Submit a question to your community as private, so only you and the moderators can see the body, useful for billing, contract, or personal questions.
- Open the Q and A area
Navigate to the Q and A tab in the community. The Ask a Question button opens the question composer.
- Compose the question
Enter the subject and body. Choose the topic or zone that best matches. Add any relevant tags so the moderator can route it correctly.
- Toggle Private
Check the Make this Private box. The visibility indicator next to the publish button switches to a lock icon. A note appears confirming only moderators will see the body.
- Submit
Click Post. The question is created with IsPrivate set true. Other members see a redacted placeholder; you see the full thread in your profile.
- Watch for the moderator reply
Replies appear in the same private thread. You receive an email notification when a moderator responds. Reply within the thread to continue the conversation.
- Private Question is a legacy Chatter Answers feature. Customers on Lightning Experience Cloud should use Cases for the same job; the Private toggle is not part of the modern Q and A model.
- Moderators with View All Data can read every Private Question regardless of community role. Audit who has the permission before promising users their questions are confidential.
- Making a private question public preserves the body and answer for everyone, including any names or account references the asker included. Always have the asker scrub their text before converting.
- Private Question reporting differs from Case reporting. If your CSAT and SLA dashboards run off Cases, private questions are invisible to them; route the user to file a Case for SLA-tracked support.