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

Related products:Freshdesk
  • April 25, 2013
  • 44 replies
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44 replies

S
Community Debut
  • saffinati
  • Community Debut
  • July 1, 2015
Re ideas from Chris Phillips - I like Option 1 - just send a *notification* of a private note (perhaps allow the option to email the contents, if someone really wants that - with an explanation of "possible consequences".)  The problem with Option 2 is that when you email something, it is now "out there" - is no longer private - and can be passed around.

The best solution is to work inside FreshService, as intended.  Then, only agents can see the private notes.



I
Contributor
  • ian.witts
  • Contributor
  • July 1, 2015

As the system currently stands it is easy to:


  1. Say something inappropriate (internal joke, something derogatory about the customer, etc) and for that comment to find its way to the customer.
  2. Give the recipe to your secret sauce and then all recipients will see it.
  3. Imagine a whole host of other scenarios where you do not want the customer seeing the internal journal.

Like I say, the reality is that you should be 100% professional and if you feel that strongly about a customer that you need to write journal entries about them you're probably in the wrong job!  However, you could conceivably write some information that is part of the product / service you deliver and if that was to accidentally leak it could be a disaster.

This definitely needs to be resolved and I agree with the guys above, a link to the comment sounds like the best solution rather than the info being contained in the email.
A
Contributor

Hi everyone,


Thanks for your suggestions and responses.


We agree this is a valid concern and must be addressed - especially if inappropriate comments are being made about the customer :)


We have included this fix in our current roadmap and should be able to implement it in the near future. The fix will ensure that if an agent responds to a private note from the mailbox instead of logging into Freshdesk, the response is added as a private note in the ticket, instead of the current behaviour of including the response as a public note. Will update after we have rolled out the implementation.


Have a great day!

J
Community Debut
  • john.lindsay
  • Community Debut
  • July 2, 2015

Thanks for the info Arvind,


What would work better for us (I don't know if others would agree) is to have an option in the admin back-end to provide 3 options:


1: All comments via email are visible to customer

2: Only replies to private comments via email are private.

3: All agent email responses to open tickets are private comments.

S
Community Debut
  • saffinati
  • Community Debut
  • July 2, 2015
Hi John - while I *do* agree that adding options / customizations are good, I don't agree that these particular options are necessary or desirable.  If you want all comments via email to be visible to the customer, then don't create private notes.  "Private" should remain private!  It would be more dangerous to allow this override - only my opinion of course ; )

Thanks to everyone here for making this fix a reality (well, "planned" at the moment - it's coming!)


 

J
Contributor

Agreed. This is more than a nice-to-have. I was today in the situation where two internal email replies to a private note were included in my subsequent reply to the customer. That was despite me being very careful and deleting the internal emails in questions from the quoted text in the Freshdesk reply editor.  Freshdesk copied these internal replies back into my reply to customer on sending.  Thankfully there was nothing too sensitive in our internal discussion but this could have been really embarrassing.

At the very least, email replies to private notes should be private by default.

A
Contributor

John / Suzanne / Julien: Thank you for your feedback. 


Rest assured, we will definitely look into the best way we can implement this feature such that is caters suitably to the requirements of most users. Have a great day!

D
Community Debut
  • denny.culbert
  • Community Debut
  • October 21, 2015

Checking in to see if there has been any progress on this issue...


I've been using Freshdesk for about a month now and this issue is currently preventing us from making our customer portal available to our customers--which is one of the main reasons for going with Freshdesk in the first place.  It seems that if you forward an email to an internal employee who is NOT an Agent, the reply comes back as a Private Note.  However, if you forward an email to an internal employee who IS an Agent, the reply comes back as a Public Note.  While we do not make it our practice to write defamatory comments about our customers, we do often share proprietary information between staff, or may simply ask a stupid question that we do not want our customers to see by accident.  Leaving it up to each Agent to remember to add code to their email replies or log into FD each time to leave a private note is too risky for us and not very efficient, so we are deciding not to use the public portal until we have more certainty that internal replies will not be unintentionally posted for our customers to see.


