After briefly playing around with the open beta Help Desk funcationality, I wanted to submit an idea for a use case that neither the current Inbox nor the new Help Desk seem to work with.
Currently all of our internal communication that happens on a ticket happens via Notes on the ticket. These notes are only accessible when opening the ticket and going through the activity, or specifically the notes.
In the old Inbox, you can also add Comments, which our team also do. However, we have noticed that Comments and Notes seem to fulfil a similar purpose, but are at odds with one another. If I leave a comment on a conversation that is associated to a ticket, then I am not able to see that comment when viewing the ticket. Similarly, if I leave a note on the ticket, I am not able to see that note on the Inbox conversation.
I had hoped that the Help Desk might do something to unify this experience, as it seems to be being pushed as a way to manage the support process all in one place. However, this still seems to be an issue. I can't see Help Desk comments on a ticket, nor Ticket notes on a help desk conversation.
My idea to unify this would be to do one of two things:
1. Show Ticket Notes on Inbox/Help Desk Conversations, and Inbox/Help Desk Comments on Ticket Activity
When a note is associated to a ticket, and that ticket is associated to a conversation, also show that note in the conversation at the same timestamp the note was created at. Note-comments (comments made on the ticket note) should also show in the conversation-comments, either as their own entries or like they currently do, under the note. Similarly, when a comment is made on a conversation, and a ticket is associated to that conversation, show that comment on the ticket activity as it's own entry at the timestamp it was made at.
or
2. Unify Ticket Notes and Inbox/Help Desk Comments
Instead of showing a note on a conversation, and a comment on a ticket, get rid of one (e.g. keep notes, get rid of comments) and have a single source that shows on all associated records. The UI look and feel could be the same, but now when I leave a "comment" on a conversation, that is actually a note that is associated to records that conversation is associated to. I can interact with that note on the conversation, or on the ticket, or the contact, or anything, and that interaction will sync across all records.
Who (what type of role or team) is the feature for?
This would be aimed at the support teams who work closely with Tickets and the Inbox/Help Desk.
What is their goal?
Communicate on tickets and have those communications be consistent and visible across HubSpot
What value will this add?
This will allow the support team to stay in one place. Whether the Help Desk or the Ticket, the person will be able to see all commincations without needing to search around.
This will also make Comments more visible, as currently the only way to see a comment on a conversation is to navigate to the Inbox/Help Desk and scroll to when the comment was made.
Are there examples of other places or products who have this feature?
The notes on all HubSpot records work great for their purpose. They just fall short specifically on conversations, which is an issue when conversations and tickets are so closely linked together.
Thanks for submitting this. I'm baffled that inline internal comments (like in Hubspot Inbox) were not included as part of this new Help Desk UI. As you detailed, this is a critical part of most support workflows. My team will be sticking with the Inbox until internal comments are added to Help Desk.
Hi everyone, thanks so much for the feedback and appreciate all the detail @HNewman! Our team is currently investigating ways to improve the overall collaboration experience in help desk, including streamlining the relationship between comments and notes.
Yes! We have just migrated from OTRS to HubSpot Service Hub... this is a problem for us. So is the way conversations are represented in Help Desk when Tickets are merged, if possible, it would be great to discuss that with you offline @rsail
Yes! I have set rules now for our team to only use notes and not comments. I wish it would be unified so fewer rules are needed to remember for a team member.
Needed! Similarly, comments on tickets are set by default to only be accesible to that person's team. This is really unhelpful if tickets need to be passed between teams and we had assumed it would inherit the same permissions around notes (which we set to 'can view all notes'). Would much rather comments be merged with the note functionality so all internal comms can be aligned
edit - turned out the above is wrong despite the first person confiming it on chat. All comments are available to anyone in helpdesk. I'd suggest changing the line 'only visible to people in your team' to 'only visible to people in your business/ intenrally' or something similar as the word 'team' is heavily loaded in Hubspot's ecosystem so we found it quite confusing.
How could HubSpot forget to include notes/comments in the Help Desk rollout? Is that just a major error on HubSpot's part? Please help me understand. I need internal notes/comments for my team (that dont get sent to the customer). There is no way that HubSpot would forget something like this. It is like a Microsoft Word or Excel version update that doesn't include comments or notes. It has to be available unless I am very mistaken about the quality of HubSpot's developer team.
Please let us know ASAP how this is available with Help Desk.
Hi everyone! Just wanted to reiterate that streamlining the relationship between notes and comments is still something we're actively working on. We understand the current experience is less than ideal, and appreciate everyone's patience as we work to address this!
In the meantime, comments are already available in help desk (they are just not synced or connected to notes in any way). You should be able to post internal comments by clicking the "Comment" option in the reply editor (the only time you will not see this option is if there is no external communication thread started yet—we know this limitation is another pain point which we want to address). Commenting in help desk contains all the same functionality as commenting in inbox, including our new AI-generated summary feature. We are also in the process of rolling out an updated Slack integration which syncs internal comments across help desk and Slack threads!
Would also be great if it would be possible to edit Help Desk comments. Currently deleting is the only option. It's also not possible to add a comment to a ticket before a mail is sent, which is a bit of an issue when creating new tickets
It would also be idea having a permission set only to be able to "comment" on tickets. For example, our use case we want our sales team to have access to the tickets to view only. There are times they will be tagged in a comment, but can not respond or are completely blocked by seeing it because of user permissions.
Hi everyone, thanks for all of the feedback here! Updating the status of the idea to "in planning" as we're working through the details on our side and planning to kick off development efforts shortly. This is a top priority for our team and we appreciate everyone's patience!
hi there @rsail , I see that this is a big priorty and thats great. My team happy with the Help Desk in general but wont really "move in" until this is available. I understand that its expected to enter development soon and i also understand that we can use comments. Can you confirm that if we use comments now, those will ultimately show in notes whenever the feature is available?
