Confidentiality of Emails in Help Desk

[JMidgley]

We have just started using Service Hub so that we can take customer enquiries as tickets via a form on the website, and I am in the process of setting this up with relevant pipelines, forms, etc. We have been using HubSpot for a long time for marketing and as a database of customer interactions, but had not used it for customer support via tickets until now. For context, we are a not-for-profit organisation so although we make use of HubSpot and use the Deals functionality, we aren’t actually selling anything nor we do strictly have customers (in the traditional sense) – but we do take enquiries from the public which may contain sensitive information.

I have largely got my head around the way the Help Desk functionality works, but I am facing a problem regarding confidentiality of emails. I want to make it so that the vast majority of users who use CRM view are not able to see the communications sent via Help Desk as these may contain sensitive information. I have set up Help Desk so it’s only accessible to certain users (who are assigned Service Seats), and within this I have a few pipelines which are further restricted. So far, this works as expected, and I have even made it so that certain Ticket properties are only visible to certain users. This is working as expected, in that when I’m testing only the chosen users can access the tickets from helpdesk view, and cannot see the ticket property fields which are restricted.

However, the big problem is that all users can see the emails which are sent from Help Desk when they are viewing a contact in CRM view. This defeats the point of restricting access to the Ticket Pipelines when they can see the content of the emails anyway. Because of the nature of our organisation, these conversations need to be restricted to only certain users and Super Admins.

I do feel like I must be missing something, as we cannot be the only people who want a setup of this nature where e.g. the conversations within complaint tickets are not available to everybody.

I thought I’d found a way around this by restricting emails to only users within a certain team (and where somebody from that team is the owner of the ticket), but that means they end up being unable to see all other kinds of emails in the system (if I have two classes of users, Help Desk workers and Business Engagement). Then if I assign somebody to have a secondary team, that undermines the segregation because they will have a team in common with the ticket owner and can therefore see everything. Most of the solutions I’m finding online seem to be about restricting contacts to their owner only – but we will often have a single contact engaging with different teams at the same time.

I want it so that all users can see the 99% of emails, and a select few can see the 1% which are part of conversations within the confidential pipelines.

Is there a way to make this work the way I want, i.e. that emails sent as part of Help Desk interactions are not visible to the rest of our users from the CRM view?

The best I’ve found so far is the ability to hide individual messages – which will function as a workaround but relies too much on users remembering to hide sensitive messages.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@JMidgley this has long been a permissions struggle - beyond limiting access to tools based on teams (sales or service) and actually limiting access to specific activities that are tied to those tools. 

The CRM is designed around the premise that everything is centrally managed and collected on the various records, unfortunately I haven't found a way to limit access based on how that content was added to the record.

With help desk being relatively recent and the number of changes/updates made, it's possible there is a solution I don't know about yet since it's been a while since I've had to try to solve this.

tagging in a few others who might have a better answer @JWingate2 @Josh @danmoyle @Adriane 

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

In agreement here, @Jnix284 & @JMidgley. With the CRM developed for pretty open collaboration, this ask to manage what's seen or not seen is a common question. I think you've found most of the ways to make it work as best as you can.

I think the next step for me would be to add this to the ideas forum, and to offer it as feedback in the product if you're able. As Jennifer says, Service Hub has grown and evolved, and this may something they need to know. 

[Adriane · Accepted solution]

Hi @JMidgley,

it sounds like you're working with a nuanced use case in HubSpot. Unfortunately, like @Jnix284 and @danmoyle already said: Restricting access to email communications within a single contact is still tricky, especially when needing fine-grained control. However, until HubSpot introduces more granular control for email visibility, there might be a combination of teams, workflows, custom properties, and manual email hiding you can use as a workaround. Check this out:

1. Team-Based Permissions

You’ve already set up Service Hub users with restricted access to certain Ticket Pipelines, which is good. A more advanced approach would be to create two teams, one for general users (Business Engagement) and another for Help Desk users.

Under each user’s profile, you can give them “View team only” permissions for tickets and conversations. This limits visibility to only tickets and conversations owned by users within their team, keeping Help Desk email communications separate from the rest. 

However - and this might be the caveat here - this setup would mean that users cannot see all emails associated with a contact outside of their team's ownership, which could be a drawback for cross-team communications.

2. Custom Properties and Workflows for Ticket Emails

This is not a direct solution but can help track and manage sensitive tickets better. To identify sensitive conversations you can consider using custom ticket properties and create an internal workflow that flags these tickets as restricted. 

For example, you could create a custom property such as "Sensitive Information" (a yes/no field). When this property is marked as “Yes,” a workflow could automatically assign the ticket to specific users (e.g., Help Desk managers or a privacy team), send an internal notification that only authorized users should access the ticket and move the ticket into a restricted pipeline.

While this doesn’t directly hide specific emails in the contact record, it allows you to better categorize and segregate tickets containing sensitive information. When these sensitive tickets are moved into restricted pipelines, only users with access to those pipelines will be able to see the full ticket and its communications (including email interactions). 

However, restricting pipeline access does not automatically hide emails associated with those tickets from the contact record view. All users with access to a contact record can typically see all associated emails, regardless of pipeline restrictions.

3. Manually Hide Emails for Sensitive Tickets

As you mentioned, users can manually hide sensitive emails. Although this relies on user diligence, it's possible to set up internal guidelines and processes for help desk workers to follow.

Some best practices in this matter involve to train all users in understanding the importance of maintaining confidentiality and periodically review access permissions and email visibility.

You may also want to consider additional encryption for highly sensitive data.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards

Adriane

[JWingate2]

I came here to reply, but when you have @danmoyle and @Jnix284 give you an answer - It's like the gods are looking over you. I agree thought with both of them.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@JMidgley this has long been a permissions struggle - beyond limiting access to tools based on teams (sales or service) and actually limiting access to specific activities that are tied to those tools. 

The CRM is designed around the premise that everything is centrally managed and collected on the various records, unfortunately I haven't found a way to limit access based on how that content was added to the record.

With help desk being relatively recent and the number of changes/updates made, it's possible there is a solution I don't know about yet since it's been a while since I've had to try to solve this.

tagging in a few others who might have a better answer @JWingate2 @Josh @danmoyle @Adriane 

[JMidgley]

Hello, thanks very much for your answer and to all others who have weighed in. 
This is very much something I hope they develop in the future, but I'm glad I wasn't missing something simple then. 

The ability to hide individual emails gets us where we need to be for now, but I'd love if Helpdesk emails could be treated as distinct from general CRM emails given the varied fucntions of different teams. 

Thanks everyone. 

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

In agreement here, @Jnix284 & @JMidgley. With the CRM developed for pretty open collaboration, this ask to manage what's seen or not seen is a common question. I think you've found most of the ways to make it work as best as you can.

I think the next step for me would be to add this to the ideas forum, and to offer it as feedback in the product if you're able. As Jennifer says, Service Hub has grown and evolved, and this may something they need to know.