Would love to see a status update on this issue...   

C
Contributor

I had a watch alert on this ticket - so thanks for reminding us Denny - I'm posting primarily to up vote/backup up Denny's question asking for a progress update... 


What approach did Freshdesk decided upon? (there were several suggestions earlier in this thread etc.)


Cheers

Chris

A
Contributor

Hi Denny, Chris


We are actively working on finding the best solution to resolve this issue. However, as it requires certain architectural changes from our end, it is taking us some time to finalise on a solution. Rest assured, this is one of our top priorities at the moment and we request you to bear with us a little longer. 


Cheers,

Arvind.

C
Contributor

Ace - thanks for keeping us updated Arvind :-)

A
Contributor

Hi all,


Thank you for your patience on this. We are now working on modifying this behavior and hopefully in a few weeks from now, we will get back to you with a confirmation on the fix after it is rolled out.  


Have a great day ahead!

D
Community Debut
  • denny.culbert
  • Community Debut
  • November 11, 2015

This is great news, Arvind.  Thank you!

A
Contributor

Hi all,


Further to the trailing thread, just wanted to let you know that we have performed the following fixes based on the most frequently reported concerns on this forum:


Concern raised: If an agent (say John), adds a private note to another agent (say James), a notification mail is sent to James' inbox corresponding to this note. If James replies to this note from his inbox, the reply is being added as a public note on the ticket instead of the expected behaviour of being added as a private note. 

Update: This issue has been fixed and replies to email notifications for private notes, will be added as private notes on the ticket.


Concern raised: If an agent (Say John) forwards a reply to another agent (say James), an email is sent to James' inbox with the forwarded content. If James replies to this forwarded mail, his response will be added as a public note on the ticket as he is an agent. However, expected behaviour is that the reply to the forwarded mail is added as a private note on the ticket.

Update: This issue has been fixed and agent replies to forwarded mails will be added as private notes on the ticket.


Hope the above fixes resolve the pressing concerns raised on this forum. Thank you all for your patience during this fix and for your helpful suggestions.


Cheers,

Arvind

J
Contributor
Thanks for the update Arvind.  Great to see this implemented.  I have tested both scenarios and both fixes seems to work very nicely. Big improvement for us as this makes Freshdesk much easier to use for day-to-day internal communication on customer support.
B
Contributor
  • bdunn
  • Contributor
  • August 18, 2016

Hi All!


There is one more step in the workflow that has not yet been tested, and that is how to reply back to the other Agents private note - you cannot at the moment e.g a reply icon does not appear.  The only time you are able to do this is when the reply came from a non-agent email address.


Freshdesk creates a Private note, where the Agent can then reply back within the ticket itself.  Any sent from outside of Freshdesk after the initial reply from the "other" Agent, will product a Public Note.


It is very common to have multiple thread back-and-forth, and the existing work flow is not adequate unfortunately.  Freshdesk needs to check if the FROM Email address is assigned to an Agent, if it is, then it should create a PRIVATE note which the Agent that owns the ticket can reply directly from within the Ticket itself OR through their mail client.

S
Contributor

Hey Bill,


Thanks for giving us your feedback about the workflow for Private notes and detecting that an agent has replied and using that to make those replies private notes. I will add this idea to our product backlog, but cannot give you a timeline for implementation yet.


I'm also closing this topic since the original issue has been implemented and resolved. Do keep sending us your valuable feedback to help us improve the product.


Thanks!

Sudha

C
Community Debut

Does anyone know if this is resolved now?

A
Community Debut

Hello Caitrina,


Yes! As mentioned by @Aravind, when an agent replies to the Note added email notification or when a reply is forwarded to an agent, and when the agent replies back to it, both the responses will be added as a private note instead of a public note.


Hope this helps!


Cheers!

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