NowComment's most important feature is probably its intuitive interface, which lets you quickly see what passages people are commenting on, easily find all the comments on the passages you're most interested in, and have unlimited distinct conversations on any sentence and paragraph (to keep different topics in different threads).

That said, NowComment also offers a wealth of other features:

• some are available on this customized site, summarized below
• for the full review of all NowComment features, see the Features Gallery on our public site.

1. *Document View Options
2. Comments and Commenting
1. *Comment Display Options (Full vs. Summary)
2. *Comment Sorting
3. *Updates (Notification of All New Comments)
4. *Private Reply
5. Additional Comment Menu Features
3. Highlighting
4. Other Document Actions
5. Profile & Settings
1. *Comment Notifications
2. *Favoriting Documents and Groups

1. Document View Options

Our default “2-Pane View” shows the original document to the left and comments to the right; you can read the document without much distraction and find any related comments on interesting passages, images, or embedded videos by clicking their word balloon. Dragging the blue vertical bar between the panes changes their relative widths.

“Combined View” puts the document and comments together in a single pane, useful if you're already familiar with the document and know you want to read all the comments (if the document isn't familiar having lots of comments breaking up the text can be distracting). Documents print in this view.

In both 2-Pane and Combined views, comments appear in document sequence: first any comments on Paragraph 1, then any comments on Sentence 1 of Paragraph 1, then any comments on Sentence 2 of Paragraph 1 … then any comments on Paragraph 2, then any comments on Sentence 1 of Paragraph 2, etc.



2. Comments and Commenting


1. Comment Display Options (Full vs. Summary)

All NowComment comments have two parts:

1. Summary of Comment (required) — an overview to communicate the essential point(s) you want to make. One or two complete sentences work best.
2. Full Comment (optional) — here's where you can flesh out your summary line with more detailed arguments and perspectives, citations, data, etc.

You can control how comments display in both 2-Pane and Combined views: “Full” shows you the complete comments (Summary + Full fields), while “Summaries” shows just the Summary field. Viewing Summaries view gives you a great overview of what everyone's talking about, especially useful when you don't have time to read all the comments completely.

2. Comment Sorting

Sorted Comments uses the 2-Pane layout to provide four alternate ways to sort comments:

• Commenter's Last Name
• Commenter's First Name

These show at a glance each person's comments on this document. Sorting by name is useful in many cases, e.g. it makes grading/evaluating really easy for teachers and supervisors! Our Sorted Multi-Document Report does the same thing across multiple documents.

• Date — see comments in the order they were made (sometimes it's helpful to see which comments were made first, or which ones were made right at the deadline).
• Tags — see all the comments made with the same tag (keyword). Comment tags are an Advanced Option on the “Add Comment” and “Reply” windows. Note that Documents can also be tagged.


3. Updates (Notification of All New Comments)

If you'd like to get an email notification of every comment made on an important document just click the “Updates” button (while viewing the document) to turn on this feature. Updates save you from having to visit documents just to check whether there are new comments. You can toggle Updates off and on at any time. See also Email notifications.

4. Private Reply

Click the “Private Reply” checkbox in the “Reply” window if you want to hide a reply comment from everyone except the person you're replying to and from the Document Owner and Group Administrator, who can always see all comments.

5. Additional Comment Menu Features (Comment Options Menu)

All comments immediately show a “Reply” button, the commenter's image, and the date the comment was made. But when you mouse over a comment you also get:

1. An“Edit Comment” button — Commenters can edit their own comment until someone replies to it, and the Document Owner can always act as moderator and edit a comment. Either way, the name of the person making the edit and the date of the edit are always displayed.
2. If you mouse over the comment date the time of day is also shown.
3. If you mouse over the commenter's name or image you can see part of his or her bio; click on either one to see his or her full Profile.


4. A context-sensitive “Comment Options” menu button with some or all of these options:
• Delete Comment — Similar to editing, both the Commenter (until someone replies to it), and the Document Owner can delete a comment.
• Show Comment URL — If you want to link directly to a comment (e.g. in your own comment of your own or in a social media post) this option show you the link URL.
• Hide Full Comment — An option to let you see just the Summary for a particular comment (choosing Summaries View would to the same thing for every comment on the document).
• Hide Thread Detail — This space-saving option hides all Commenter photos, and all the Full Comment fields, for all comments below and including the selected comment.




