Client-facing notes vs. internal notes

Both are legitimate. Problems start when they get mixed together, or when they drift so far apart that the second one is the only one anybody reads.

Why the split matters

Internal candour is how work actually gets fixed. If a designer thinks the brief is wrong, that needs saying plainly, and it needs saying somewhere the phrasing doesn't have to be diplomatic. Force that conversation into a client-safe channel and it doesn't become polite — it moves to DMs, where nobody can find it later.

So the goal isn't to hide things. It's to give candour a place to live that's attached to the work rather than scattered across private messages.

A rule that holds up

Ask what the note is for. If it changes what gets delivered, it belongs with the work where anyone picking it up will see it. If it's an internal judgement — about effort, about the client, about whether this was a good idea — mark it internal.

• Decisions and their reasons: on the work, where the next person finds them.
• Concerns about scope or effort: internal, but written down, not whispered.
• Anything you'd be uncomfortable seeing read aloud: internal, and think about whether it needs writing at all.
• Status: not a note. It's the state of the task.

Write internal notes like someone will read them

The trap with a private channel is that people write for the moment: 'ugh, again'. That's useless in three weeks. Internal doesn't mean disposable — it means candid. The test is whether a colleague could read it cold and understand what happened.

Where Flowcove sits on this

Notes on a task can be marked internal, which keeps candid discussion in its own lane rather than mixed into the running commentary. Internal notes can carry their own due dates, because an internal follow-up is still a thing that has to happen by Thursday.

This matters more than it used to. If you invite a client to the portal, the line stops being a matter of taste: a task marked internal, and any note marked private, stay out of what they see. Everything else on that client's board is readable by them. So 'internal' is doing two jobs at once — keeping your team's own signal clean, and drawing the boundary of what leaves the room.