New Feature: Internal Commenting

A few weeks ago, we rolled out our Collaboration feature to help you work on templates and documents more efficiently. Simultaneous editing is a great step forward for teams that have different team members taking care of different document sections. But you know what’s even better?

The ability to add comments to lines and sections of your documents and mention the person whose attention they need. That’s why we’ve made it possible right inside your templates and documents with internal commenting.

Hello, internal commenting

Collaboration is all about other people’s input, especially when you need different departments to sign off on proposals or contracts. Thanks to internal commenting, you can now ask for that input without having to switch between platforms.

Need to involve Jane from Legal to approve minor changes to your Terms & Conditions? Simply highlight the section and mention her in a comment. Made pricing accommodations for a client and want Finance to look it over? Mention them in a comment.

Want to change the third sentence counting from the bottom of the second paragraph in the Process & Timescales section? You no longer need to email or Slack team members - just tag them in a comment. Already made minor edits and need your manager to approve? They no longer need to scan the entire document to find and approve the changes because now, you can tag them in a comment.

With internal commenting, you can get your proposals, brochures, contracts, and all other documents you send out the door faster than ever before. Getting everyone to focus only on the sections that need their attention leads to faster edits and faster approvals. And the sooner you can get a deal in front of your clients, the sooner the clients can sign or accept them.

What internal commenting looks like

Whether it’s you giving or asking for feedback, the Collaboration feature makes it easy to do so. Simply highlight the text, use the popup to add a comment, and @ the person who needs to see it.

The comments will appear on the template or document in real time. Once you’ve tagged a user, they’ll get an email. Besides notifying them of the comment, the email also contains a direct link to the document you commented on.

When you start editing a template or a document, you’ll also be able to see whether or not there are comments inside it in the top toolbar of the Editor. From there, you can view the comments and navigate through them. That way, you get an instant overview of the work that still needs to be done.

Alternatively, you can simply scroll through the template or document and view the comments in full context. Wherever there is a comment, the text will appear as highlighted. By hovering over the highlighted text, you’ll see the comments made for this particular section.

Comment threads

Once you’ve hovered over the highlighted text, you’ll see the first comment and have the ability to open the entire comment thread in a sidebar. From there, you can add your own comment to the same comment thread. The most recent comment will always appear at the top.

When your team has addressed the issues from the comments, you can mark the comment thread as resolved. Doing this will result in the following:

• All commenters (except for the user who marked the thread as resolved) get an email notification
• The text will no longer be highlighted
  
• The comment will no longer be visible in the top Editor toolbar

And if you accidentally resolve a thread, don’t worry. You can undo it by marking it as active and all of the above will revert back to its original state.

Wrapping up

Another round of feedback collected, another highly requested feature live. Thank you for keeping us on our toes and helping us improve Better Proposals one day at a time. It truly wouldn’t be possible without you.

Now, what are you waiting for? Head over to your account and check out internal commenting!