--- title: Admin Notes description: "Admin notes are free-form text annotations you can attach to any customer record. They're the place to record context that doesn't fit into structured fields — communications with the customer, the reasoning behind a block, manual investigation findings, links to…" url: "https://webstepper.io/docs/trustlens/customer-management/admin-notes/" updated: "2026-10-18" category: Customer Management --- # Admin Notes Admin notes are free-form text annotations you can attach to any customer record. They're the place to record context that doesn't fit into structured fields — communications with the customer, the reasoning behind a block, manual investigation findings, links to external ticket systems. This page covers how to use admin notes, what they're best for, and how they integrate with the rest of TrustLens. --- ## Adding a Note 1. Open the customer's detail page 2. Scroll to the **Admin notes** panel (it's collapsed when the customer has no notes yet — click to open) 3. Type your note in the textarea 4. Click **Save note** Notes are saved immediately and appear in the Admin notes panel. They aren't added to the customer's event timeline. --- ## Note Metadata All of a customer's notes are kept as one block of text on their record. Each note you save is appended as a new line carrying: - Timestamp (site time), in square brackets - The note text Notes don't record which admin wrote them and have no category — if authorship matters, include your name in the text. There's no way to edit or delete an individual note from the admin; notes accumulate. TrustLens also appends notes automatically: the reason when a customer is blocked ("Blocked: …"), the rule name when an automation rule flags them for review, and the text of Pro's Add Admin Note automation action. --- ## What to Put in Notes | Note Type | Example | | --- | --- | | Block justification | "Confirmed friendly fraud — customer received tracking confirmation and email receipt, then disputed for non-receipt. Refund denied on order #12345. Submitting evidence to Stripe." | | Allowlist justification | "Confirmed VIP via phone call 2024-03-15. CFO of {customer company}; orders for office supplies. Suppress risk signals." | | Investigation notes | "Linked to fraud ring with customers X and Y; further investigation pending. Awaiting processor confirmation on dispute outcome." | | Communication history | "Customer emailed 2024-03-20 asking about delayed shipment. Tracking confirmed delivered. Response sent." | | External ticket link | "Zendesk ticket #5042; awaiting customer response. Help desk lead: @sarah." | | Manual override reasoning | "Trust score is 18 but signals appear to be a false positive — return spike was due to defective batch in March. Allowlisting until product issue resolves." | --- ## What Not to Put in Notes - **Sensitive personal data** beyond what's needed for the moderation decision — notes are admin-visible but not encrypted at rest - **Customer-facing language** — notes are internal; customers cannot see them, but a screenshot could leak - **Speculation that could become a legal liability** — "I think this customer is a known scammer" is more dangerous than "Customer's behavior matches the pattern described in policy X" - **Notes that should be elsewhere** — order-specific notes belong on the WooCommerce order; product issues belong in the product's notes Because notes can't be deleted from the admin, think before saving anything you might later want removed. --- ## Notes and the Event Timeline Saving a note doesn't create an event, so notes don't show up in Recent activity. Related events do: a block, for instance, logs a `customer_blocked` event with the reason while the same reason is appended to the notes. Read the notes panel and the activity feed together to trace the full decision history on a customer. --- ## Permission Model Adding and viewing notes requires the `manage_woocommerce` capability — same as the rest of TrustLens. There's no per-user note privacy; any admin who can see the customer can see all notes on the customer. For sensitive cases (e.g. notes that include internal legal opinions, employee disciplinary context), keep those out of TrustLens — the note system isn't designed for differential access control. --- ## Searching Notes The Customers list doesn't search notes. If you need to find a specific note (e.g. "find all customers with notes mentioning 'Zendesk ticket'"), query the `admin_notes` column of `{prefix}trustlens_customers` directly or build a custom report. Notes aren't returned by the REST API. For most workflows, notes are read in the context of a specific customer being investigated, so search isn't critical. --- ## Notes and GDPR Admin notes are part of the customer's processed personal data: - **Data export requests** (Tools → Export Personal Data) don't include admin notes — TrustLens exports the customer's score, segment, order and refund counts, status flags, events, refund records and signals - **Data erasure requests** (Tools → Erase Personal Data) delete the customer's TrustLens record, notes included Your obligations under GDPR may still cover notes even though the exporter leaves them out. If a customer asks for everything you hold, review their notes and supply them yourself where required. --- ## Notes in Dispute Evidence Reports (Pro) Admin notes are **not** included in Pro's Dispute Evidence Reports. The reports include factual data (order history and customer stats) but not internal commentary. This is intentional — notes can contain language inappropriate for a processor-facing document. If a fact from your notes belongs in a dispute response, add it to the response you submit to the processor yourself — the report has no free-text field for it. --- ## Deletion There's no delete button for notes. The only ways to remove note text are: 1. Deleting the customer's TrustLens data (the Delete bulk action, or a GDPR erasure), which removes the whole record — scores, events and signals included 2. Editing the `admin_notes` column in the database directly Neither leaves a record that a note existed, so treat notes as permanent and write them accordingly. --- ## Best Practices - **Prefix notes with a category** — "[Block]", "[Comms]", "[Investigation]" — since there's no category field - **Sign your notes** — notes don't record the author - **Reference external systems** by ID rather than detail (e.g. "Zendesk #5042" not the full conversation) - **Write factually** — "customer received product on date X, dispute filed on date Y" rather than "this customer is committing fraud" - **Add notes whenever you take a discretionary action** — future you will want to remember why - **Review notes during quarterly audits** — they're the institutional memory of your moderation team