Your agents reply to customer tickets by adding comments to them. They can do this either through the Zendesk Support web interface, or by responding to the ticket using email or another messaging channel.
This article includes these sections:
About public and private comments
You can configure ticket comments in one of two ways:
-
Public: Ticket comments can be seen by the customer. Public comments are written on the Public reply (or messaging channel) of the ticket comments field. For example, here's where agents can add public replies from the ticket interface
-
Private: Private comments (known as internal notes) can be seen by agents, but cannot be seen by the customer. These are great for discussing tickets internally with your team without having to involve the customer. For example, here's where agents can add private comments from the ticket interface:
Making agent comments private by default
By default, when an agent adds a comment, the comment becomes public. For example, if the agent wants to add a private comment to the ticket from the ticket interface, they must first select Internal note. If they forget, the customer will see what they write.
If you prefer, you can configure ticket comments from agents to be private by default. Then, when an agent adds a comment from the ticket interface, they will need to select a public channel (such as email or chat) instead of an Internal note if they want the customer to see the comment.
If CCs are enabled, you can also change the default comment privacy for end user CCs. See Configuring CC and follower permissions.
To configure private ticket comments as the default
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings. - In the Comments section, deselect both these options: Agent comments on all tickets are public by default and Agent comments via email are public by default.
If you don't have the Zendesk Agent Workspace enabled on your account, the option names vary slightly. Deselect both these options: Agent comments by web are public by default and Agent comments via email are public by default.
24 Comments
Hello All
Is it me or is this article not in line with agent workspace. The options mentioned here are different that what is shown to me in my account.
Hi Hussain!
I've created a ticket for this concern, and here's the ticket # 6421183. We'll continue working on this using the ticket that I created, and kindly check the email that was sent to you since I have a few questions that need enlightenment; prior to conclusion.
Best,
Customer Advocacy Team
Hi Hussain!
Please accept my apology for the incorrect ticket number that I shared in this community post. This is the correct separate ticket # 6493405 that I created for your concern. We'll continue working on it using the ticket that I created, and kindly check the email that was sent to you since I have a few questions for you.
Best,
Customer Advocacy Team
On Settings > Tickets, "Agent comments via email are public by default" has been turned on (blue dot) for over one year, but by default the private comment tab always appears first by default. Is there an issue on ZD's end or something else I can do on our account to have public comments be the default tab view when any agents opens a ticket?
Hello Elizabeth,
The setting you're referring to dictates comment visibility specifically for email comments from agents; so if an agent replies to a ticket directly from a notification email that threads the comment in accord to this setting. Agent comments made within the UI, and the accompanying default composer behavior there, is controlled via the "Agent comments via web are public by default" setting under Admin>Settings>Tickets.
Beau | Customer Advocate
Ask our Zendesk Community
I just had a ticket solved out by Zendesk Support, saying this article is incorrect, saying that "At this time, unfortunately, It is not possible to make a public reply or internal notes default by channel, it is a feature at the account level."
Per this article, this is not true, but it's also not working for us. With the settings listed below and the chart in this article, I would anticipate anything "Non-email" to default to PRIVATE becuase the box isn't checked - "Support (For example, SMS, Web, or API)", and active Chats, which is ridiculous, but that's what it is, I've submitted product feedback there.
I would also expect email tickets to default to public based on the second box being checked. I'm being told by Zendesk Support that this doesn't function that way. Will someone please explain why my email conversations are still defaulting to "Internal note" for my agents.
Michael Mader I'm not sure if you received an answer to this, but there appears to be a bug in the settings whereby the email tickets take on the setting of non-email tickets. We are having the opposite problem where we have non-email conversations checked off to be public by default and do not have the agent comments via email box checked off - which should make email comments an internal note by default, but ALL channels are defaulting to public with the non-email conversation box being checked off.
I have a ticket open with ZD support right now but I believe this is a bug in how this setting is functioning. It's a large bug as it's reasonable to want chats to default to a chat reply while still having emails default to internal notes.
Hi there! Is there a way to do this on a brand by brand basis? Thanks!
