Recent searches


No recent searches

Agent Workspace: Keep content from internal note if changing to public reply



Posted Mar 23, 2022

Post Title: 

Keep content from internal note if changing to public reply in agent workspace.

Feature Request Summary: 

Keep any text that has been typed in an internal note in the response box if the reply is changed to a public reply, rather than having to copy and paste it.

Description/Use Cases: 

We have our agents use internal notes for the drafting of replies. This worked fine prior to the migration to agent workspace, but now when drafting an email in an internal note, the content is lost when you switch to a public reply.

Business impact of limitation or missing feature:

Drafting replies in internal notes has been encouraged as standard process to prevent internal notes from accidentally being sent as public replies. It used to be a simple click to change from internal to public, but now it is necessary to copy and paste. This opens up room for errors if the copy and paste is incomplete, and is an extra step that wasn't necessary before.

Please allow for the entered content to transfer between different types of replies. 


77

61

61 comments

+1 to this thread — the old Zendesk functionality (maintaining the drafted message between Internal and Public replies) was much easier to use for all of the reasons mentioned above by other users.

Hopefully this thread is a reminder to Zendesk PMs to conduct a modicum of user research before making clumsy changes to common workflows.

2


+1 to this request. 

Having recently updated to Suite and Agent Workspace to be able to utilize other features not available in Legacy, this change significantly impacts our agents' workflow.

I think a button as proposed in #2 (above) could be a valuable option.

"2. How about we introduce a button in internal notes composer that lets you either move content to the public email composer or directly send your content to the end user?"

Would it be possible to (re-)implement this feature as a setting to be toggled on and off, like defaulting to internal vs. public?

1


+1 We have always encouraged our agents to draft any responses using Internal Notes before sending, although now we have switched to Agent Workspace, this is creating additional steps for us

1


I've added notes on other threads, but our team has shared that this is their biggest frustration with Agent Workspace that they've been testing before we upgrade next week. 

This is the fourth company I've been a Zendesk admin for. At all of these companies, the standard practice has been to start a draft in Internal notes and, when it's ready, switch over to public comment before submitting your response.

2


image avatar

Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hello all,

I'm coming here with an update. We're currently exploring the best solution and have prioritized to start working on this project in Q2 this year. I understand the frustration with engaging on this post for a long time without getting any commitments. But, we appreciate your patience and are excited to bring a solution to you in the next few months. Thanks!

0


Hallelujah! Thanks for the update Amisha... would love to help beta test if needed. 

-Luke

1


Thank you for the update, Amisha Sharma! Same as Luke above, we'd be glad to beta test.

0


image avatar

Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hello Everyone,

We're currently actively working on exploring the best solution for this pain point and have prioritized working on this start of Q2. We're here to collect some more feedback from you so that we make sure to handle all the different use cases -

1. Are there ever situations where you need to compose a messaging or chat response on internal notes? Would you like to carry drafts over from internal notes to messaging or chat composer as well? Or the only use case is to carry drafts to email composer?

2. If we provide a setting to turn on carry over of drafts, would you prefer to select the channels it can carry the drafts over to? Example: You can select to carry over to only email or only messaging or both?

Please note that the setting will be an admin level setting. Thanks for engaging!

0


image avatar

Simon Blouner (midlertidig)

Community Moderator

Hey Amisha Sharma

In relation to your pinned comment, and the functionality to come:

1. To us it makes sense making it available on all channel, to carry over drafts from private to public.

2. To us it would be all channels - however, having the option to select channels, would be neat.

1


We only use this feature for email, and we wouldn't need the option to turn it on or off for individual channels.  However, it's important to us that a "drafts" feature would allow the agent to choose after entering text to post as either an internal note or a public reply.

1


This is interesting. This is the first change in the new Agent Workspace that I've seen that seems like it might have an improvement to offer, although it conflicts with a lot of existing workflows. I absolutely value drafting a public reply in private, but I can also see value in doing both public and private updates at once. I wonder if there's a way to do both.

 

0


image avatar

Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey Dave Rooney - If you turn off the draft carry over setting, nothing would change for you, you'll be able to let each channel treat its own draft. If you turn on the setting, you will be able to choose if you want drafts to carry across all channels or only email or only messaging. 

