Comments And Mentions

Many records carry a discussion: a running conversation attached to that one order, ticket, applicant or invoice. This chapter explains where that conversation lives, how to write in it, how to pull a colleague or another record into it with an @, and what everyone else sees afterwards.

What The Discussion Panel Is

The discussion is a panel that sits at the bottom of the record's main tab, below all the fields, separated from them by a horizontal line. It is part of the record, not a separate screen.

At the top of the panel you will find:

• the heading Discussion;
• a small gray badge with a number — how many conversations the record has;
• on the right, a pencil-and-square icon button whose tooltip reads Write a comment. This button only appears if you are allowed to post.

Below the header sits the writing box (collapsed until you open it), and under that the messages themselves, newest conversation first.

If nobody has written anything yet, you see a speech-bubble icon with No comments yet and Start the conversation with the box above.

Not Every Record Has One

The discussion panel is switched on per kind of record by the person who set up your application, and reading and writing are further controlled by your role. So it is entirely normal that your tickets have a lively discussion while your price-list entries have no panel at all. If you expect a discussion on a record and there is none, that is a configuration question, not a bug.

Your administrator can also place the discussion somewhere else — a custom-built page can show it in a different position on the screen. Everything in this chapter still applies wherever it appears.

The Number In The Badge Counts Conversations, Not Messages

The badge counts top-level conversations (threads), not individual messages. A record with one thread that has fifteen replies shows 1. This surprises people, so it is worth knowing before you read anything into the number.

Why It Matters

A comment stays with the record forever, and everybody who opens that record later sees it. That is its whole point: the reason a discount was approved, the phone call where the customer changed their mind, the note explaining why an invoice was reissued — all of it stays where the next person will actually look, instead of in one person's mailbox.

Example A customer calls to postpone delivery on order #4471. You open the order, write "Customer called 10:15 — asks to postpone delivery to Monday, warehouse informed", and post it. Three weeks later, when someone asks why that order shipped late, the answer is on the order.

Writing A Comment

1. Click the pencil-and-square icon button at the top right of the Discussion panel. The writing box expands.
2. Type your message in the editor.
3. Click Post.

The whole panel is redrawn with your message in place, the writing box empties and folds away again (click the pencil button to write another one). The rest of the screen does not reload — whatever you had open elsewhere on the record stays as it was.

The Editor

The writing box is a small rich-text editor, roughly the height of a short paragraph, with the placeholder Write a comment... until you start typing. Its toolbar gives you the usual formatting: bold, italic, strikethrough, text and background color, font size, headings and styles, bulleted and numbered lists, indents, quotes, alignment, links, and a full-screen mode. If the toolbar is wider than the box, it slides — use the arrow at its right end to reach the rest.

Two buttons deserve a specific mention:

• an upload icon with the tooltip Attach file — pick any file from your computer and it is uploaded and inserted as a bordered block with a paperclip and a link to the file. A thin blue progress bar runs while it uploads.
• a document icon with the tooltip Format as File attachment — this one uploads nothing; it only restyles the text you selected to look like an attachment block. Use the upload button when you actually want to attach something.

There is also an image button for inserting a picture.

Note Pasting a screenshot straight into the box does nothing. Image pasting is deliberately turned off. Save the screenshot to your computer first, then insert it with the image button, or attach it with the upload button.

What "Reset" Does

Once you are replying to somebody (see the next section) a Reset button appears next to the status line. It cancels the reply — your message goes back to being a new, standalone conversation.

It does not clear the text you have typed. There is no "clear the box" button; select your text and delete it if you want to start over.

Threads And Replies

A discussion is made of threads. Each thread starts with one message and can collect replies underneath it.

Starting A New Thread

This is the default. Under the writing box a small gray line reads Starting a new thread. Type, click Post, and your message becomes a new conversation at the top of the list.

Replying To Somebody

Every message has a Reply button on its right-hand side.

1. Click Reply on the message you are answering. The writing box opens if it was closed, and the button you clicked stays highlighted so you can see which message you are answering.
2. The gray status line changes from Starting a new thread to Replying to #123.
3. Type and click Post.

The #123 is the message's internal reference number. You will not see that number anywhere else in the application — treat it purely as confirmation that you picked the right message.

If you change your mind, click Reset and the status line goes back to Starting a new thread.

How Replies Are Displayed

• Threads are listed newest first.
• Replies are listed oldest first underneath their thread, indented and marked with a vertical line down the left, so a conversation reads in the order it happened.
• You can reply to a reply. It nests one step deeper again. Two or three levels stay readable; much deeper than that gets narrow and hard to follow, so consider starting a fresh thread instead.

Each message shows a circular badge with the author's initials, the author's name, and a friendly timestamp such as Today at 14:32, Yesterday at 09:15, 2 days ago at 16:40, or a plain date for anything older. Times are shown in your own time zone.

Example On applicant record J. Nováková, a recruiter starts a thread: "Phone screening done — strong on the reporting side, weak on SQL." The hiring manager clicks Reply on that message and writes "Good enough for the role, book the second round." The team lead then clicks Reply on the manager's reply with "Tuesday 10:00 works for me." All three sit in one indented block, in the order they were written, and the badge on the panel still reads 1 — one conversation.

