1) What is your original issue/pain point you want to solve?
When creating a note on a ticket, Zammad defaults to a fixed visibility setting. There is no way to configure whether a new note should default to internal (hidden from customers) or public. Agents must manually toggle this on every single note they create, which is repetitive and - more importantly - error-prone. Internal remarks intended only for other agents can accidentally be sent as public notes visible to the customer.
2) Which are one or two concrete situations where this problem hurts the most?
- An agent writes a quick internal remark like “Customer is known to be difficult, handle with care” and forgets to toggle the note to internal. The note is sent publicly, and the customer reads it - a serious communication incident.
- A support team where 95% of all notes are internal has to manually toggle every single note. Over hundreds of tickets per day, this is a constant source of friction and missed toggles.
3) Why is it not solvable with the Zammad standard?
There is currently no setting - neither system-wide, per role, nor per agent - that controls the pre-selected default visibility of a new note. The only option is to toggle manually, per note, every time. This cannot be configured away.
4) What is your expectation/what do you want to achieve?
A three-level hierarchy of settings controlling the default note visibility:
- System-wide default (Admin panel): Sets the global fallback - either
internalorpublic. - Role-level override (optional): Admins can define a default per role, overriding the system default.
- Agent-level override (Personal profile settings): Each agent can set their own preferred default, overriding both role and system settings.
Resolution order: Agent setting → Role setting → System default
The per-note toggle remains fully functional - this setting only controls the pre-selected state when opening a new note.
Your Zammad environment:
- Average concurrent agent count: ~10
- Average tickets a day: ~50–100
- What roles/people are involved: Support agents, team leads (admin)
Anything else that you think is useful to understand your use case:
This is a low-complexity configuration addition with a disproportionately high impact on data hygiene and the safety of customer communications. The risk of accidentally exposing internal notes to customers is a real, recurring problem in teams where internal notes are the dominant note type - and it is entirely preventable with a simple default setting.