After you have submitted a ticket, you can change a public comment to private by making it an internal note. Everyone who has access to the ticket, including anyone copied on a ticket, can see public comments but only agents can see private comments.
Agents and admins can change any comments from public to private. When you change a public comment to private, you cannot make it public again. Additionally, the comment will no longer be visible to end users in tickets or the help center.
- Open the ticket that contains the comment you want to change.
- Click the Events icon to open the ticket events.
If you don't have the Agent Workspace, click Conversation in the comments section and select Events from the drop-down menu.
The ticket's events and notifications are displayed.
- Under the comment you want to change, click Convert to internal note.
- When a confirmation message appears, click Convert to internal note.
A new event is added to the ticket indicating that the comment was converted to an internal note.
For more information about how attachments to private comments are handled, see About adding attachments to private comments.
22 Comments
To confirm, if an accidentally sent "public reply" is successfully converted to an "internal note" by using the "Make this comment an internal note" feature, will the customer or person why submitted the customer service request see the accidental message?
Hi Melinda,
Thank you for reaching out to Zendesk Support.
In regards to your concern, the comment that was changed from public to private won't be visible to the requester as long as the changes were made as soon as possible. If the agent didn't immediately change it into an internal comment, the end-user will have time to read the following email.
Thank you!
Regards,
DJ Buenavista Jr. |
Customer Advocacy Specialist | Support@Zendesk.com
If the change (convert to internal note) was made at a later time, I understand that it will no longer be visible to end-users in tickets or the web portal but will it recall the email that was already sent to the requester just in case it was not read yet?
No, once the email is sent, it cannot be recalled.
Hi, I was directed here from this comment in an article on the ZD/Slack app integration.
The integration currently creates tickets with initial comment as public. Hopefully that changes one day...but in the meantime, wondering if there is a way to change the comment type from public to internal based on on the created_from_slack tag? Pretty sure it isn't possible in triggers, but just want to confirm.
My follow-up question to Lila's is to clarify the comment she cross-linked.
That restriction mentioned is just for if the slack comment is "creating" a new ticket, yes? If the ticket already exists, can the slack comments be added as internal note updates, then?
Reneé Lasswell: From what I see in their "Using the Slack Integration" article, ALL comments via slack after create appear to be internal. Here's a link directly to the commenting on existing tickets section of the article above
Hey Team!
Just tested this out in a few different formats (Ticket Created from Zendesk), and I haven't been able to recall / unsend one of the emails, even after immediately changing the comment to internal (immediately being within a few seconds of send).
Workflow was:
Add Ticket > sent to gmail address > add Subject + Comment > Submit as Open > "Events" > Change to internal.
Any update as to if this only works with certain servers?
The method above will only remove the end-user's visibility of the actual comment in the Help Center. However, any emails that were already sent are unaffected by this method.
Hello!
Is there any way to automate the conversion? For example with get transcripts of voicemails sent to us from a specific email address which we have agents auto-convert to an internal note prior to replying to the thread. I'd like to be able to doo this via trigger or automation.
Thanks!
Although the Ticket Comments API does not have a parameter for the most recent public or private comment, you can use the List comments endpoint to retrieve all ticket comments and then pass the comment with the most recent timestamp to PUT /api/v2/tickets/{ticket_id}/comments/{ticket_comment_id}/make_private.
Note: For assistance in using the API, please reach out to your Development team and provide the API documentation above.
Hi all.
Just wondering if it's possible to make a private comment public? We have a Zoom integration running on Zendesk and when a meeting ends, it adds a private note to the ticket but ideally, we would like this to be public. Our current thinking is we copy and paste but hoped there might be something a little more streamlined as doing this impacts some of the original formatting.
Thanks
We just switched to Agent Workspace and noticing that if you enter notes and then switch from one reply type to another (ie enter notes as public and toggle it to Internal notes before saving changes), the notes you entered don't transfer over. The user has to toggle back to the reply type they entered the notes in and copy and paste them into the other reply type.
Example: Add notes "1234" with the reply type of internal. You realize the comment should be public so you toggle the reply type to Public. The notes you entered, "1234", disappear and the user either has to reenter the notes or go back to the original reply type (in this case Internal) copy the notes, toggle back to "Public" and paste the notes.
Is this the expected behavior. Seems like unnecessary extra work for the agent
bill cicchetti, this is intended in the Agent Workspace. See this section of the "Composing messages in the Agent Workspace" article. Basically you now can compose messages for multiple reply channels at the same time and submit them individually, so the drafts no longer persist when switching between reply types.
Lila Kingsley: Thanks Lila for the information. Since we currently are not using any other channels other than requests coming in via email, phone (tickets manually created by Agents) and the webform we never had seen any use for this.
I'm reading these comments and this article. Still can't be sure what to think you are providing indefinite answers. Please, make it simple.
When we converted a public reply to an internal note after we realize a mistake we done, will be still visible to the end user or customer?
Once you make the comment internal, that would hide the comment when the requester views the ticket in your Help Center if you have that option available. However, that doesn't prevent the email notification that was previously sent out when you updated the ticket with a public comment.
Hope this clears up any confusion!
Thank you team for quick feedback.
Understand now.
Hi Zendesk team,
curious to know if we can disable this option for our agents.
This can cause some confusion and some awkward moments.
Thank you.
Hey Matan Arik! This can't be disable at this time, but I can understand where you might one to disable it! This is certainly worth adding as a new post in the General Product Feedback topic!
We recently updated Zendesk to the new layout and seem to have lost the ability to toggle a reply between Public and Private. Previously, we were able to write a reply in private and, when ready, convert to public and send. Now, they function separately.
Copy/Pasting is an easy solution to this, but is there a way to go back to the old method of just changing it? We have many macros that default to Private due to needing some edits before they can be sent and I'd like to avoid having to change all of them.
Please sign in to leave a comment.