Enter a whole number and select hours, days, or weeks. The default is 24 hours.
4

Set the maximum reminders

Set how many nudges Ravenna sends per round before giving up. Select from 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited. The default is 3.
5

Select a business schedule (optional)

Under Business hours, select a business schedule to restrict when reminders can fire. Leave it set to No schedule to send on a wall-clock interval, including nights and weekends.
6

Add conditions (optional)

Under Conditions, select Add condition set to limit reminders to tickets matching specific filters (for example, only Priority is High or Urgent). Leave empty to remind on every pending approval round.

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When approval reminders stop

A reminder cycle ends as soon as any of the following happens:
  • All approvers on the round have responded (the round is approved, declined, or reset).
  • The round has no pending approvers when a reminder is about to fire.
  • The configured Maximum reminders count has been sent.
  • An admin disables the Enable approval reminders toggle.
  • The reminder chain has been running for 30 days without delivering, because the ticket never matched the policy’s conditions.

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Assignment reminders

When a ticket is assigned, Ravenna schedules the first reminder using your workspace’s interval setting. Each time the reminder fires:
  1. Ravenna checks the ticket. If the ticket is unassigned, was reassigned to someone else, archived, or has moved to a terminal status (Done or Closed), the reminder is cancelled.
  2. Otherwise, Ravenna posts a public message that @mentions the current assignee:
    @Alice, this is a reminder to follow up on a ticket assigned to you.
  3. If the cap has not been reached, Ravenna schedules the next reminder one interval out from the message it just sent.
  4. When the cap is reached, Ravenna fires a Reminder Expired workflow trigger of type Assignment.
Reminders are tied to the ticket and its current assignee. Reassigning the ticket replaces the schedule with a fresh cycle for the new assignee.
Only one assignment reminder runs at a time per ticket. The schedule is keyed by ticket, not by assignee, so a new assignment supersedes the previous reminder.

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Configure assignment reminders

1

Open Automation settings

Go to Settings → Workspace → Automation. The page is admin-only.
2

Enable assignment reminders

Find the Assignment Reminders card and toggle Enable assignment reminders on.
3

Set the reminder interval

Set how long Ravenna waits after a ticket is assigned (or after the last reminder) before sending the next nudge. Enter a whole number and select hours, days, or weeks. The default is 24 hours.
4

Set the maximum reminders

Set how many nudges Ravenna sends per assigned ticket before giving up. Select from 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited. The default is 3.
5

Select a business schedule (optional)

Under Business hours, select a business schedule to restrict when reminders can fire. Leave it set to No schedule to send on a wall-clock interval, including nights and weekends.
6

Add conditions (optional)

Under Conditions, select Add condition set to limit reminders to tickets matching specific filters (for example, only tickets in a particular queue, or only Priority is High or Urgent). Leave empty to remind on every assigned ticket.

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When assignment reminders stop

A reminder cycle ends as soon as any of the following happens:
  • The ticket is unassigned or reassigned to a different user. A new cycle begins for the new assignee.
  • The ticket is archived.
  • The ticket moves to a terminal status (any status in the Done or Closed system group).
  • The configured Maximum reminders count has been sent.
  • An admin disables the Enable assignment reminders toggle.
  • The reminder chain has been running for 30 days without delivering, because the ticket never matched the policy’s conditions.
When the maximum is reached, the ticket stays open and assigned. The signal that reminders have given up is the Reminder Expired workflow trigger.

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Escalate stale work with workflows

Pair reminders with the Reminder Expired workflow trigger to escalate work that exhausts its reminder budget without progress. Filter the trigger’s Reminder Type to Approval or Assignment so the workflow only fires for the reminder type you intend.Common patterns:
  • Notify a backup approver or the assignee’s manager. Add a manager or fallback group when the cap is hit so the request keeps moving.
  • Reassign to a fallback group. Move the ticket to a backup queue or assign it to a different team so it does not stall.
  • Post an escalation note. Add a private note summarizing who is still pending and ping a lead for triage.
  • Auto-close stalled requests. If a request has been ignored for too long, change the ticket status or decline the round in a workflow.
Learn more about the Reminder Expired trigger and building escalation workflows.

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Tips

  • Start conservative. A 24-hour interval with a 3-reminder cap is the default for a reason. Tighter cadences create noise without changing outcomes.
  • Select a business schedule. Without one, reminders fire 24/7 and people get pinged in the middle of the night.
  • Use conditions to focus the policy. If only high-priority or queue-specific work warrants nudging, add conditions so routine tickets are not pinged. Conditions are re-checked on every fire, so a ticket can drop out and back into scope without losing its place.
  • Use Waiting statuses to pause assignment reminders. Assignment reminders only stop when a ticket reaches a terminal status group (Done or Closed). Use statuses and SLA pauses deliberately so reminders fire only when the assignee actually owns the next step.
  • Always design the expiry path. Reminders only nudge, they do not move the ticket. Build a Reminder Expired workflow so stalled work gets reassigned or escalated automatically.
  • Combine approval reminders with Wait for Approval timeouts. Reminders push approvers to act; the workflow’s On Timeout branch handles the case where they never do.
Last modified on July 27, 2026