What customers see
Not every fault you record in the bug tracker is visible to customers. This page explains in plain language which entry appears in the customer portal, who sees it there, and which entry stays with your team until it is fixed. It answers the one question that matters before you publish anything: "If I save this now, who reads it?"
What can I do here?
- Look up whether a fault may appear publicly at all, before you publish it
- Understand why a fault rated critical is missing from "Known issues" although it is published
- Explain to a customer why they can see their own report while another customer cannot find it
- Recognise which details of a fault never leave your team
Step by step
- Record the fault on the bug board and set the severity honestly - it is part of what decides visibility.
- Assign the affected companies and contacts. From then on those customers see their report under "My reports", whether or not the fault is published.
- Write a customer-safe title and a customer-facing text. Whatever you do not write here, nobody outside your team gets to read.
- Set the "Published" flag when the entry is meant to appear on the public "Known issues" page.
- Check the table below: if the fault is open and rated critical, it stays off the public page despite "Published". That is intended, not a malfunction.
- Once the fault is resolved or closed it moves - still only with the "Published" flag - into the archive of resolved issues, where every severity is visible.
Fields explained
| Field | What it means for visibility |
|---|---|
| Published | The flag with which you release an entry for the public "Known issues" page. Without it, the only people outside your team who see it are the reporter and the assigned customers. |
| Severity | Together with the status it controls whether an entry may appear publicly. "Critical" is the one value that suspends publication until the fault is fixed. |
| Status | Separates open faults from finished ones. From "Resolved" onwards the archive rule applies: every severity may appear, provided the entry is published. |
| Customer-safe title | The title customers read. If it is missing, assigned customers see a neutral placeholder instead of your internal title. |
| Customer-facing text | The part of an update that goes outwards. The internal note beside it always stays with the team. |
| Attachments | Screenshots and files on the fault. They are internal without exception and never appear in the customer portal. |
Values & statuses
Who sees which entry?
| Viewer | What they see |
|---|---|
| Your team | Every fault, in every status, with all internal details. |
| A customer who reported the fault or is assigned to it | Always their own report under "My reports" - open, critical and unpublished ones included. If the entry is not publicly visible, it is marked confidential there. |
| A signed-in customer with no link to this fault | Only what the public sees. Signing in unlocks nothing extra. |
| The public, without signing in | The "Known issues" page and the archive of resolved issues - both reachable without signing in, both showing published entries only. |
When does an entry appear publicly?
| State of the fault | Publicly visible? |
|---|---|
| Open, severity low/medium/high, published | Yes, under "Known issues". |
| Open, severity low/medium/high, not published | No. Only the reporter and assigned customers see it. |
| Open, severity critical | No - regardless of the "Published" flag. The rule holds until the fault is fixed. |
| Resolved or closed, published | Yes, in the archive of resolved issues, for every severity. |
| Resolved or closed, not published | No. |
Common questions
Why do critical faults stay invisible until they are fixed?
Because a public description of a critical fault that is still open can read as instructions for exploiting it. The affected customer stays informed regardless: they see their own report and receive every update by email.
A customer says they can see their report but it is not under "Known issues". Is that a fault?
No, that is the normal case for an unpublished or critical entry. The customer sees it under "My reports", where it is marked confidential.
Does a customer see a different status than my team?
No. The status is the same - only the reasoning behind a closure is kept apart: reports rejected internally and duplicates appear as closed to the customer, and you phrase the reason yourself in the customer-facing text.
Do questions to a contact or internal notes ever become public?
Never. A question goes to exactly one contact and is visible only to them and your team; internal notes and attachments do not leave your team.
Do I have to send an email on top of publishing?
No. Assigned and reporting customers with notifications switched on receive the update automatically as soon as it carries a customer-facing text or a new status.