A recent change to enable private comments in the Idea Portal interface also changed idea comment visibility within the Aha! Roadmaps interface in a way that significantly increases the risk that a comment meant for an internal audience will accidentally be made public.
The Idea portal interface added a new feature to create private comments and to configure the default visibility of comments originating from the portal. The Aha! Roadmaps interface also changed the default from internal to public comments without making it a configurable option.
Our idea workflow generally starts with an internal review of a new idea, and we add internal comments about the review conversation to the idea record. While our users can adapt to override the new default behavior, it seems risky to assume that every comment on an idea record is meant for a public audience. This has caused comments meant for internal audiences to be inadvertently created as public comments.
Please make the default comment visibly setting for Aha! Roadmaps configurable, so each organization (or user) can configure the setting that is most appropriate for their workflow.
Note: Since this idea was posted, we have added color to portal comments in Aha! so that it is more clear that the new comment will be shown in the portal. This should help reduce the risk of a comment meant for an internal audience being shown on the portal.