Discussions

A rich discussion system provides an important contribution to online collaborations. Aligni's discussion system is designed to reduce the burdens of email, chat, and other collaboration venues and enable discourse to be co-located with the records that matter.

Discuss Everything

Aligni Discussions are chronological lists of events and commentary related to a specific record. Discussions are supported in multiple areas of the application where collaboration and event logging are helpful. In particular, Aligni supports discussions in the following areas:

Permissions and Access

Anyone that has permission to view a particular parent record is able to view the corresponding discussion. In most cases, viewers are also able to post to discussions. However, some records (such as ECR and ECO), participation is by invitation only. In these cases, only invited participants may post to the discussion.

Notifications and Subscriptions

The following rules establish who receives a notification when someone posts to a discussion:

  • The owner of a parent record always receive notifications.
  • For discussions that are “by invitation”, all participants receive notifications.
  • Anyone who is “at-mentioned” will receive a notification and will be automatically subscribed to receive future notifications.

The following rules establish how subscriptions to discussions are managed:

  • The owner of a parent record cannot unsubscribe from notifications of that record.
  • Participants of “by invitation” discussions cannot unsubscribe.
  • Anyone who is “at-mentioned” is automatically subscribed, but they may unsubscribe at any time.

Discussion Visibility

In many cases, discussions are available as a widget on an appropriate tab within record’s pages. For example, on Builds, ECR, and ECO, the discussion widget is shown on the default (primary) tab.

In other cases, however, discussions are accessed using a “drawer pull” on the right side of the page, approximately mid-page. This will pull the discussion widget from the side to reveal it. These access points are common on multi-tab pages (such as parts) or on full-screen pages where an area isn’t available for discussions (such as quotes and purchases).

Data Retention

Most discussions are subject to your organization’s chosen data retention settings. Please see the data retention documentation for more information. If you need persistent storage of notes associated with these records, attachments should be considered.

 

Discussion Entries

Any collaborator with appropriate permission may post a comment to a discussion. Different records and modules in Aligni have different comment authorization criteria, so refer to the documentation for that module for details. Also note that comments support Markdown formatting to help you get your point across.

In most cases, a user may edit (or delete) a comment within 15 minutes of posting it. The administrator may make edits (or delete) for up to two days. These measures are provided reduce excess commenting due to “second thoughts” and to provide administrators a bit more flexibility to update or censor discussions.

Mentions

Within a comment, you may mention other users with the at (‘@’) character followed by their username. Only users that are allowed to view the discussion are available for mention. If a user is mentioned in a comment, they will receive an email notification directing them to the new comment.

Events

Many event activities related to the parent record are also posted to the discussion and attributed to a collaborator, when appropriate.

Special Events

Some events related to a particular discussion are of more significant importance and are styled to stand out a bit. For example, build events such as Build Finalized are styled to be slightly more recognizable for quick scanning.

Approval Workflow

Approval workflow events are also considered to be important and styled to stand out.

Votes

Discussions attached to ECR or ECO allow participants to vote thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or undecided. This voting activity has no bearing on the ECR/O itself, but it does offer collaborators a convenient way to set a persistent position related to the record and to see how others have voted at-a-glance.

Attachments

Attachments within a discussion are allowed with certain limitations for size and security concerns. For example, executable, script, and multimedia files may be disallowed if they could potentially pose a risk to those someone who opens or views them.