Communication is the key. Literally to everything. Especially when it’s a team-managed project and there is an enormous flow of creativity involved.
A reliable channel of communication is an important factor in any teamwork. Pics.io has developed a number of ways you can convey your messages to your teammates, both verbally and non-verbally.
Use flags, color markers, and star ratings to tell your teammates how you evaluate particular assets in your shared digital library.
When you upload an asset, a comment can be added to it on the uploading panel.
Leave a comment on an existing asset or its revision in the Activity panel. To add one, follow the steps:
Select an asset and open the Activity panel (a double-window-looking icon situated left to the Details panel).
At the very bottom of the Activity panel, find a field to leave a comment either by writing or by dictating it (the latter available in Google Chrome).
Carry on a conversation by clicking the 'Reply' button to start the threaded message.
NB! (Commenting feature is available with the Micro and higher plans).
Comment on the specific highlighted area
If there’s some particular area on your asset that you want to discuss, suggest changes, etc. - you can use Markers and Areas of interest.
To add a marker, click on the pink button right above the window for leaving comments. This will create a pink marker that you can put wherever you need on your asset and leave a comment. You can create as many markers as you want. They are numbered, so you will not get confused.
You can highlight an area of interest in a similar way as you put markers:
Click on the pink button at the bottom of the Activity panel and place it where you need it on the canvas.
Find a small arrow on the right side of the marker and drag it to select the area you need.
Add a comment to let everybody know why you think this area is important and what should be done about it.
Your comments appear in the Activity panel with a marker and an eye-looking button which has two modes - closed and open. You can switch it off and on by clicking on it. The closed eye hides markers from the asset, open eye shows them.
Watch a short video tutorial that explains everything that has been described above:
Tip: Markers and highlighted areas work best with the following file formats:
Images, such as JPG, PNG, RAW formats, etc.
Designer files, such as Adobe XD, InDesign, AI, and EPS.
Video files. Read more about discussing video assets here.
PDF files.
Video timestamps and timecode ranges
If you leave a regular comment on a video, it will refer to the whole video file. But if you want to leave a timestamp comment about a particular moment of your video, make sure you tick the box Attach time above the comment field. The time will appear next to the comment, so your teammates will know which moment in your video you’re referring to.
Tip: You may attach time to a comment, a marker, or an area of interest in your video.
To comment on a specific time range, pause the video file and navigate to the timeline. Find a bullet in opening and closing square brackets that indicate the beginning and the end of the time range and pull them to adjust the desired range.
Besides, all the comments, markers, and areas of interest are reflected as bullets above the timeline. They act as “bookmarks” that automatically take you to the corresponding places in the video.
Voting feature
If you need to decide which of the discussed assets or ideas your team or your Pics.io website visitors prefer, you can ask them to vote on them by adding reactions to the existing comments by using emojis.
For that, just come up with the idea/workflow of what emoji will be used as an indicator of like/dislike for voting and ask your visitors to leave a corresponding reaction to a comment within the Activity panel. To inform your visitors about the necessity of voting, write this information within the consent window that is shown each time someone visits your website. Learn how to work with the consent window here.
Please see the example below showcasing the feature in use:
Editing and deleting comments
You can delete and edit your own comments, and with the correct permissions it is possible to delete comments left by teammates too.
The permission to delete teammate comments can be set in the My team > Roles section, where you can find Collection permissions > Assets subcategory.
Mention and inform a teammate
Use the @mention to tag colleagues in the comment. For that, type the @ character followed by their name or email address in your comment or reply.
Notification emails & push notifications allow collaborators to see that there’s been new activity in the comment thread along with the option to see the left comment. They can click a link in the email to open the asset and go straight to the comment to see more context.
When your comment has been posted, the @mentioned in it teammates will be notified about that in the following ways:
via email;
via the Notification Center (a bell icon at the top);
via Slack;
Also, each member of your Pics.io team can configure notifications for separate collections within the Notifications section of their Pics.io accounts:
In case you'd like to disable all notifications except for the mentions, enable the corresponding option called 'Allow notifications about mentions in any case'.
Read more about notifications in Pics.io here.
Find assets by comments
Narrow down the results by finding assets commented on by a specific person in your team by using a pre-created saved search called Commented by which contain the list of your teammates.
To find the asset with the specific comment (e.g. 'Sun') left within the Activity panel, use the following search query in the search field:
comments.text:Sun
To find the assets that contain the specific word (e.g. where the 'Sun' is a part of the comment) in a comment left within the Activity panel, use:
comments.text:Sun*
Read more about advanced search queries here.