Internal email replies to tickets are creating Public notes


We are having an issue where internal company staff (agents and non-agents) are responding to Freshdesk notifications (Ticket notes, replies, and forwards) and including our support inbox that is linked with Freshdesk.

Freshdesk is then adding the email as a Public Note to the related ticket.
Can I change this so that email like this are added only as Private Notes?

I would think that if there are no requester or Company email domain addresses in the email To or CC list that the ticket would be made private, as was not intended for external circulation.

I did see that are other Matching Topics:

When replying to a private note email notification, response goes to the client via a public note (Warning: halitosis)





But I am unable to view the link in your support portal to see if there was a solution for it.



 



11 replies


Hey Chris,




Here's the link to the Knowledge Base article about Responses to Email Notifications.




To clarify the behavior of the system, when an agent forwards a ticket from the Freshdesk agent portal to anyone, it is recorded as a private note and when anyone included responds to that email, those responses are private.




When an agent or non-agent, responds to an email from the requester or an email notification about an update to the ticket, those responses are made into public notes since the intent was to respond to the customer right away.




Hope that helps.


Sudha




Hi Sudha,

That is not ideal behavior and it would be better if email responses from agents or non-agents add public notes ONLY in the case of that email having the requester in the "To/CC' field.
It is very common for a requester email to be sent to multiple recipients, we have many cases that follow:

  • Requester sends email to Support Team (freshdesk) + CCs in technical and account manager

  • Technical or Account manager then respond to the requester email, but removes the requester as a recipient and sends to support team only.  ie an internal email not meant to be circulated to the requester




Currently this is added to the ticket as a public note, even though the requester was never in the email To/CC fields.


We are never going to be able to train everyone in our organisation on the intricacies of what they can/cannot send and include support(freshdesk) in on or not.  Need a blanket default on all internal emails to be added as private.  Agents can then decide if that note is OK to make public or leave as private.




Cheers,


Chris



 


Chris, I have the exact same issue and have raised a ticket with Freshdesk about it. What you suggest about been able to configure Freshdesk to create notes as Private instead of Public, in such cases, is very reasonable.

 



Chris and Sudha, 




I'm also in need of this feature, occasionally a requester will CC other non-support users in our organization, even if we drop the requester in the email thread, it is still public in the online portal. 



+1. I accidentally attached an email as a public note when it was meant to private.


Dear Kyle,

I have asked Freshdesk to add a new configuration
option
in the Admin > Email section that says:

    Do not create a public note
when the email address of the requester is not included in the recipients ( To
or CC ) of the incoming email


with NO as default ( for the current behavior ). Then,
I and those like me that prefer otherwise, can select YES and get the desired behaviour.




Support threads like


•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/18785
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/18815
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/13034
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/306748
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/313033
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/313328
•  https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/313577
indicate that this is a problem for many Freshdesk users.



Thanos, have you had any traction with the FD team in getting this raised into product?



I spoke with them in the past and they said they would look into it but nothing happened.

Now I am trying again to convince Freshdesk that this is crucial because it can easily cause great damage to their customers ( by leaking information ).

Needless to say that other customers putting pressure on Freshdesk to address this issue are more than welcome.

At the moment we have implemented some measures to guard against an accident:
- We have disabled public note
email notifications
- We have
instructed agents to add a
@Simonsays "action":"note" @Simonsays
Freshdesk
email command in their signatures ( in all mail applications they use, which are many ) to prevent information from
leaking through public notes

Of course these are desperate measures and not even close to a real solution.


I'd like to see a feature to completely turn off public notes



There is a big weakness in FD regarding emails.  We really have no good/safe way to email team members from Freshdesk and then feel comfortable with the fact that a response will not end up publicly facing.  I know that in theory a FWD will never turn into a public note, no matter who replies. That's good but unfortunately you cannot select FWD as an action within Observer which makes it so there is no good way to email team members when things happen.  For example, when a ticket comes in that is a Sales inquiry, I want to change the Status to Sales and then have an email sent to the Sales team (who does not live in Freshdesk) instructing them of the sales inquiry. The problem is that if they reply to this internal email, the client will see the reply! This is dangerous.  




This is a big issue for us too, is it fixed now? looks like it has been ongoing for some time.....

The option to switch it on for any organisation would be great


However, I don't see responses on here from Freshdesk???


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