1


Amisha Sharma

Thank you very much for these updates!

In response to your pinned comment from February 1st:

1. Ideally, we'd like this to apply across all channels. We encourage our agents to draft all messages internally before converting them to public reply.

2. To streamline the agent experience, we'd probably apply it across all channels.

4


Hi Amisha Sharma! Thank you for soliciting feedback on this. One of our largest businesses came forward and advised that the clearing of comment when switching from internal note to public reply is causing inefficiencies in their workflow. They are a high volume contact center, so small inefficiencies can greatly impact their metrics.

I asked them to summarize and they provided the following:

We typically write our emails in the internal notes field, to ensure emails don’t get sent uncompleted and then we move it to public reply. In the old version, the entire email, including attachments would “roll over” and we could just send. Now, we have to copy and paste it in the public reply area.

When they state 'new version', what they are referring to is that we recently upgraded them to Agent Workspace.

I can't speak to other channels, as this is an email-only business.

Please let us know if we can provide any additional details.

4


+1 on this - we haven't migrated yet but this may be a big reason why

1


Hi,

Our use-case is same as for the Trudy.

Answering also to questions from Amisha:

> Are there ever situations where you need to compose a messaging or chat response on internal notes? Would you like to carry drafts over from internal notes to messaging or chat composer as well? Or the only use case is to carry drafts to email composer?

I'd say it is true for the email composer only. 

2. If we provide a setting to turn on carry over of drafts, would you prefer to select the channels it can carry the drafts over to? Example: You can select to carry over to only email or only messaging or both?

Currently we don't use Zendesk messaging, but I'd like to have a flexibility just in case.

1


+1 to this thread.
In my team, we used to enter text in private comments and then switch to public comments when completed before sending it to the customer.
The same applies to attachments. Now, even if we attach a file in private comments, if I switch to public comments and copy and paste the file, the file is not attached. It is very difficult to use.
Also, using the drop-down to switch between private and public comments is not good. (need More clicks).
I would like it to switch with one click like before.

0


Hi Amisha Sharma,

Thank you very much for this update, however, I'm not exactly sure this addresses the concerns expressed here:

1) I'm not seeing that Draft Mode can be set as the default (to where the agent has to manually switch to Public Reply) like Internal Notes could.

2) There isn't an obvious visual indication that you're in Draft Mode.

1


Chiming in just to say its annoying that if I forget to change to the correct mode at the beginning, then all my text is lost once I switch modes.

0


I see what you are trying to accomplish and I like it, but the only problem is that sometimes I write something in the Public Reply only to remember I need to send it as an Internal Note. Previously, I could switch to Internal Note and my message would remain in the text box that is now yellow. But with the update, it does not and I have to copy and paste it if I want to accomplish this. Not a big issue but annoying and time-consuming.

0


Huge bump to this. 

There is no reason for deleting the comment text when switching between internal and public replies. 

If I take a call and want to email the customer I shouldn't be punished with my content being deleted because I didn't first swap or forgot to copy paste. 

It's unintuitive and seems like an oversight in the new format. 

PLEASE CHANGE THIS!!! 

0


I concur with this however it is a plan restriction deformity and not an element demand. This was an essential work process usefulness of exemplary work area and presently it's really wasteful. Not exclusively to specialists need to duplicate/glue stuff across yet they can likewise stall private note drafts out in there and see save blunders. Much obliged.

0


image avatar

Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Thanks for all your feedback. We're currently in the feedback gathering phase for draft mode so that we can continue to make improvements:

Hello Trevor Whitecotton - If you turn draft mode "on" once, we remember your preference across the other tickets you open. Is there another way you'd like to make this the default? On your second point, we're definitely exploring ways we can improve the visual indication. Thanks!

Hello Cade Rea - The current behavior is that the text does not carry over across channels. However, it shouldn't be lost. If you switch back to the channel where you composed the text, the text should be there. Please let me know if you're losing the text. Thanks!

Hello Gordon Berthoud - Thanks for the feedback. We'll explore if we can solve this pain point.

Hello Nic AMES Australasia - The text should not be deleted. It should stay in the composer and not carry over. Please let me know if that's not the case. Thanks!

Hello John James - Thanks for your feedback. Have you explored draft mode? Is that something which can help your agents? Thanks!

