New Beta Feature: Conversations - a New Commenting Solution

We're very excited to announce a new Beta feature called "Conversations" which will allow you to collaborate and discuss content more easily (and in real-time) within an e-Portfolio!

Have you ever wanted to comment directly on a particular sentence, paragraph or piece of media within an e-Portfolio?

Now you can!

It's simple to use:just select a portion of text or a piece of media and a comment box will appear. Type your comment and click "Send" (or press Enter/Return) to send it. (Please note: Comments will need to be enabled for the e-Portfolio you are commenting on for Conversations to occur.)

Even better, the e-Portfolio owner can reply directly to your comments, keeping the conversation going - and better-organized - and others can also jump in and contribute their thoughts to the same conversational thread. New comments appear in real-time so users don't need to refresh their pages to see them.

e-Portfolio pages can have multiple conversations happening at the same time, with all the related comments grouped together. Passing your cursor over a conversation marker will show you which portion of the page is being discussed.

Clicking on the conversation marker will cause the whole conversation to appear to the right of the e-Portfolio's content area, where new comments in the same thread can also be added. 

The dark gray "Page Comments" button allows you to make page-level comments or to see a list of all conversations happening on a particular page. Click on the "Page Comments" button to make a comment about the full page. Mouseover the button to reveal the "Show All" toggle that turns the overview on and off. Click on any conversation in the overview to go directly to that conversation.

If a page changes and the content that was commented on no longer exists in the published view, the original highlighted content and the conversation about that content is preserved in the overview.

This feature will eventually replace our existing comment system, but for now, we are looking for beta-testers to try it out and give us your feedback! 

During this beta period, old comments will remain as they were, at the bottom of every e-Portfolio page. New comments made with Conversations will be available to the right of every e-Portfolio page.