Paging Through A Long Discussion

The panel shows ten threads per page. When there are more, a row appears under the messages with Previous on the left, Page 2 of 4 in the middle, and Next on the right. Buttons that would take you past the ends are grayed out.

Only threads are paged. All replies of a thread are always shown with it, however many there are — a thread with sixty replies is one entry on one page.

Two behaviors worth knowing:

• Posting a reply keeps you where you were. If you were reading page 3 and replied to something there, you stay on page 3.
• Posting a new thread takes you back to page 1, because that is where the newest thread appears.

Very long discussions can make the record slower to open. If a record has accumulated hundreds of messages, that is a good sign the topic has outgrown the comment panel and belongs in its own records.

Mentioning People And Records With @

Typing @ in a comment lets you point at somebody — or at another record — and turn that into a link.

How To Do It

1. In the writing box, type @.
2. Keep typing at least three characters of the name you are looking for.
3. Wait about a second. A small spinner appears next to your cursor while the application looks, and then a suggestion list drops down.
4. Click the entry you want, or move with the arrow keys and press Enter.

The name is inserted as a solid colored chip. The chip behaves as one single character: you cannot edit the text inside it, and one press of Backspace removes the whole chip.

Press Esc to close the suggestion list without picking anything.

The one-second pause is deliberate. The application waits before searching so it is not querying on every keystroke. Nothing is broken — give it a moment.

The Two-Step Picker

The first list you get can contain two different sorts of entry, depending on what your application holds and what you are allowed to see:

• individual records, shown as the kind of record, a dot, and the record's name — for example Customer • Alpha Logistics. Picking one inserts the chip immediately.
• kinds of record — for example Invoice. Picking one does not insert anything. It puts a small label at the front of the chip and reopens the list, now searching only within that kind of record. Type the name and pick the record you want.

The second step has no three-character minimum, so it is the reliable route when the direct search does not offer what you need: pick the kind of record first, then type as little as one letter of the name. If you picked the wrong kind, press Backspace while the box after it is still empty and you are back to the first list.

Why Somebody Might Not Appear In The First List

The first list is fed by the same index that powers the application's global search. That index only covers fields your administrator has explicitly made searchable. Colleagues are normally findable out of the box, because names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers on user records are searchable as standard. Other kinds of record may not be — which is exactly the case where you should pick the kind of record first and search within it.

The list is also capped: it shows a limited number of matches rather than everything. A more specific search term brings the record you want into view.

What Happens After You Post A Mention

Once posted, the chip becomes a link. Anyone reading the comment can click it and the mentioned record opens in a pop-up window over the current screen, so they never lose their place.

The mention is also recorded, which has two visible effects:

• On the mentioned record, your comment appears in the tab that lists incoming references — labeled Mentioned in as standard — grouped by kind of record, with a gray note reading (via comment #123) after the link. See Record Detail Screens for that tab.
• If you mentioned a person, the same entry appears in the Mentions section of that person's own profile page. That is their personal list of "places in the application that point at me". See Your Profile And Account.

Does The Person Get Notified?

Not by default. Mentioning somebody records the mention and makes the record show up in their Mentions list — it does not, on its own, send them an e-mail or ring the notification bell.

Your application may have been built to do that: a mention is an event your administrator can attach a rule to, and plenty of applications do exactly that. But it depends entirely on how yours was set up.

The practical advice: if somebody has to act on your comment, do not rely on the mention alone. Assign the record to them, set the field that drives their work list, or tell them — and use the mention for the link and the record it leaves behind.

Example A support agent writes on ticket #8812: "@Marek Dvořák this is the same fault as on @Order 4471 — can you confirm before we ship the replacement?" The comment now links to both Marek and the order. Marek finds the ticket in the Mentions section of his profile. But because the agent needs an answer today, she also sets the ticket's Assigned to field to Marek, which is what actually puts it on his list.

Mentions Work In Rich-Text Fields Too

The same @ behavior — the three-character minimum, the pause, the two-step picker, the chip — works in any rich-text field on a form, not only in comments. Those are the fields that show a formatting toolbar rather than a plain box; a long description, a meeting minute or an internal note field is typically one.

A mention written in a rich-text field is recorded the same way, with one difference in how it is labeled afterwards: on the mentioned record it appears as via the name of the field, rather than via comment.

For what rich-text fields are and how they behave, see The Fields You Will Meet.

Editing And Deleting What You Wrote

There Is No Edit

Once a comment is posted, the discussion panel gives you no way to change it. There is no pencil on a posted message, for your own comments or anybody else's.

If you got something wrong, the honest fix is a reply to your own message: "Correction: the delivery date is the 14th, not the 4th." This is deliberate — the discussion is a record of what was said and when.

Deleting

If deletion is available to you, each message shows a red trash icon next to its Reply button. You will see it on:

• your own messages, always; and
• everybody's messages, if your role has been given the right to moderate the discussion.