We have some customers who like the way composer behaves today as they like to compose text in internal notes while talking to their customer on public reply. So, these customers do not want text to carry over. However, since there are both needs, we'll continue to explore further.

0


Hi Amisha Sharma,

Thank you very much for the update here! I don't think "remembering" your preference across other tickets you open (at the same time) really does what we're looking for here. Currently, the workflow looks like this:

Agent opens ticket
Agent manually selects DRAFT MODE
Agent drafts response
Agent manually turns off DRAFT MODE
Agent sends response to customer
When the agent opens their next ticket, DRAFT MODE is disabled because they disabled it in the last ticket so they could send their response publicly.

This really needs to function like it used to where you can set your default as DRAFT MODE (with an obvious visual indicator) so agents can draft their responses internally before sending them publicly.

0


image avatar

Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Thanks for explaining, Trevor Whitecotton. I have a workaround and would love to ask if that works better?

  • Agent opens ticket
  • Agent manually selects DRAFT MODE "on"
  • Agent drafts response
  • Agent hits submit ticket and then clicks on "send" on the warning pop-up
  • Agent sends response to customer
  • Now, when the agent opens their next ticket, DRAFT MODE should stay "on" as the agent did not turn it off on the previous ticket.

If we count the number of clicks, that should reduce with this workaround as now the agent does not need to turn draft mode "on" on every single ticket. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

0


Hey Amisha Sharma! Any updates about this feature? We just moved to Agent Workspace and I have so many agents frustrated with this. 

1


Amisha Sharma I'm piggy backing off of @alek reed's previous comment:

We typically write our emails in the internal notes field, to ensure emails don’t get sent uncompleted and then we move it to public reply. In the old version, the entire email, including attachments would “roll over” and we could just send. Now, we have to copy and paste it in the public reply area.

In my scenario we have "Internal notes" as our default setting. In past, I would close out a ticket using a preset macro, then switch to public reply and everything copied over. Now I have to copy and paste it in the public reply area. Why did you change this feature and is there a way to rollback this functionality? 

0


Amon Wong and Crystal Bustil - draft mode is present in the agent workspace now and if it is turned on, then you can have the default set to be public reply and then enable draft mode. The icon is in the far left from any public reply window and once enabled, then you have to hit an ok confirmation for the email to be sent. Until draft mode is turned off, the state of draft mode persists between tickets.

This has resolved the issue quite well for our team, although there have been some other updates that make keeping public as the default reply mode more feasible now (tickets with messaging no longer default to messaging after an email has been sent - which is a huge improvement!)

0


Is there any update on when this loss of function will be re-enabled, or at least configurable by admins, to retain the text content when toggling from internal comment to public comment?  In my view, this is actually presenting as a bug as opposed to a security feature, for the reasons outlined below:  

 

Draft mode unfortunately does NOT address the major user experience issues associated with this change, and unfortunately our org has had to revert entirely from Agent Workspace, losing much of the efficiency features that we have, due to the fact that we use 100s/1000s of macros legacy to agent workspace that default the comment type to internal while the agent customizes minor areas before publicly sending.  

 

This forces people to manually copy + paste, and also we have no ready way to determine which legacy macros automatically set comment to private to make any adjustments.  
 

In addition, the feedback that we are getting is it increases the risk of sending an incomplete message to the requester.  None of this is addressed by having agents manually click DRAFT MODE.
 

To my understanding this change wasn't communicated as part of the agent workspace migration, that admins would have to figure out a way of determining within their 100s and 1000s of macros which ones default to private versus public and make the adjustment.  

 

We've had to roll back agent workspace entirely because of this, as we have no ready way of determining how many of our macros will need to be edited.  

1


Beyond this, I'm curious as to why Internal Notes and Public Reply are even in the same part of the UI. Its like ZenDesk wants our agents to mistakenly send internal notes to customers. Seriously, please move notes to a different part of the UI. Perhaps make a “Internal Note” button and then have that expand a separate section to write notes in. There's no need to make some complex engineering solution to save drafts here, just separate out the input textfields to prevent mistakes and you get the ability to send notes and replies for free. 

3


Please sign in to leave a comment.

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

More about

Didn't find what you're looking for?

New post