Redmine

Hi James,

Could you tell what's the function of private note.

I am trying to use private note but it can be seen by others.

You probably have to go into permissions and un-check "View Private Notes" in order to be able to use it properly.
Any role or user that has this option checked will be able to view private notes and if every role or group has that checked, then effectively, there is no "private" note feature in your system.

James H wrote:

When writing a note and marking it private, the note becomes invisible to all users except the author of the object you are writing the private note to. This includes being invisible to the writer of the private note.

Perhaps I understood your issue ticket wrong? Anyway, all users beloging to roles that can "view private notes" can see private notes.

I am wondering...
Why wouldn't you want to have users see their own private note?

IMHO a user should always have access to all content he produces.

What is the use case that justifies this workflow/permissions system?

People create issue tickets, developers write private notes to communicate among themselves without the user opening the issue being able to read the "internal" communication of the developers...

The way it is currently, if you write a private note and submit it, you can never see what you wrote

That's because of your configuration

Seems to me that if you cannot tell whether or not you responded to an issue (just because you deemed it to be "private" so that other users, besides the owner of that issue, cannot see what you wrote) is counter-productive to a project management-type of system since you lose track of your very own actions.

Every user belonging to a role that has the "view private notes" permission can read all private notes.

I guess you are mis-understanding much of what i am saying.

My issue ticket says:

Should private notes be viewable by the person that wrote them?

In my case, only the owner of the issue is able to view all the notes on that issue. Individuals can write private notes to the issues, but after updating with the note, it is not visible to the respective individuals.

I do not know how much simpler I can write it, but I will try:
Should private notes that were written by Person A be viewable by the person (Person A) that wrote them?
Only the owner of the issue (Person B) is able to view all the notes (public or private) on that issue. Individuals can write private notes to the issue but after updating the note with the private note, that private note is not visible to that same individual that wrote the private note.

Responses to you:

When writing a note and marking it private, the note becomes invisible to all users except the author of the object you are writing the private note to. This includes being invisible to the writer of the private note.

Perhaps I understood your issue ticket wrong? Anyway, all users beloging to roles that can "view private notes" can see private notes.

Yes, all roles that can "View Private Notes" can see all private notes.

I am wondering...
Why wouldn't you want to have users see their own private note?

IMHO a user should always have access to all content he produces.

Yes, I believe a user should always have access to everything he produces.

What is the use case that justifies this workflow/permissions system?

People create issue tickets, developers write private notes to communicate among themselves without the user opening the issue being able to read the "internal" communication of the developers...

My question assumed you closed my ticket out because you thought that private notes should not be viewable by the person who wrote it. This question does not apply anymore if you "...believe a user should always have access to everything he produces."

The way it is currently, if you write a private note and submit it, you can never see what you wrote

That's because of your configuration

So you are saying that: because of my configuration, even if I write a private note and submit it, I will not be able to see what I wrote? What configuration setting allows this?
Take both cases of having "View Private Notes" checked and un-checked.
Checked: I should be able to see all private notes.
Un-checked: I should be able to see all of my own private notes.
If you asked, I could have told you that I do not have "View Private Notes" checked for the users/cases I tested. If I am missing something, please let me know?

Seems to me that if you cannot tell whether or not you responded to an issue (just because you deemed it to be "private" so that other users, besides the owner of that issue, cannot see what you wrote) is counter-productive to a project management-type of system since you lose track of your very own actions.

Every user belonging to a role that has the "view private notes" permission can read all private notes.

I understand this and have tested it in my set-up and it does not behave as expected. Does it behave as expected for you?

we are using this feature for internal Communication of Between of staff. Author can not see private notes also. This is IT help desk application.

Sounds like my Defect #17057 needs to be reopened and actually looked into.

Would be great if a developer can test this out and confirm..... would only take 3 minutes.

Hello, guys!

Do we have already this functionality #17132 in any plugins or something patches?

Alex Alex wrote:

Hello, guys!

Do we have already this functionality #17132 in any plugins or something patches?

Not sure what you mean...
but your feature request and related requests sounds interesting.

My issue with private notes is very basic/fundamental and I am trying to confirm whether or not this behavior is by design or if its a defect in redmine.

so... is there anything going on with this?

bump

Adnan Topçu wrote:

we are using this feature for internal Communication of Between of staff. Author can not see private notes also. This is IT help desk application.

Bump

Hi everybody!

I think it's a bug, not feature.

Private notes must be visible to the author - but they still don't (we have 3.0.3 version).

Thanks for confirmation on the newer version.

We don't use private notes, one big reason being this.

Looking at the result of both the filed issue and the discussions here, there seems to be confusion as to whether or not this actually is intended behaviour or not.

It may be that you will have another chance at getting through to the devs by creating a new issue, as long as your descriptions are clear or written differently.

I think filing a new issue with a clear change request, stating that "_no matter what permissions are set_, note authors shall be able to see their own notes" or equivalent, may work out. As an addition, you could always add to it that you would want this to be a per-project or system wide setting.

Just make it super clear what it is that you want the devs to consider/do/implement, and also include a reproducible step-by-step instruction on what happens today and what you would want to happen. I'm sure there are templates for filing issues that should be followed, see if you can find any of that.

Personally, I cannot conclude whether this specific issue is a bug or not. Seems like the devs understand this as an intended behaviour using settings, but the notes in the issue itself makes this whole topic confusing.

Then you are obviously not understanding the entire premise of my post.
If you actually read my post, its really not that confusing.

The first few lines says:

Defect #17057

I put up this Issue thinking that it was a defect.
Respondee feels otherwise...

Then, I state the behavior again:

When writing a note and marking it private, the note becomes invisible to all users except the author of the object you are writing the private note to. This includes being invisible to the writer of the private note.

Then I write questions related to why my defect was closed out without being looked into at all:

I am wondering...
Why wouldn't you want to have users see their own private note?
What is the use case that justifies this workflow/permissions system?

So if you still think that you don't know whether or not "this is a specific issue or bug", guess what? I was in the same boat because my defect issue was closed out, and that is why I posted here.
The entire purpose of this post is to ask the dev and community if "this specific issue" is intended behavior so as to clarify whether or not "this specific issue is a bug or not".

The rest of the posts on this discussion has an abundance of clarifying statements.
Have you read this discussion or did you try and just give up? Looking at the discussion, the same information is restated in multiple ways to be as clear as possible. I even put example cases and I walk-through the scenario.