Two warnings, both important:

1. There is no confirmation. One click and the message is gone. There is no "are you sure?" and no undo, anywhere in the application.
2. Deleting the first message of a thread takes its replies with it. The whole conversation disappears from the panel, not just the message you clicked. If you only want to remove your own contribution to a live thread, delete your reply, not the thread starter.

Who Can See Comments

Treat every comment as shared, not as a private note.

A comment belongs to the record, not to you and not to the person you mentioned. Anyone who can open that record and whose role allows them to see its discussion reads everything in it — your messages, your replies, and your mentions. There is no private comment, no internal-only flag, and no way to address a comment to one person.

Two consequences to keep in mind:

• If a customer, supplier or candidate ever gets access to their own record — some applications do publish records — the discussion may go with it, depending on what that role is allowed to see. Write as if it might be read by the person it is about.
• Conversely, a colleague who cannot open the record cannot see the discussion at all. Mentioning them does not grant them access. If they reply that they see nothing, the problem is the record's visibility, not the comment. See Roles, Groups And Permissions.

Comments are not included in a spreadsheet export of a list — exports contain the columns of the list, and the discussion is not a column.

What Belongs In A Comment Versus A Field

The rule of thumb: if anyone will ever need to filter, sort, group or report on it, it belongs in a field. Comments are unsearchable narrative; fields are data.

Example — the wrong way A team records "on hold" by writing "ON HOLD" in a comment. Six months later nobody can produce a list of held projects, because there is nothing to filter on. The right move was to ask the administrator for a status field, and to use the comment for why each one is on hold.

Some further habits that pay off:

• One topic per thread. Start a new thread for a new subject rather than replying to whatever was last, so the record stays readable a year from now.
• Write for the next reader, not for the person you are talking to today. "Approved by Finance on 3 June, e-mail from J. Kraus" beats "ok as discussed".
• Do not paste anything you would not want stored — passwords, card details, personal data that does not belong on the record. Comments cannot be edited afterwards.

When A Comment Will Not Post

Work down this list.

• Nothing happens and the box does not empty. Look for a message under the box. Please enter a comment. means the editor was empty when you clicked Post.
• "Unable to add comment right now." The application refused to store the message. The usual causes are that your permission to post was removed since the page was opened, or that a rule in your application blocked something you mentioned. Try removing the mention chips and posting the plain text; if that works, tell your administrator which record you were trying to mention.
• "Comment cannot be added: missing object context." The panel lost track of which record it belongs to. Reload the record and try again.
• A general error box appears — a pop-up headed Error When Processing Request. This is the application's catch-all failure message and covers a slow connection as well as a real error. Before you retry, select your text and copy it, so a second failure does not cost you the message. See When Something Goes Wrong.
• The Post button is not there at all. Neither is the pencil button. You have permission to read the discussion but not to write in it. Ask your administrator.
• The upload of an attachment fails. A short browser message tells you the upload failed and nothing is inserted into the text. Your typed comment is untouched, so you can post it without the attachment and try the file again afterwards. For the separate uploader used by file fields on a form, see Uploading Files And Images.

Protect your text on long comments. Nothing is saved until you click Post — there is no draft and no autosave. For anything longer than a couple of sentences, write it somewhere else and paste it in, or copy it before posting.

Tips And Gotchas

• The badge counts threads, not messages. 3 can mean three messages or three hundred.
• Reset cancels the reply, it does not clear the text.
• Do not count on a warning when you close a pop-up window. The unsaved-changes prompt is built around form fields, and text you have typed into the comment box may not count as a change. If the record is open as a pop-up sheet, copy anything long before you close it. See Pop-Up Windows.
• Comments survive a deleted record. On applications where deleting is recoverable, restoring a record from the trash brings its discussion back with it. See Deleting Records And The Trash.
• A mention chip is one unit. You cannot fix a typo inside it; delete the chip and insert a new mention.
• Typing a name manually is not a mention. Only a chip picked from the suggestion list creates the link and the entry in the Mentions list. Plain text stays plain text.
• The discussion does not update by itself. If a colleague posts while you have the record open, you will not see it until you reload the record.
• Mentioning does not share. It creates a link, nothing more — no access, no e-mail, unless your application was specifically built to send one.

What To Ask Your Administrator For

Nothing in this chapter is something you can turn on yourself. These are the requests worth making:

• "Turn on the discussion for this kind of record." Comments are enabled per record type.
• "Let my team post comments here, not just read them." Reading and posting are separate permissions.
• "Let me remove other people's comments on this record type." Moderation is a third, separate permission.
• "Send a notification when somebody is mentioned." Possible, but it has to be built. Say which records it should apply to and who should receive it.
• "Make these records findable when I type @." If a kind of record never appears in the suggestion list, its name field has not been made searchable.
• "We keep putting X in comments — can we have a field for it?" The most valuable request on this list.

Related Chapters

• Record Detail Screens
• The Fields You Will Meet
• Your Profile And Account
• Notifications And Alerts
• Roles, Groups And Permissions