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

Hey Jev,

Thank you for writing to us in our Forums and for actually taking the time out to clearly explain the scenario. 

So here the problem is AgentBon adds a private note for AgentSmith and AgentSmith replies to the email notification he receives. Whenever an agent replies to any notification email, his reply gets added as a Public note in the ticket. 

This is how the system has been designed. 

So it is expected that the agent logs into the portal and then replies if he wants to keep things private. 

Whenever you add a note in a ticket from within the portal, it is a Private note by default and only if you unlock it, it gets public visibility. 

Hope I have made this clear for you, Jev. Do write back to me if you have further queries.

Thanks,

Anna

Hey Sobomax,

Can you please elaborate a bit more on the issue you are facing? How are you trying to add a note and notify people? 

Please fill me in with more clarity so that I can help you out better.

Thanks,

Annapoorna 

We use Forward to send a ticket to internal teams for discussion/resolution. We use Reply to respond to the customer. We've faced the problem above too, where:

1. A client sends us an email (which raises in ticket in Freshdesk)

2. Agent forwards the ticket to another team to get issue resolved

3. Most of the time, when the person replies to the forwarded ticket, it gets added as a private note. the agent then replies to the client, but the internal discussion is not included in the email thread. This works perfectly for us. 

4. However, sometimes (I think when a person replies all to a forwarded ticket or similar scenario), the reply to the forwarded ticket gets added as a public note. We're not sure exactly when this happens, but agents have to keep a very careful eye out for this. This is the case similar to the issue mentioned by Jev.

The best way to solve this would be: if a public note is added, give option to turn it into a private note. 

Hi

I can suggest a small option of using Email commands with Action:note option in the commands, so that AGENT reply stays as Private Note, instead of going as Public Note.

I know its difficult to remember this each and everytime, but we will try to improve this section and Email commands can help, for the time being.

regards
Vijay

Please consider making a change to this behavior.  The consequences of forgetting are potential harmful.

It would be great if replies to private notes via email either defaulted to private, or if we could change this behavior via a setting. 

Replies to something marked as "Private" should also be Private, not Public. 

+1 vote from me to make notes private by default when other teams reply by email to a forwarded private note.

+1 for both private replies remaining private 

+1 for only using BCC field for all email addresses apart from the requester.

Please like or vote for this idea.

Just wondering if it's possible, is anyone using a workaround or a freshplug to manage this somehow? 

I agree, there should be an option to change the default behavior regarding replies to forwards from the admin panel.

This has also been requested under https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/13034 so you may want to vote for that feature request as well

I'd agree that this is something that seems as though it should be pretty straight forward.  The fact is that an internal person replying back to an internal email request should not be a public comment out to the customer by default.  If you have multiple back and forth email discussions from a support individual to, for example, a developer or SME, you don't want that conversation threaded to the customer. You want to make sure that your support team can aggregate the discussion into something that's logical, concise and clear for the customer without confusing the issue significantly.

I would like all e-mail input to become private notes (by default or as an option), so output is only sent to the customer  when approved by a logged-in user, just as private notes created from the application do.

How do I disable public notes. My customers are responding as a public note but it is getting missed as the ticket does not show 'Customer Responded'

This is a big deal.  It's easy for me to say that we're always 100% open and transparent with our customers (as we are) so even if this did happen it wouldn't matter, but I can imagine that some organisations have to be very guarded about what they say to their customers and this is very problematic for them.

In your case it is fine if all agents are forced to login. However, if anyone in your company with a (@yourdomain.com) email address, replies to any email (like a notification, or agent assigned email) then that gets pushed to the customer.

This relies a lot on educating the entire company to not do something. It is difficult to force managers, and other departments to remember not to reply to an email (which is usually support@company.com), and the consequence of this mistake are huge, and not correctable.

Currently If someone adds a private note and chooses to inform other agents, it then emails them the content of that note.

In my opinion, this should be changed and I can think of 2 possible ways for FD to "fix" this / stop this happening...

Option 1. the content of the private note is NOT emailed, just an alert informing the intended recipients that there is a private note could be emailed.

In this case, the recipient agents have to log in to view the private note and IF one of them replies to the email, no sensitive information is passed to the customer.

This option is likely easier to implement but less "slick" / seamless - Maybe this could be a quick workaround fix while the clever bods consider how to implement Option 2?

Option 2. the content of the private note is emailed but it stays private (with the FD agent group or intended recipients) from that point

If this is the case (which it currently is) then replies to private notes should NOT be sent to the customer - there needs to be a mechanism that stops that happening and replies should be also private and have the same scope as the original note (i.e. the list of agents).

Either way, the crux of the matter is, if you add a private note, it should stay private between those in the group that are handling the ticket.

Further opinions welcomed.

Cheers

Chris