A PDF Comment Form puts a PDF on a public page and lets people comment on the exact passage or spot they mean. Use it when you need feedback on a draft plan, policy or set of guidelines, and a general comment box would leave you guessing which paragraph someone was talking about.
Each comment carries its page and the text it points at, so you can read feedback in the context of the document. Comments appear on the page as soon as they're posted, with the commenter's name, and you can read and download every one of them from the project admin.
Before you start
PDF Comment Form appears in the Create New menu only when your plan includes it. If you don't see it, ask your Customer Success Manager. You'll also need the final PDF you want reviewed, under 50 MB.
What you can do with a PDF Comment Form
Let people highlight a sentence and comment on it, drop a pin on a map, table or drawing, or leave a general comment about the whole document.
Ask a few questions alongside every comment, such as how someone is affiliated or which part of town they live in.
Open and close commenting on set dates, while the document and the comments stay readable after it closes.
Let people reply to each other and support comments they agree with, under their own name or anonymously.
Get an email when someone posts a comment or reply, and when someone reports a comment.
Read every comment in a table on the Responses tab and download them all as a spreadsheet.
Where to find it
From your dashboard, click Create New, then PDF Comment Form. After you create it, the project opens on the PDF Settings tab, which is where you upload the document and set the commenting window. Active PDF Comment Forms are listed with your other projects on your dashboard, with their comment and participant counts.
Step by step
Click Create New, then PDF Comment Form. Give the project a name and choose how participants are identified under Participant Anonymity. Click create.
On the PDF Settings tab, click Select PDF File (or drag the file onto the upload area). When it finishes, make sure it's chosen under Primary PDF Document.
Under Commenting Window, set a start and end date. Leave both blank to keep commenting open with no end date.
Click Save PDF Comment Settings.
Optional: on the Questions tab, add the questions you want answered with each comment. Choice questions show as buttons, short-answer questions as a one-line box, and comment questions as a larger text box. You can mark any of them required. If you need people to say which section they're commenting on, add a choice question.
Publish the project, then share its link. Listing it on your engagement portal is optional.
Open the public page yourself and check the page count and the Open through date before you send the link out.
Comments go live as soon as they're posted
There's no review step on a PDF Comment Form. Every comment and reply appears on the public page the moment someone posts it, and stays there when the page is reloaded. The old Publish comments immediately setting is gone from PDF Settings, because it's now always on.
Each comment shows who wrote it. Someone signed in shows their profile name. Someone who isn't signed in sees an optional Your name box above the comment and reply boxes. If they type a name, it's shown with their comment. If they leave it blank, the comment shows Anonymous User. If your project's Participant Anonymity is set to fully anonymous, no name is ever collected or shown.
Because comments are public right away, plan your launch around that: say in your project description how you'll use the comments, and keep an eye on the page in the first days.
Emails about new comments
PDF Comment Forms use the Form Submitted email. Each admin with Form Submitted checked in the project's admin list gets an email for every new comment or reply, with the subject New comment on (or New reply on) and the project name, a short excerpt, and links to the comment and the Responses tab. Uncheck Form Submitted for anyone who doesn't want them.
To keep a busy project from flooding inboxes, each project sends at most 30 of these emails an hour. Anything past that is still on the Responses tab.
When someone reports a comment
Each comment has a Report option. The person reporting picks a reason (Vulgar Language, This is Spam, Abusive Content or Other) and can add a note of up to 500 characters. A note is required when they pick Other. The project's admins who get Comment Moderation emails receive one with the comment, the reason and the note. You get one email per reported comment a day, however many people report it.
Reporting doesn't hide the comment. It stays on the page until support takes it down.
Reading and exporting comments
Responses tab. One row per comment, newest first, with when it was submitted, the commenter, the page, the comment, each answer to your questions, its supports and replies, and a View link that opens the document on that comment with its passage highlighted. Long comments are shortened in the table; hover to read the whole thing.
Header numbers. Comments counts top-level comments, Responses counts comments plus replies, and Participants counts the people who posted. They follow the date range you pick.
Data Export tab, Response Data. Every comment and reply as a spreadsheet, one row each, with the commenter, page, comment, supports, replies, status, a link to the comment, which comment a reply answers, links to any attachments, and each answer to your questions.
Data Export tab, Comments. The same comments in the format your other projects' comment exports use, so you can combine them in one workbook. Each row is marked PDF Comment and carries the page, status, replies, link and attachments.
Exports include comments support has hidden, marked with their status, so your record is complete. Comments that were deleted are left out.
What it does not do
A few things people expect that this version doesn't handle yet:
There's no button in the admin to hide or remove a comment once it's posted. If a comment needs to come down, contact support.
There's no way to hold comments for review before they're public.
There's no Comments tab for this project type. Comments are on the Responses tab and in the document.
A project holds one PDF. To take comments on several documents, create one project for each.
Placing a pin needs a mouse or a tap. Keyboard users can still highlight text or leave a general comment.
Tips and limits
Use a PDF that has real text in it, not a scan. People can only highlight text the PDF actually contains. Scanned pages still take pins and general comments.
The page loads up to 200 comments. For a document you expect to draw more, consider splitting it into chapters.
Anyone with the link can download the PDF, so only upload what you're ready to share.
Commenting dates don't have a time zone picker. After saving, check the Open through date on the public page matches what you meant.
Each person can post up to 30 comments an hour by default. You can change this with Rate Limit (comments per hour).
Names are capped at 100 characters, and a name that fails our language filter is dropped. The comment still posts, as Anonymous User.
On a phone, people switch between the document and the comments with the toggle at the bottom of the screen, and add a comment with the plus button.