Comments
Ask a question about a specific line item without leaving the estimate. Comments attach to the estimate line or selection item they are about, so the context stays with the question, and @mentioning a teammate sends it straight to their Inbox.
Comments are internal. They are never shown to clients — not in the client portal, not on the selections review page, and not on the printed selections and allowances sheet.
The Comments Sidebar
A comments rail sits on the right-hand side of both the estimate page and the selections page.
On a wide screen the rail is a narrow strip of icons down the right edge. Click the speech bubble icon to open the panel beside the estimate; click it again to close. On a narrower screen — a laptop, tablet or phone — the rail is hidden and the speech bubble moves into the page header, where it opens the panel as a slide-over instead.
Either way the icon carries a badge with the number of unresolved threads on the whole estimate, across every area — so you can see there is something outstanding without opening anything.
The sidebar remembers whether you left it open, separately for each estimate and for each page, so it comes back the way you left it.
Commenting on an Estimate Line
- Open the estimate
- Click the speech bubble icon on the line you want to discuss
- Type your comment in the box at the bottom of the panel
- Click Send, or press Ctrl + Enter (⌘ + Enter on a Mac)
The comment appears in the thread immediately. The panel header shows which line you are looking at, so you always know what the conversation is attached to. Opening a thread this way never moves the page — the line you clicked stays where it is. Only jumping to a thread from All scrolls, since that row may be elsewhere on the estimate.
Disabled lines keep their comments. Disabling a line is often the outcome of a discussion about it, so the thread that explains the decision stays where you left it.
Comment Counts
Each line shows a badge with the number of unresolved threads on it, so a line with a badge is a line with an open question. The badge updates as you post, resolve and delete comments. Lines with nothing outstanding show no number.
Seeing Every Comment on the Estimate
The panel has a scope switch at the top — Entry / All on the estimate page, Item / All on the selections page:
- Entry (or Item) — the comments on the row you selected
- All — every comment on the estimate, each labelled with the row it belongs to
All is the quickest way to see what is outstanding on a long estimate. Replies are collapsed behind a "2 replies" button so the list stays scannable — click it to read them. You can reply and resolve directly from this view, without switching back to a single row.
Click a thread's label to jump to the row it was left on. The page switches to that row's area tab if it is not the one you are looking at, and scrolls the row into view.
Commenting on a Selection
Selection items work the same way. On the selections page, click the speech bubble icon on a selection item to open the panel on that item, then type and send.
Selection comments carry their own unresolved count badge, and behave identically to estimate line comments — including replies, mentions, resolving, the Item / All switch and the filters below. In All, each thread is labelled with the item, and beneath it the area and assembly the item sits under.
Replies
Click the reply arrow on a comment to answer it. The reply is indented beneath the original, keeping a back-and-forth together as one thread instead of scattering it down the list.
In the per-line view replies are shown straight away; in the All view they start collapsed behind a count, since that view is for scanning many threads at once. Either way, Hide replies and the count button fold them away again.
Threads are one level deep: you reply to the original comment, not to another reply. This keeps a thread readable and means the whole conversation is resolved as a unit.
@Mentions
Type @ followed by a name in any comment or reply. An autocomplete list of active users appears — choose one with the arrow keys and press Enter or Tab.
When you mention someone:
- They receive an inbox notification titled "[Your Name] mentioned you"
- Clicking it opens the estimate or the selections page with the comments panel already open on the right item
- They start following that line or selection, so they see later comments on it too
Other people following the same line get a separate "new comment" notification. Someone you mentioned gets the mention only, not both.
See @Mentions in Comments for how mentions work elsewhere in the product.
Liking a Comment
Click the thumbs up on a comment or reply to agree with it without adding a "+1" of your own. The count beside it shows how many people have; hover it to see their names. Click again to take your like back.
Resolving a Thread
Once a question has been answered, click the check mark on the original comment to mark the thread resolved.
A resolved thread:
- Is dimmed and marked with a green border, with a label showing who resolved it and when
- Drops out of the default comment list
- Stops counting toward the line's badge
Click the undo arrow on a resolved thread to reopen it.
Anyone who can see a thread can resolve or reopen it — there is no separate permission — and resolving is recorded against your name. Resolving sends no notification.
Resolving applies to the whole thread. Replies follow their original comment, so a resolved thread takes its replies with it and reopening brings them back.
Filtering
The Show dropdown at the top of the panel controls which threads are listed:
| Option | Shows |
|---|---|
| Unresolved | Open questions only |
| Resolved | Threads that have been answered and closed |
| All comments | Everything. This is what the panel opens on. |
The All view adds two more dropdowns beside it:
| Dropdown | Options |
|---|---|
| From | Everyone, My comments (threads you wrote in or replied to), Mentions me (threads that @mention you) |
| Area | All areas, or one area of the estimate. Hidden when everything sits in a single area. |
From matches whole threads, not single comments: answering somebody else's question makes that thread yours, so it appears under My comments even though they wrote the first line.
Your choices stick while you move between rows and between scopes on the same estimate, so you can work through a filtered list without resetting it each time.
Deleting a Comment
You can always delete your own comments. Deleting someone else's requires the Delete All Comments permission, which is granted to the Human Resources role by default.
Deletion asks for confirmation first.