# Private messages to a group, or other means to handle private support requests

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-messages-to-a-group-or-other-means-to-handle-private-support-requests/14010>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [Março 22, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-messages-to-a-group-or-other-means-to-handle-private-support-requests/14010 "2014-03-22T15:51:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![mcwumbly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcwumbly/32/103861_2.png) [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)\
**Post date:** [Março 22, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-messages-to-a-group-or-other-means-to-handle-private-support-requests/14010/1 "2014-03-22T15:51:59Z")

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We will be deploying discourse primarily as an open forum for users of our products to discuss features, bugs, usage, etc. Our customers still often need a private channel to discuss certain issues, however. To date, they are all used to emailing ‘support’, where a group of us can respond and stay copied on the conversation.

But I’m hoping to steer folks toward the forum where possible to encourage people to use the open resources on the forum. Worst case, we will just end up replying to the emails with links to the relevant topics, but this also tends to make some of us less likely to go find the conversation on the forum.

Also then we can take advantage of features like:

- mentioning particular folks who are best able to help with a given issue
- limiting the noise on email
- linking to related topics in the gutter

This kind of request has come up before, but I haven’t found any answer as to how people are handling this type of use case yet.

@lightyear - what have you guys been doing for the requirement below? Have you been handling that aspect of things with discourse?

Some previous similar discussions:

[Private forums or discussion threads](https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-forums-or-discussion-threads/1764/15):

> [@lightyear](#):
>
> One other thing we do and need are so called **Post-Inbox-Only** features on those topics. Meaning for e.g. we have our Tech-Team discussing and organizing things in private but once in a while if someone outside the circle wants to have an email adress or something this requires them to be allowed to write to the mailing list and this post contains private information, you don’t want to have public. I was wondering whether that works with categories. Or maybe if you can PM groups and there is a group “administrative tasks”, the official way could be to PM that group instead. Is such a workflow possible with discourse?

[https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-messaging-to-a-group/8376](https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-messaging-to-a-group/8376)

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