Jira Service Management: Make Comments Default to Internal Note (or Reply to Customer)

Short answer: Jira Service Management Cloud has a site-wide setting for this. Go to Settings (gear) > Products > Jira Service Management: Configuration > Default comment behavior and choose whether comments default to Internal note or Reply to customer. It applies to the whole site (transition screens such as Resolve, and the issue-view shortcut where your site has the newer toggle). There is no per-project or per-transition default yet; that request is JSDCLOUD-17209 (Gathering Interest).

1. Change the site-wide default (native)

You need to be a Jira admin.
Click the gear icon (top right) > Products.
Under Jira Service Management, click Configuration.
Find Default comment behavior and pick the default you want.

Background: in mid-2025 Atlassian switched transition-screen comments to Internal note, agents started posting "replies" that customers never saw, and Atlassian added this toggle so each site can choose (see their Community post "Set default behaviour for transition screen comments"). If your agents' resolution comments suddenly stopped reaching customers, check this setting first.

2. Which default should you choose?

Reply to customer if most transition comments are resolutions ("Fixed, please confirm"). Agents close the loop, at the risk of an internal remark going public.
Internal note if your team uses transitions to hand work between tiers or vendors. Safer for sensitive details, at the risk of customers waiting for a reply that was never sent.

Whichever you pick, tell agents: the colour of the comment box and the tab label (Add internal note vs Reply to customer) are the only signals, so a 30-second demo saves a lot of apologies.

3. Different defaults per project or transition (workarounds)

Remove the comment field from a transition screen so agents comment from the issue view after transitioning, where they choose the type explicitly.
Automation safety net: trigger Work item commented, condition {{comment.internal}} equals false and the comment text contains a marker such as "INTERNAL:", then alert the agent (email or Slack) so they can delete it. Automation can't un-send the customer email, so treat this as monitoring, not prevention.
Canned responses / snippets: keep customer-facing wording in saved responses so agents rarely type free-form public replies.

4. Internal notes in Jira Software projects

Only service projects have the internal note/reply split. In Jira Software or Work Management projects every comment is public to anyone who can see the issue, unless someone picks a role or group from the lock icon. If you need "internal by default" there, see How to make Jira Cloud comments private by default.

Loomwise Private Comments restricts new comments to a project role (Administrators by default, changeable per site or per project) in company-managed and team-managed projects. Free during the early version, runs on Atlassian Forge, no browser extension.

See Private Comments All comment-privacy workarounds

5. See who replied last, without opening every ticket

A common follow-up problem: was the last comment a public reply or an internal note? JSM queues show status and SLAs, not the last public reply.

Last Comment Fields for Jira (by Loomwise, coming soon) adds three read-only fields, Last comment, Last commented by and Last comment date, that work as list columns, in JQL, filters, dashboards and CSV export. Restricted comments are never copied into the fields, and JSM internal notes are skipped by default. Free for up to 10 users, about $0.35 per user per month above that, billed through Atlassian.

See Last Comment Fields Email us to try it early

Also see JQL: find issues where the customer commented last.

FAQ

Can I set the default comment type per project in JSM? Not natively. The Default comment behavior setting is site-wide. JSDCLOUD-17209 asks for project and transition-level defaults.

Why do my resolve-screen comments go internal now? Atlassian changed the transition-screen default to Internal note in 2025, then added a toggle. An admin can switch it back under Products > Jira Service Management > Configuration.

Can I turn a public reply into an internal note after posting? Customers are notified when a public reply is posted, so changing or deleting it afterwards does not recall the email. Delete it quickly and send a correction if needed.

Do internal notes appear in the customer portal? No. Internal notes are visible only to agents and collaborators with access to the service project.

Related guides

Disclosure: Loomwise makes the apps mentioned in the cards above and wrote this guide. Not affiliated with Atlassian. Vote counts and ticket statuses are from jira.atlassian.com as of October 2026. Last checked October 2026; Jira menus and features change, so verify in your site. Contact: hello@loomwise.app