Question, Private
A Private Question is a Salesforce Chatter Answers question that the asker chose to keep visible only to themselves and the moderators of the community, not to the rest of the membership.
Definition
A Private Question is a Salesforce Chatter Answers question that the asker chose to keep visible only to themselves and the moderators of the community, not to the rest of the membership. It surfaces in the Q and A feed as a redacted entry with a lock icon; the body is visible only to the original poster, support agents with the right permission, and community managers monitoring the moderation queue.
Private Question is a legacy feature tied to the older Chatter Answers component. In Lightning Experience Cloud and the modern Q and A topic-based discussion model, the equivalent capability is fulfilled through Cases and Knowledge: a customer who needs a private answer files a case rather than a public question, and the agent's reply is bound to the case rather than the community feed. Most orgs that still rely on Private Question are on a Salesforce Communities or Customer Portal estate that has not migrated to Experience Cloud yet.
Why Private Question exists, what it actually hides, and what replaced it
The privacy model
When a member asks a question and marks it Private, the platform sets the IsPrivate flag on the underlying ChatterAnswer record. The question still gets a record ID, still increments the unanswered-question counter the moderator sees, and still notifies the moderator queue. What changes is the visibility: every other member of the community sees a placeholder entry showing the question was asked privately, not the question body. Only the original asker, the assigned community moderator role, and any service agent granted the View Private Questions permission can read it.
Why customers use it
The most common driver is sensitive personal data. A customer asking about a billing dispute, a private account question, or a medical-context support issue does not want their question searchable by the broader community. Private Question lets them route the conversation to support without leaking specifics. A secondary use is competitive customers who do not want their question (and the answer) visible to other companies sharing the same community. The community manager can still triage and respond, but the conversation lives in a private thread.
Moderator queue and answering
Private Questions land in the same moderation queue as public questions but with the lock icon prepended. Moderators answer them by replying in the question thread; the reply is also private and visible only to the asker. If the answer is general enough that other members would benefit, the moderator can ask the asker for permission to convert the question to public, then click Make Public. The conversion preserves the thread history and the answer. Most orgs leave the question private and post a generalized version as a separate Knowledge article instead.
Why Lightning replaced it with Cases
Lightning Experience Cloud retired the dedicated Private Question feature because the case object already solves the same problem with richer features (SLAs, queues, escalations, agent productivity reporting). A customer in a modern community who needs a private conversation files a case. The case has its own internal-vs-public toggle, its own assignment rules, and inherits service entitlements. The community Q and A feed is reserved for public discussions only, and the data model is cleaner because there is one Case object instead of a Case plus a parallel private-question store.
Migration from Private Questions to Cases
Orgs migrating from the legacy Customer Portal or Communities to Lightning Experience Cloud typically migrate Private Questions to Cases as part of the project. The standard pattern is to write a one-time Apex script that creates a Case for every existing Private Question, copies the question body to Case.Subject and Case.Description, links the original asker as the Case.Contact, and closes the loop with a notification to the asker pointing them to the new Case in the Experience Cloud site. Public questions stay in Chatter Answers (or get a separate migration to the new Q and A topics).
Reporting and analytics
Private Question records appear in the same ChatterAnswer reports as public questions, with an IsPrivate column. Community managers can build a report on Private vs Public ratios to understand member behavior: a community with 30 percent private questions probably has a content trust issue (members do not want their questions visible), and a community with 1 percent private questions probably has the opposite problem (members are oversharing). Both shapes are useful signals for community strategy.
When to keep Private Question vs migrate
The right call depends on the surrounding stack. Customers still on the legacy Customer Portal or original Communities should leave Private Question in place; it works fine. Customers moving to Lightning Experience Cloud should migrate to Cases as part of the project. Customers on a hybrid (some legacy, some Experience Cloud) should pick one. Running both creates two parallel private-discussion queues that overlap in confusing ways, and members get inconsistent experiences depending on which portal they land on first.
Ask a Private Question in a Chatter Answers community
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.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Chatter Answers Private QuestionsSalesforce Help
- Q and A in Experience CloudSalesforce Help
- ChatterAnswer Object ReferenceSalesforce Developer Docs
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Question, Private.
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
- Questions and AnswersSalesforce Help
- Cases OverviewSalesforce Help
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Question, Private.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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