Mail sent to ticket is put into additional comments by default - how to change

[Jens Mogensen]

In tickets and requested items when posting to additional comments, a mail is generated to the user with this content. Conversely when they reply, the reply is put into additional comments. This is fine.

Sometimes the Servicedesk needs to contact someone else by email though. If it's a colleague they will use the @ function and write in work notes. If it's an external provider or another end-user they will use the Email function:

Now here's the issue. When the external provider answers the e-mail sent from the ticket, the answer is automatically inserted into additional comments and thereby is viewable on the service portal as well as sent in an Email to the user. this is very undesirable as the info from Microsoft, Cisco etc. is not always something the user should be privy to. As well as it pretty much being spam if there is a long dialogue between technicians before the issue is resolved. The users don't need to know how the sausage is made so to speak.

So my question: Where do I change the mails sent to a ticket to be logged in work notes in stead of additional comments? Since it's not default, are there any drawbacks to changing this?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[TrevorK]

I think this is an out of box ACL you can use for reference:

https://YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME.service-now.com/nav_to.do?uri=sys_security_acl.do?sys_id=66f0fbc60a0a0b0100ce40e98ad45972

Specifically look at the conditions:

You essentially get the user from who is logged in, then compare it to the Caller field. It just requires a javascript call.

There is another way to do this with the dynamic qualifier but I want to give you an out of the box reference to look at as an example of a working one.

Note:
a) You would likely want to do this on "Incident" not "Task" otherwise it applies to a lot of tables
b) It will allow the caller to read every work note associated to their incident

[Jens Mogensen]

Thanks for the link! That was exactly what I was looking for regarding choosing caller.

But, damn, you're right. I certainly do not want them to be able to read all work notes - that would defeat the whole purpose of this.

Do you have any suggestion how I can limit work note visibility to the notes created by the users themselves?

[TrevorK]

Yes, go back to using Additional Comments for all the email 😉

Honestly, I am not sure how this would be easily done because of how a journal field is structured. Right now I don't have a chance to mock up potential solutions but it is something I have never had to do in our instance.

Edit: I would recommend searching the community on this one, I haven't seen this in the instances and I am sure others have asked. Sorry can't be of more help - I just don't have the time right now to spend an hour playing with the code.

[Jens Mogensen]

No problem, you have been most helpful 🙂

Sadly we can't use the additional comments for communication with external providers. This is not something you do in your instance - write from the tickets to external providers?

[TrevorK]

Our external providers just write into work notes. We don’t want them necessarily communicating out to the client. However one option is you could code your inbound rule with a condition to check the domain of the sender. If it’s in your list of third party providers add it as a comment. If it’s not add it as a work note.

Maybe that would work?