What does "comment internally" actually mean in JIRA Service Desk?

[Ji]

In JIRA Service Desk projects, comments are segregated by internal vs external visibility. Meaning that I am able to select whether I want to Share with customer or Comment Internally.

Which users are able to see comments that are specifically marked as internal?

I couldn't find proper documentation describing this feature.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Share with customer makes the comment visible to everyone who can see the issue/request.

Internal comments do not appear on the requests, so a customer can not see them.

[William Raendchen]

Internal comments are not shown on the portal view of the issue. However, everyone who can see the internal version of the JIRA ticket can see both internal and external comments!

Internal = "Everyone who uses JIRA and has access to this issue in JIRA itself. But not displayed on the portal view"

[Linda Wanitschek]

Thank you William.  Very clean statement.

[Michael Aniskovich]

I still remain confused by this.  "But not displayed on the portal view".

So, I respond to the submitter by tagging them (using the [~nnnnn] tag.

1.) Will they see it if I choose "Comment Internally"?

2.) What parameters constitute "Customer"?  (My assumption is that it's someone outside of my company, but I could be wrong.)

I would LOVE to see "hover-over" notes added to these kinds of things.  Kind of annoyed.

[Linda Wanitschek]

If a user chooses "Raise a Request"  on the customer portal view, there are comments displayed there.

The comments displayed on the Customer Portal View are only the comments where "Customer" is selected.

When Internal is selected the comments are displayed on the Issue view.

Customer is a person who is a reporter or any other person who can see the issue only thru the Customer Portal.

[William Raendchen]

Edit: in addition to what Linda said (which was all correct).

Service Desk has an *additional* representation for Issues, called Portal view.

Internal comments are never displayed in the portal view. However they are displayed in the traditional issue view for everyone who has access to it, i.e. browse permission in your project. 

To restrict customers, who also happen to have access to your JIRA internally, you need to remove those people, as well as the Reporter from the "Browse Project" permission, and replace it with "Service desk customer - portal access".
Then it is ensured that customers can no longer see internal comments. However since they can't see internal tickets anymore, they can also not link them or do anything else with them. [~username] notifications only work if you have access to an internal ticket as well. Servicedesk automatically sends its own notifications, which are seperate from your JIRA notifications.

Sorry if I can't explain it any clearer, in my opinion the way Atlassian set this up is a complete joke and lazy design.

[YEW JOON KHONG]

can customer view internal comments as well? certain projects we would like the customer to view the internal comments from the developers , (developer can't post public comment as for now)

[Linda Wanitschek]

Yew,   no no no.

Internal is private internal only.  If you need a customer to be able to see internal, add them as a User in your roles. 

At Intel, we use this separation of Customer from Internal heavily. We would never vote for such a change. 

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

I'm with Linda on this one - the whole point of the internal comment is that customers do not see them.

[Jon Starbird]

While I agree you should also have the option of a Collaborator comment being made visible to the Portal view. Not having that option at all makes Service Desk rather useless for companies who only use the tool internally. 

In our case for example, our Service Desk customers are our employees but we want a majority of them to only use the Portal view as they do not need regular access to Jira itself. For some issues our developers need to collaborate on the issue and they work primarily from Jira. 

It really defeats the purpose of Service Desk if you have to allow users to view issues in Jira if they are only Customers of the Service Desk. You might as well just not use Service Desk at that point.

[Linda Wanitschek]

we have automated emails that send the person a confirmation

and in the email are 3 hyperlinks to Issue queries.  And they default to the Detail view.

In this view, they do not see internal comments, but can see the entire request.  It's pretty easy to do this.

My Owned - Open:   

[Jon Starbird]

sure but again it takes them into Jira itself. So why use Service Desk then?

They then end up using two different interfaces to see their issues, why? Just give the option to have collaborator comments be visible to the portal view. 

I'm not saying make it default, I'm saying make it Service Desk Project setting option. There is no reason to not have the option. 

[YEW JOON KHONG]

Thanks for all the feedback , 

We don't operate service desk 24x7, but when there is a reported issue after hours, the on-call support/developer who is not part of SD may need to update the ticket and share with the customer. 

Basically, collaborators should have the option to post the comment internally or public.

[Linda Wanitschek]

We are experimenting with a form style that as long as the issue is in x status, the reporter can edit the issue.  Once the issue transitions to another workflow status, the reporter is not allowed to edit.  Unfortunately, the test is not going as happily as we would like.  

[Linda Wanitschek]

Jon, yes it takes them to Jira, but their user security will only let them do x, so we are okay with that.  They still cannot see the internal comments.  

Not all apps are perfect. We struggle to with what should the reporter be able to see or not, and yes the service desk team members have to do the fixes.  But we have over 3500 people in our instance and haven't had any slip ups. knock on wood.  

[Jeanne Scilley]

Hello Linda.  How are you able to hide internal comments from your users who view the tickets in the JIRA application? 

Our SD is internal to our company - we do not use it for persons who buy our products - our SD "customers" are business users who seek IS support inside the company.   We have a mix of business users - some of which are JIRA savy and actually use JIRA core/software for their projects and project management.  Because they are familiar with JIRA they do not use the portal to check the status of their service desk tickets - they work/comment directly in the service desk tickets

It would be nice if there was a way that we could hide the Internal comments for those users who are not agents in the service desk.  

I would be interested to know if I understood your last comment to mean that your employees who are not service desk agents cannot see the internal comments in that service desks tickets.  And if so, whats the magic trick?  ;-)

[Jan Clausen]

Hi,

I would also like to know if there is some posibility to make the internal notes in SD "private"

so that only assignee or board administrator can see them.

Not all other company users

Is it possible

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

No, if you can see the issue, you can see the internal comments.

[Sverre Moe]

We would like to know this also

We have JIRA users (external customers) with access to a Service Desk Project, but we do not want them to read the INTERNAL comments.

[Kevin Black]

Many of our small cohort (ATM) do not go into Portal View after creating the issue. They simply rely on the flow of emails to and from Service Desk.

QUESTION: If a service desk agent creates an internal note which of these (are supposed to) get an email (they all would if it were a share with customer):

• Reporter
• The Other Service Desk Agents
• Requested Participants
• The Assignee

Thanks (it's confusing). I'm happy whichever way it turns out as long as I understand the rules.

Kevin

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

People who can see the request can see the comments intended for the customers

People who can see the issue can see the comments intended for "internal" people (and the comments intended for the customers)