Case Updates – Public & Private Activities

Using the Public/Private Activities to store Case Updates

NOTE: We’d recommend setting up a Portal test user so you can fully test this example.

Public and Private Activities are used to track the interactions that both your customer service team and your customer have on a given Case. Private Activities aren’t visible to Case Portal users and are designed for internal notes only. Public Activities can generate email notifications and are visible to the customer in the Case Portal.

First, create a new Case directly in Workbooks and fill in any required fields. Then set the following fields:

• Set Primary Contact to your Portal test user.
• Set Task Type to “Next Steps”.
• Set Activity Sub Type to “Public”.
• Set Task Description to some relevant text. For this example, we’ll use “A test update”.
• Set Next Steps Due to tomorrow’s date.
  • When Next Steps Due is set, the Activity won’t be marked as “Complete”. Instead, it’s marked as “New”, with a due date of the Next Steps Due value. This lets you drive Activity reports and dashboards and spot Activities that haven’t been actioned.

When you save the record, an Activity is created and shown under the Activities tab. If you’ve set up a Recent Activity grid, it’ll also appear at the top of that list, as it’s the most recent Activity. The First response at field is set to the current date and time. As a final step, the Create Activity process clears the fields above so you can log a new update next time.

Now try the same thing again, this time with Activity Sub Type set to “Private”.

Finally, log in to the Case Portal as your test user. One update will be visible under the Notifications menu. Click the update in the notification pane to open the relevant Case in the portal. You’ll notice that the “Private” Activity isn’t shown here.