Give feedback with comments and mentions

"Make this bigger." On which screen? The blue one or the final one? Feedback loses half its meaning the moment it floats free of the thing it is about. A comment in ALLO solves that by living on the work: pinned to the exact sticky note, image, or page it refers to, with a reply thread and a resolved state, so three weeks later you can still see what was decided and why.

This guide covers where a comment should go, how to pull in the right person without spraying notifications, and how to keep a busy canvas from drowning in open threads.

The short version

Put a comment on an object when the feedback is about that object, and on the page when it is about the whole section. Type @ to mention the one person who needs to act. Reply to keep a discussion in one thread, resolve it when it is done, and reopen it if the issue comes back. Comments are the durable record; use chat and calls for the live conversation and write the decision back into a comment when it lands.

Who can do what

Every comment action is governed by one thing: whether you have comment access to the canvas. That single boundary decides adding, replying, reacting, and resolving, and it is the same for signed-in members and guests.

Two rules are worth pinning down because people ask about them constantly:

• You can always edit or delete your own comment, regardless of role. Deleting someone else's comment, or an entire thread, is reserved for the canvas owner.
• Guests never get thread moderation. A guest with comment access is a full participant in the conversation, but resolve, reopen, and thread deletion stay with the workspace collaborators who own the canvas.

If the comment tool is disabled, the cause is comment access, not a bug. The canvas is shared to you read-only, or guest access on that canvas doesn't include commenting.

Put the comment where it belongs

The single most useful decision is where a comment lives. Anchor it to the object when the feedback is about that object; put it on the page when it is about the whole section.

Object comments stay tied to the thing they point at: a sticky note, a screenshot, a PDF, a shape, a spreadsheet, a sub-canvas tile. "Replace this screenshot with the latest export" only makes sense when the comment is on that screenshot, so anchor it there instead of leaving a floating text note nearby. Anchored comments also show up in the Comments tab and can be resolved, which a stray text box never will.

Page comments are for feedback about the section as a whole: "This page is ready for stakeholder review," "Move this exercise before the prioritization page," "Fold this before the client sees it." They attach to the page, so they travel with it and count when the page is deleted (more on that below).

Mention the one person who needs to act

Type @ in the comment and pick the person. A mention is a deliberate signal: it tells ALLO to treat that person as a recipient and route the comment to their attention.

Mention the person who has to do something, not the whole room. A thread with eight names is a thread nobody owns, and the one real question gets lost in the acknowledgements. If a comment needs a decision, mention the decision-maker in the comment that contains the ask, not three replies later.

Guests can mention people too, as long as guest commenting is on. Who shows up in the suggestion list, and how teams or whole-canvas mentions resolve, depends on sharing and membership; Mention people and canvas collaborators covers those targets in detail.

How notifications actually reach people

There are two different ways a comment lands on someone's radar, and they are not the same thing.

• An explicit @mention is the strong signal. It puts the comment in the recipient's Home Mentions and their Inbox.
• Thread participation is the soft signal. If you reply in a thread someone is already part of, they'll see it in their Inbox even though you didn't @ them. A plain reply like this is not a mention: it shows up in the full Inbox, but it does not appear in Home Mentions.

So if you actually need a specific person, @ them. Don't assume a reply in the thread is enough to get them back.

The delivery order is predictable:

Inbox is immediate, email trails by about a minute, and everything beyond Inbox respects the recipient's settings. Mention delivery is not a stopwatch.

Reply, react, attach, and edit

Reply inside the thread to keep a discussion connected to the comment that started it. React when a thumbs-up would do and a full reply would just add noise.

You can attach files to a comment by dropping or pasting them into the composer. Use that for a supporting file the discussion needs. If the file itself needs visual review, put it on the canvas as an object and comment on it there, where everyone can see it in context.

Edit your own comment to fix wording or add context. Delete it only when it was wrong or shouldn't stay in the history. If the comment captured a decision, resolve the thread instead of deleting it, so the record survives.

Resolve and reopen

Resolve a thread when the issue is done. A resolved thread doesn't disappear: it collapses to its latest comment, tucks the earlier replies behind a N more comments disclosure, and stops accepting new replies. The history stays; the noise doesn't. Reopen it from the thread header if the issue comes back or the decision turns out to be incomplete.

Resolving and reopening are owner-and-collaborator actions. Guests can keep talking in a thread but can't close it, which keeps "is this done?" in the hands of the people responsible for the canvas.

Find unread feedback without hunting

You don't have to pan around looking for bubbles. Unread comments use a lime bubble fill, the slide rail flags pages that have unread activity, and the Comments tab in the side panel lists every thread so you can work through them in order. Opening a thread marks it read.

On a dense canvas, navigate from the Comments tab or a copied comment link rather than scrolling until you spot a bubble. If old threads are still adding visual noise, resolve them; that's what resolve is for.

Move a bubble out of the way

With comment access you can drag a comment bubble so it stops covering the thing it's about. The bubble stays clamped to the page, so it won't fly off into empty space. The one rule: don't drag it so far that it no longer clearly points at the work. A tidy-looking canvas isn't worth a comment nobody can place.

Send someone straight to a thread

Use Copy text to lift the comment's wording into a task, a doc, or a message. Use Copy comment link when someone should land directly on the thread: the link opens the canvas and focuses that comment.

A comment link is a pointer, not a key. It jumps to the thread once the canvas is open, but the person still needs access to the canvas itself. If you're not sure they have it, share the canvas first, then send the link. (Private links and share links explains the difference.)

Before you delete an object or page

Comments live on the thing they're attached to, so deleting that thing takes the discussion with it. ALLO won't let this happen quietly: deleting an object or a page with comments shows a confirmation that names exactly how many comments and threads will go.

When that warning appears, decide deliberately. Usually the right move is one of:

1. Resolve the thread, because the discussion is finished.
2. Copy the comment link or text into a task or decision log first.
3. Fold the page instead of deleting it, so the comments stay.

Comments, chat, and calls

Comments, chat, and calls are three different tools. The difference is durability:

• Use chat for coordination while you work: "two minutes left on this round."
• Use a call when the group needs to talk something through live.
• Use comments for the record.

If anyone will need the decision tomorrow, it belongs in a comment or in the canvas itself, not only in a chat line or a call nobody wrote down. The collaboration side panel is where you review comment threads as a list.

What can go wrong

You can't add a comment. Commenting needs comment access, and a few things take it away:

• View-only access, or guest access without commenting. Check your role in Share.
• The canvas just opened and is still loading. Give it a second.
• The canvas is read-only because of the owning workspace's plan or billing, not your role. This turns off editing and commenting for everyone, and it kicks in when that workspace is over its Free plan limit, over its storage quota, or has an unpaid subscription. On a shared canvas it's the owner's workspace that counts, so ask them to check their plan or fix a payment issue.

Someone you mentioned can't open the comment. They don't have canvas access. Share the canvas, then resend the comment link.

Resolve or reopen is missing. You're a guest, or you don't own the canvas. Thread moderation stays with the owner.

A comment disappeared. Its object or page was deleted, which removes the thread. If the page was only folded, the comments are still there. Find the page in the slide rail or the Comments tab.

A mention didn't notify anyone. Run through these:

• Did you @mention them, or just reply in the thread? Only an explicit @ reaches Home Mentions.
• Do they have access to the canvas?
• Is the thread already resolved?
• Are their notification settings or quiet-time holding back email and push?

The Inbox updates immediately. Email is a minute behind by design.