3. Highlighting

Nowcomment gives you five (5) different colors to make private highlights and five (5) other colors for public (visible to others) highlighting. Each color has a default meaning (e.g. yellow = Important, red = Unclear), but you can override (customize) these meanings at any time.

NowComment features a built-in “heat map” capability for public colors that lets you see how many Group members have marked up each passage and with what meaning (e.g. 5 saw it as Important and 3 Disagreed with it).

For more information see our Highlighting overview.



4. Other Document Actions (“More” menu)

In addition to Uploading, Printing, and Inviting to documents, the blue Navigation strip at the top of a document page has a “More” menu that gives you these additional document options:

1. Copy — You can upload a document one time and then choose the Copy option to make more copies of that already uploaded document. The copies will keep the original file name with “Copy 1”, “Copy 2”, etc. tacked on the end of the document name. You can then share each copy with the appropriate Group; you'll probably want to retitle each copy (via the Document Properties page) with whatever naming conventions make sense for you, e.g. replace “Copy 1” with “Section 1” or “Thursday morning group” or whatever.


2. Sorted Multi-Document Report — see below.


3. Download & Export Options — Your documents aren't locked into NowComment, you can download and/or export any document you uploaded or that was shared with you in a variety of ways: in its original format, in HTML, printed to PDF (if your computer's operating system has that option), or EPUB.


4. Favorite/Unfavorite — Marking a Public Document as a “Favorite” will make it appear in the Favorites section of your Profile Page and, if you've chosen the Favorites checkbox in your email notifications settings, you'll get email about all comments made on a document (Public or Private). “Unfavoriting” removes the Profile listing and the special email notifications for that document.


5. Fullscreen — This hides the NowComment logo and top links, freeing up more space for the document and comments. The “Show Top Links” option on the same menu restores the logo and links.


6. Tag Document — This lets you assign tags (keywords) to a document to help people find it on searches.

Note: some of the options above are also on each document's “Options menu” on your My Library.



5. Profile & Settings (Account Information)

Your Profile Page is where you control how your name is spelled, your email address, what picture or image you use (if you don't upload one we provide a nature photo), your bio information if any, etc. In addition to these straightforward fields:

1. Comment Notifications — NowComment lets you control how many comment notifications you get by choosing one or more of the following notification criteria here:
• if people reply directly to you
• if they comment on a conversation (thread) you've posted to
• if they comment on one of your “Favorite” documents (see below, also similar to Updates)
• comment on a document in a Favorited Group

By default you'll get a single “Daily Digest” of all comments that fit your chosen criteria, but you can also chose to get immediate notifications instead (or no notifications at all if you leave all checkboxes unmarked).

2. Favoriting Documents and Groups — here are some sample uses:


• Favoriting a Group — You join a Group and want to be notified whenever someone comments on any of that Group's documents. From the Group page, just click the “favorite this Group” link under the Group name. If you're joining an existing Group you'll receive notifications about Group comments made within the past 24 hours.


• Favoriting a specific Document — Useful whenever you want to monitor a document not in a favorited Group without having to visit it just to check whether there's are new comments.



Note: another way to get per document comment notifications is to use our “ Updates” feature; just click the “Updates” button when reading a document to turn on this feature. You can turn Updates off at any time.

• Unfavoriting a specific Document — Whenever you no longer want automatic notifications of new comments (you can always visit the document to see what's new).


• Unfavoriting a Group — If you leave the Group or no longer need to closely monitor its comments (note that you can Unfavorite specific documents while still Favoriting the Group as a whole!).

There are three ways to get a document onto this “Favorite” list:

1. choose the “Mark as a Favorite” option on the “More” pull-down menu while reading the document)
2. Favorite it from the document's Properties page.
3. choose “Mark as a Favorite” from that document's Options menu on your My Library page