Comments and mentions
Comments are the conversation about an issue: what was tried, what was agreed, what is still blocking it. They sit under the description, newest at the bottom.
Screenshot to come: a comment with an attachment.
Writing one
Type into the box marked Write new comment here, then click Comment.
To attach a file to that particular comment, use Choose file next to the button before you post. This is the tidiest way to attach things: the file arrives with the words that explain it.
Who gets told
The assignee of the issue is emailed when a comment is added, provided they have notifications on for that project.
Nobody else is, unless you mention them.
Mentions
Type @ and a list of people on the project appears. Pick one and their handle is inserted
into your comment.
A mention emails that person whether or not they have notifications on for the project, and whether or not the issue is assigned to them. That is deliberate: a mention is a direct request for somebody's attention, not routine noise.
Screenshot to come: the mention picker open.
There is a known problem with mentions. The handle each person has is taken from their
email address, and if that address contains a dot, a plus or a dash - jane.smith@, for
example - the mention is not recognised, even though the picker offered it and the name
appears in your posted comment.
Nothing tells you. The comment looks right, and the person is never emailed.
Until this is fixed, if a mention really matters, do not rely on it alone: assign the issue to them, or tell them another way. It is being worked on.
Editing and deleting
You can edit and delete your own comments. The project owner can edit and delete anybody's.
Comments that arrived through a BCF import often have no author recorded here, which means only the project owner can touch those.
Editing a comment is not currently recorded anywhere. The activity feed shows the original comment, not the edit, and an issue's history does not mention it either. So an edit is silent - worth knowing before you rewrite something somebody has already replied to.
The comments the app writes itself
Some entries are not written by a person. When a field changes, the app records it as an automatic note on the issue - "changed Status from Active to Resolved".
They are kept out of the activity feed, because the change is already listed there in its own right. They are included when you export a BCF file with Comments ticked, since they are stored as comments - which is worth knowing if you wonder why an exported file has more conversation in it than you remember having.
Comments and BCF
Comments travel. They go out in an export and come in on an import, so the conversation is not stranded in this app.
A comment written in somebody else's tool arrives here with their name against it - and if that person is not on your project, they are added as a placeholder person so the attribution survives.