Starting a Document Discussion

To start a discussion,

In an open document, click the discussion (speech balloon) icon in the upper right corner.

Click Create New Discussion.

The appearance of the Create New Discussion window depends on your assigned role and the document's workflow status. If you are the document owner, an assigned proxy author, or a document control administrator, you will always see the following window. You will also see the following window if you are an assigned writer, reviewer, or approver, and the document is in the draft, collaboration, review, or approval status. If you see this window, continue with step 3.

If you are not the document owner, an assigned proxy author, or a document control administrator, and the document is in the pending, published, or archived status, you may see the following window, which does not include the option to select notification recipients. In this case, the discussion is automatically marked private and will be viewable only by the document owner, assigned proxy authors (if any), and document control administrators. If you see this window, you can skip to step 6.

Note: The ability for readers to send public messages in the pending, published, or archived status is controlled by a document setup preference which the document control administrator can change.

(Optional) If you want to send notifications to make certain users aware of the new conversation, click Send Notifications To, and then click Writers, Reviewers, Approvers, or Other Users.

Note: Selecting a user does not change that user's permission to access the document in any way. If the added participant can already access the document by virtue of an assigned role or permission, that user will be able to open the document and see the new discussion. If the user cannot currently access the document, the user still receives an email notification with the discussion's original text and a link to the document, but clicking the link goes to an "access to resource denied" message.

Do one of the following:

If you selected Writers, Reviewers, or Approvers, select the check boxes for the users you want to notify, and then click OK.

Note: If no users appear in the Writers, Reviewers, or Approvers tab, then no one has been assigned that role for this document.

If you selected Other Users, find users by department, by job title, or by searching for a user's name. Select the users you want to notify, and then click OK.

(Optional) Notice that the document owner's name (and the proxy author's name, if one is assigned) appears in the recipient list preceded by a check box. The document owner will not be notified by default. If you want to include the document owner, select the check box.

Type a message.

(Optional) Notice that the first 70 characters of the message are copied into the Title box. You can change the title text.
(Optional) By default, the new discussion will be accessible to anyone who can access the document. To restrict who can see the message to only those you select as recipients, the document owner, assigned proxy authors, and document control administrators, click Make Private. (See Who Sees Document Discussions for details.)
Click Save.