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.

[Jens Mogensen]

Hmm, maybe. Would be a bit fiddly as we can't predict all the externals we might want to contact. Could suddenly be someone we have not written to before on a case by case basis.

But wait, you wrote "Our external providers just write into work notes. We don’t want them necessarily communicating out to the client."

That's exactly what we want! How did you make the mails from external providers end up in work notes without the same happening to the mails from the clients?

[TrevorK]

All of our internal users are part of the same domain - no one uses a personal email. That makes it easy to split apart our staff from everyone else. Anyone who doesn’t have an email in our domain would be an “external” to use.

[Jens Mogensen]

Ah, so you've made some kind of rule (script, ACL?) that says "put inbound mail into work note if it's not from domain x"?

[TrevorK]

It can all be done if your Inbound Action.

When you are ready to insert the text from the email do an if statement; if "true" then do work notes, else do comments.

[Jens Mogensen]

That sounds so much simpler than what I have been doing so far. I will look into this, thanks!