
Table of Contents
- Enable / Disabling Comments
- Comment Replies
- Attachments on Comments and Comment Replies
- Comment Anchor Links
- Editing / Deleting Comments
- Hiding Comments
- Voting on Comments
- Admin Comments
- Private Comments and Submitter Q&A
- Comment Reporting
- Important things to Note About Comments
Enabling / Disabling Comments
Our latest Commenting interface is now configurable at the Initiative level! (Admins can locate the main option within System Setup > Ideas). Enabling the new Commenting experience will display Commenting options for the Admin to choose from at each individual Initiative level.
Admins can choose between the new Commenting experience (2.0) and our legacy Commenting experience (1.0). Our new Commenting experience will have all updated functionality enabled by default, while the legacy Commenting experience gives the ability to disable specific functionality. Admins will need to revert back to Commenting 1.0 if there is specific functionality they wish to not use.

Make sure to "Save Changes" at the bottom!
Comment Replies

Email Triggering Scenario: User A posts an idea. User B comments on User A's idea. User C comments on User B's comment as a comment reply. In this use case, User B will receive all comment emails on that idea if the "New comment on idea" template is enabled. Since User B and User C are fellow commentators - they will see all comments, as well as receiving emails notifications. User A, as the idea submitter will see all comments, therefore they will be sent email notifications regarding those comments.
Leveraging Private comments may be an option to keep the communication locked down if Admins wish to keep certain information to be hidden from certain users.
Attachments on Comments & Comment Replies
Refer to this article regarding enabling attachments for comments - and comment replies.
Comment Anchor Links
Refer to this article regarding comment anchor links which allows comments to be shared easily via a condensed link.
Editing & Deleting Comments
The new Commenting experience will not allow any other User (including Admin) to edit a comment. Admins can still hide or delete comments, however they will not be able to edit End User comments.
Our legacy commenting experience allows comment editing / deleting for the End Users. Navigate to Site Setup > Ideas > Comments > "Comment Editing for Submitter & "Comment Deleting for Submitter" Select "Save Changes".
End User Perspective: When enabled the idea commenter can see pencil and delete icon.




Important things to note about comment editing and deleting:
With new Commenting experience - If Parent comments are deleted, Child comments will now remain, but show that Parent comment has been deleted.
Legacy version will delete Parent and Child comments. Comment counts are also modified accordingly in the corresponding widgets. This does not accommodate API, Facebook Plugin, custom idea comment widgets, iPhone App or Yammer components.
Hiding Comments
Only Admins can hide comments from End Users. For the Comments, Admins can hide individual comments by selecting the "Hide" icon. This shows that the comment is still visible - and can be chosen be hidden:

Admins can hide individual comments, and if that comment had replies, the replies will also be hidden - or Admins can just hide replies. This is for both new and old experiences.
Please be aware of the following when hiding parent and replied (child) comments: When hiding a parent comment, and Admins do not want the count of the children to show for the End User, they will need to hide the replied comments as well before hiding the parent.
If Admins hide the parent comments, but do not hide the replied comments (child comments) - the End User will see a link to access those child comments, but will not be able to access them, which may cause confusion.
Voting on Comments
Refer to this article to find out more information around comment voting.
Admin Comments
Refer to this article to find out more information around administrative comments.
Private Comments and Submitter Q&A
Administrators/Evaluators also have the ability to post other comment types on the View Submission page. Note: Private comments are visible only to administrators and evaluators. On the View Submission 2.0 page, click on the dropdown menu in the comments section to change the comment type when posting a comment:
To post a private comment, select "Private" and enter your comment.
Private comments will appear as yellow in the comments section of the idea. Only Admins and Evaluators will receive notifications of new private comments. End users and idea submitter(s) will not be notified and will not have access to any private comments.
Important Note: Private Comments are visible to all users that are assigned Action Items. This includes any Idea Submitters that are assigned Action Items including Development Action Items. If an idea submitter is added to a development step later in the process they will be able to see private comments.
Submitter Q&A are private threads that allow the idea submitter(s) and idea team members to be involved in the comment thread with idea Evaluators or Admins. To post a Submitter Q&A comment select "Submitter Q&A" from the dropdown menu in the comments section:
After a Submitter Q&A comment is posted, a green "Submitter Q&A" label will appear around the comment.
Comments marked as Submitter Q&A will be visible to the idea submitter and all evaluators on the idea. With this comment type, the idea submitter will be alerted with a notification.
End users who are not part of the idea will not be notified and will not have access to these comments. Refer to this article to find out more information around using these comment types on action items.
Comment Reporting
Admins can export all comments on ideas within each Initiative. To do so - navigate to Site Setup > Exports > Submissions. Admins will then need to select the "Submissions with Comment Details" report.
Important things to Note:
- We now support an Emoji Picker! Feel free to express your true feeling through comments
- There is no character limit for comments.
- HTML is stripped from comments.
- Comments trigger significant amount of email templates - see the Email Templates guide to become familiar
Is there a way to remove an attachment from a comment? It appears if you hide the comment with the attachment, both the comment and attachment will be hidden. I'd rather just delete the attachment but keep the comment. Is this possible?
We need a functionality to add private 'idea owner' only comments. We also need a 'sandbox' tab, that allows general free-text updates to be appended to the case, without using the social comments feed.
Cheers,
Andy
Hello Kathy,
There is no functionality available which would allow you to delete a comment attachment. Only option is to delete the entire comment and ask the comment submitter to re-submit.
Best,
Brightidea Support
Hi Andrew,
We strongly encourage you to submit your comment feature enhancement request to our “IdeaSpace” (http://bi.brightidea.com/ideas). This will allow all Brightidea clients to collaborate and vote on their favorite ideas – including yours!
Best,
Brightidea Support