Change the ticket from a status to another (running stats) with requester's reply

Change the ticket from a status to another (running stats) with requester's reply

I recently came across a new use case. I have set all statuses to running (do not stop timer), so I have lost the ability to automatically change the status based on the user's response. (Advanced Portal Settings>Reopen Request)

I have the Professional subscription. I haven't found a way to do this using business rules or triggers, it seems the only option is to upgrade to Enterprise (and pay an extra 10k) for custom functions. 

I wonder if any of you have a workaround for this. Cheers. 

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