A flexible and intuitive way to view, add, delete and respond to comments is essential for effective collaboration, and successful online collaboration has become an absolute necessity for companies in our post-covid world.
October 2021: Xara has a new commenting system that makes it easy for any member of your team to comment on your shared marketing and business documents, with some powerful new options described below.
All Comments and Replies now appear in a new Comments Panel on the right of your document in the Xara editor.
Adding Comments
To add a comment to an object, select it and click the Comment button on the context menu at the top of your document.
The Comments Panel that opens on the right allows you to enter and Post your comment.
You can also add a comment to any text - just select the character range you want to comment on and then click the Comment button on the context menu.
When you Post a comment or reply, an email is sent to all the collaborators on the document. The new comment is given a unique number, which you can see next to the comment in the Comments Panel, and on a pin on the object/text to which the comment applies.
Easily locate the right comment by matching the number in the comment pin to the number in the Comments Panel
Inviting other collaborators
While typing a comment or reply, you can reference other people by typing a @ character. This brings up a list of people in your team, plus anyone else already collaborating on the document. You can select any of the users in the list, or just type an email address after the @, to invite someone new into the document. It doesn’t matter whether the person you invite is already a Xara Cloud user or not.
Note: Collaborators are free and you can invite anyone, internally or externally, to work on a Xara document with you.
Viewing Comments
Open the panel by clicking on the Comment button on the top context bar.
In the default Comments on page mode you will see comments appear in the Comments Panel for each comment pin that is visible in the current document view. The numbers shown on the pins and comments mean you can easily see which comments apply to which objects/text. If you scroll the document so that comment pins go out of view, the corresponding comments disappear from the Comments Panel, while other comments appear for any comment pins that have come into view.
To view replies on a comment, or add your own reply, click on either the comment itself in the Comments Panel, or on its pin in the document. The comment opens with all its replies, in the Comments Panel. Press the < Back button at the top of the comment to return to the multi-comment view.
Only Unresolved comments are shown in the default Comments on page mode. You can change this mode to any of the following settings via the drop down at the top of the Comments Panel:
Choose which comments to show in the Comments Panel
Comments on page
Shows only Unresolved comments.
@Mentions me
Only shows comments in which someone has mentioned you in the comment or in one of its replies.
Resolved
Shows Resolved comments only
Comments history
Shows both Resolved and Unresolved comments.
Unread Comments
New comments, or comments with new replies that you haven't read yet, are marked with a small red circle on the comment pins and on the comment in the Comments Panel.
The small red dot indicates a comment is unread
Also when you open the Comments Panel and there are unread comments in the document, the panel will show you just the unread comments so you can easily step through them to catch up with any comments/replies that you haven't seen.
Resolving Comments
When a comment thread is finished, you can mark it as Resolved so that it will no longer appear in the default comments view. Simply click on the check mark button at the top of the comment in the Comments Panel.
Comments get marked as Resolved automatically if you:
Delete the object to which the comment applies
Delete the page to which a comment applies
Deleting Comments
If you want to completely delete a comment, with all its replies, so that it doesn't even appear in the Comments history view, use the Delete option in the ... menu at the top of the comment in the Comments Panel. Note that this deletion is permanent.
Sharing documents with comment-only permission
Now when you share a document with someone using the Share with others option in the Share menu, you can choose to give them only Commenting permission. This means they cannot edit the document in any way, they can only add and respond to comments. This is the default permission for new shares, but you can elevate any collaborator’s permission to Editor in the same Share with others window, to give them full editing permission.
Note: To revoke access a user's access to your Xara team and documents, then delete their user account through 'Manage Team' in the Xara Admin Panel.
Other points to note:
The page thumbnail bar on the left of your document has a small comment marker in the top right corner of each page that has a comment, showing you how many comments are on each page.
See at a glance how many comments there are on a page
You can Like a comment by clicking the Thumbs Up button on the comment in the Comments Panel.
The ... menu on a comment also has options to Edit a comment that you already posted. And Copy link will give you a link that will take a user directly to the comment in the document.
Sometimes you may want to comment on a page generally and not on any specific object or text. To do this simply open the Comments Panel - you can add a comment to the current page using the comment entry field at the top. The pins for page comments appear just above the top left corner of the page.
Old comments added before the release of this new commenting system will not be converted into new-style comments. So the new commenting system can only be used for new comments.
When you Make a copy of a document using the option in the File menu, Xara Cloud deletes all comments from the newly created document. The comments remain in the original document.
Similarly if you make a Team Template (File > Save as template) from a document containing comments, the comments are deleted from the new template.