How To Automatically Close Inactive Topics
This article was edited on the 24th of April 2025.
Closing topics that are inactive can help you keep content fresh in the activity streams on the community. In this article, you’ll find out how you can automate the closing of inactive topics.
How to configure the automation rule for closing inactive topics
Note: you must be have the community manager/administrator primary role to configure this rule.
- Go to Control > Settings > Automation Rules.
- Under ‘Automatically close inactive topics’, turn on the switch.
- Configure when you want topics to be closed (the number of days after which a topic has been inactive - i.e. no new replies have been added).
- Optionally configure the categories you want this rule to apply to (otherwise, all categories will be considered).
- Press save changes.
- You’re all set!
⚙️ More details around how the rule works
- Topics started by users with the following primary role are ignored by this automation rule: Administrator, Community Manager, Moderator and Superuser.
- If a topic has been closed by the automation rule, and it is reopened by a moderator, the topic will be closed again by the automation rule (this was previously not the case).
- This automation rule will close all topics regardless of when the rule was activated and of when the topics were created, as long as, of course, the topics belong to the configured categories and are inactive for the set number of days (this was previously not the case).
If you disable this automation rule and then reactivate it after some time, all topics will still be closed if they match the configured criteria (number of days + belong to category).