Changing the default privacy of ticket comments


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.


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Location: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets >
Settings

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
Making agent comments private by default

Related articles:
Configuring agent
access to tickets when the agent is the
requester




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: In general, 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. However, on
Enterprise plans, admins can configure agent
access to private comments and agent-only
fields on tickets they request. 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.

Note: There’s one exception to the Public by default setting. Tickets
that only have internal notes and no public comments will always default to internal notes,
even if the setting is turned on.
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) 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.
Settings to make agent comments private by default do not apply to
channels that are considered live, including chat, messaging,
and social media. See About channel switching logic
in the ticket composer.
To configure private ticket comments as the default

In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
Click Comment options for agents to expand it.
Deselect both of these options: Set composer to public by
default and Allow agent comments via email to
be public by default.


Note: For information about comment privacy when email replies are involved,
see Understanding when email
replies become public or private comments.


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