Confluence has two key functionality areas: documentation/knowledge management and team collaboration. Comments are probably the best way to practice collaboration on the Confluence page. They enable users to add important information, ask questions, or put a remark relevant to the page content or a specific fragment of the content.
Comments can be used in two contexts:
- Whole page – Page Comments
- A specific segment of page content such as sentence or paragraph – Inline Comments
Let’s review each one of those scenarios. We will start with page comments.
Page Comments in Confluence
When it is intended to post a comment about the entire document, page comments should be used.
Page comments widget is located at the bottom of the page.
A click on the widget opens up the rich text editor, and you can write your comment there, do all sorts of formatting, even including some macros and images. When done, a simple click Save stores and publishes your comment.
Notice that the ‘Watch this page’ option is ticked by default when you create a comment. Leaving it like that means you will start receiving notifications about any activity on the page where the comment was created. If you don’t want that, just uncheck it.
Once the comment is posted, other users can reply and like your comment. Also, you or a space administrator can edit or delete your comment at any time.
Inline Comments in Confluence
If your comments pertain to a specific part of the page content, a word, a sentence, or a paragraph, then inline comments are the appropriate option.
Start with highlighting the text you want to comment on, and then click on the Comment button that will appear above the highlighted text.
Enter the comment and click Save.
The text you highlighted will have a yellow highlight indicating there is a related inline comment. Clicking on the highlighted text will display the associated comments.
Similar to the page comments, other users can reply or like, your inline comments, and you will receive a notification when that happens.
In-line comments have one additional feature that page comments don’t – they can be resolved. That means that the comment is no longer needed, and it should not clutter the right side of the page. Keep in mind that the comment is not deleted when it is resolved, and it can be brought back by reopening it using the page actions menu.
Here are a few more tips that apply to both page and inline comments:
- Similar to when editing page content, in the comment text, you can create a reference to any user using @ symbol
- You can embed a macro using slash character.
- If you need to link directly to a specific comment, you can do so using a comment-specific URL. Right-click on the time stamp allows you to get the comment URL in the clipboard, and from there, you can paste a link wherever you need it.
- And last but not least, each comment can be liked and unliked.