Context and attachments
Key point: Context is for the task or discussion, attachment if for the comment.

From version 6.0008, you can attach PSML documents and fragments, PDF pages and URLs to comments. In addition to the context, this features lets you create rich relationships between documents and comments.

This article clarifies the difference between the context and attachments.

Context

The context is set when you create the discussion or task. It is required and anchors all comments in the thread to a particular location which can be a group, a URI or a fragment.

You can change the context when you move the discussion or task to a different location. In that case, all the comments inherit the new context. It is also possible to move some comments in a discussion to a new context, in that case, they form part of a new discussion. Conversely, moving comments to an existing discussion automatically changes the context of the moved comments.

Permissions

The context group defines the permissions for viewing, editing or replying to the comments. When the context is a document or a fragment, the group the document belongs to is used. If the document is shared, there might be multiple groups.

If a comment is posted from a group that is not accessible to the user, the comment is not visible to the user even if it includes an attachment to a document that the user has permission to view.

User interface and API

Since the context is set for the entire discussion, it is readily available in the user interface and the API even when comments are not loaded. In the user interface, the context is:

  • always displayed at the top of every task or discussion
  • available in the search results
  • included when listing tasks

Attachments

Attachments are optional and relate to individual comments. You can have multiple attachments per comment. Attachments can be documents, URLs and fragments.

Permissions

The group that each attachment belongs to only affects the permission to view the attachment, but has no effects on the permissions for the comment or discussion.

If you post a comment with an attachment to document that a user does not have access to, the document is listed as an attachment but the user cannot view the document.

Users can always access URLs, so if you attach a URL to a comment, users are always able to access the URL.

User interface and API

All attachments are not available in discussions unless all comments in the discussion are loaded. 

For developers: Using the PageSeeder API, it is possible edit attachments and attach a comment to any fragment, but the user interface limits the type of fragment that can be selected to PSML fragments and PDF pages.

PageSeeder uses the attachment icon to indicate when a URL, document or fragment is attached to a comment.

Summary