I understand that you would like to have this setting per brand, however, this is an account-wide setting, and there is no option to filter it via brand as of the moment. We truly value customer feedback and your voice and votes on the product feedback topics in the community help influence future Zendesk functionality.
I don't see a setting to make merge comments deselected by default as per the merge helpfile
'To hide merge comments from requesters, deselect Requester can see this comment for both merge comments. Admins can also set the default privacy for all ticket comments to make merge comments deselected by default.'
Is there a way to make agents' comments public/private by default after calls?
I hope all is well! Toggling the settings "Agent comments on all tickets are public by default" would also default your call ticket comments to either public or private comments.
Thanks!
Hi, Gabriel! That has not been our experience with call tickets. Our instance is set up for comments to be public by default. However, when we receive calls, it defaults to internal note for the duration of the call and after hanging up.
This isn't a huge deal for us, but some of our agents would prefer the call comments to default to public. Just trying to figure out what are our options for that.
Settings:
Default call screen:
When a ticket is created from a voice call (incoming call), it is expected that the comment will automatically be set to private (Internal note). This ticket comment settings mentioned above are applicable only for email, chat, Messaging or SMS channels only.
When a Talk call becomes a ticket, switching channels could only have Internal notes and Call a number, unless the caller has an existing profile. See Understanding how phone numbers are linked to end-user profiles.
Eitherway, you may consider the workaround mentioned here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408821302810/comments/4408849427866.
Thank you!
It's a bit of an extension to this topic - it'd be great if a user could set defaulting posts to private for their own profile as well (and/or be able to define this as part of a user role) - I say this as there are workflows where internal by default would be perfect ---but not not necessarily for all agents.
I haven't looked further - is it possible to flag roles such that they're internal by default/only?
At this moment, this feature is only available for the whole organization (account-wide setting) and there is no feature yet that this is available to only selected user roles or profiles.
If you have some time, I recommend that you start a post about this in our Product Feedback topic. Our Product team actively monitors our feedback threads, and conversations with high user engagement ultimately get flagged by the team for roadmap planning. Thank you!
I would need to configure ticket comment field as internal/private as default to specific brand. I guess this is not possible with trigger or any other way?
The use case here is that calls coming in under this brand are call requests which we forward to the party handling the actual issue of the customer call. That's why we should write down the details of the issue as internal comment and would be very helpful if the comment field would open as internal comment as default.
Hello Nina,
Reference: Creating macros for tickets
We cannot set the default privacy of ticket comments by brand, unfortunately.
As you have mentioned that your agents have to write down details of the issue for this specific brand and that you need it as an internal comment, may I suggest creating a macro with all the information that you need?
This way when an agent applies this macro, they would just have to populate the needed information in an internal note.
Here's a sample setup:
Thanks Zha, that is how I have done the process now, it is just that agents need to remember to use this macro with these incoming calls and change the comment type to internal.
Dave Dyson There is documentation in a ZD article that states you can update the default for merging tickets:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882445594-Merging-tickets
Thanks Sydney! Possibly this has changed since I gave my answer (or maybe I was wrong then). I'm not at Zendesk anymore, but I'll see if my old comment can be removed.
The Agent Workspace view takes this backwards as the default is now set globally and doesn't respect the type of ticket (private vs public) as the previous interface did:
There is also no longer a warning if replying publicly (first reply) to a currently private ticket. This also happened on the old interface.
Hi there,
There is something I don't understand in here.
A conversation comes to our Support instance through web widget (messaging). No agent answer, and exactly 10min after last message from the bot, I have this system event changing visibility of the ticket to public, firing trigger "notify requester of new comments" (because this trigger has a condition with public comments only. So requester just receive an email telling him that "Company as answered, with the whole retranscription of the messages, but no actual answer.
Can someone help about this system 10min visibility thing ? I was thinking that it was the messaging 10min message turning the conversation as inactive but that option is not enabled.
I see that you posted the same question in the article Managing messaging transcript visibility. You can see my response to your message here.
Thanks!
Please sign in to leave a comment.