Collaborative document reviews with PDF annotations

PDF annotations in documents can allow your app users to review documents, add their own comments, and respond to comments added by other users. 

Comments and replies can be added to documents at any time, anywhere, using either the mobile or desktop app. This allows both the event planner and the app user to keep all their inputs centralized, making it easier to track, review, and take action on documents.

Notifications are sent via both email and the app whenever someone comments or replies, ensuring that participants know exactly when and where their input is needed, even if they are not actively logged in to the app.

This is particularly useful in the context of an Advisor Experience app, where you want to encourage your advisors to exchange around a document through commenting, and responding to each other's comments. 

Enabling document annotations

After having uploaded a PDF document to your workspace, via the Documents module, you can make it available to be annotated or commented on by your app users.

This is done via the Annotations options in the document details in Backstage:

Here you can choose among the following options, that will be applied to this specific document when accessed via the app:

• No annotations: App users will not be able to add any comments at all to the PDF document. They will only be able to read the document.
• Private annotations: All app users will be able to add comments to the PDF document. App users will only be able to see their own comments in the document. App users will not be able to see or react to the comments made by other app users on the document.
• Public annotations: All app users will be able to add comments to the PDF document. All app users will be able to respond to the comments made by all the other app users, and mention other active app users.

How do annotations work in the app?

When using public annotations

With public annotations, all app users will be able to add comments to the PDF document. All app users will be able to respond to the comments made by all the other app users, and mention other active app users.

For app users, when they access a document that has annotations enabled publicly via the web app or the mobile app, they will have the ability to add comments to the document:

This is done using the Comment + button:, and entering the comment in the panel on the right:

Clicking or tapping on Comment will finalize adding the comment to the document:

Selecting an existing comment will allow the user to add a reply to the comment:

If the user has selected their own comment, they also have the option of deleting the comment.

When an app user comments on an existing comment that was posted by another user in the document, their comments are also added as replies to the existing comment:

To drive interactions and exchanges, advisors can directly tag one another in their comments using the mention symbol "@". 

Mentioning an advisor in a comment or reacting/responding to another advisor's comment will automatically send them a notification via the app and via email. 

These notifications can be enabled via Backstage, and the app user can choose whether or not to receive these notifications via the Notifications section's settings.

Other controls in the toolbar above the document include (from left to right):

• Move forward and back through pages of the PDF document. Users can also scroll.
• Zoom in/out of the document.
• Add a comment to the document.
• Download the document - this downloads the PDF document without the annotations.
• Show/hide comments - you can use this toggle to display or hide the comments that are present on the document.
• Increase or decrease the width of the side panel to the right where comments are displayed, to be able to see the comments more comfortably.

Please note that currently users cannot edit their comments once they are posted, and that hashtags are currently not supported.

When returning to a document that they have already worked on, app users will easily be able to distinguish any new comments, as they display a clear "NEW" label.
To note, to see new comments that have been added while the user has the document open, the user will need to refresh (close and then reopen) the document.

When using private annotations

With private annotations, all app users will be able to add comments to the PDF document. App users will only be able to see their own comments in the document. App users will not be able to see or react to the comments made by other app users on the document.

For app users, when they access a document that has annotations enabled privately via the web app or the mobile app, they will be able to add their comments to the document, without any other app users being able to see them.

This is done using the Edit button, and then placing and entering their comment on the document

Clicking or tapping on Comment will finalize adding the comment to the document:

Users also have the option of downloading the PDF document, that will include their comments as sticky notes.

Accessing the public annotation details and downloading the document with annotations

With public annotation enabled on the document, event planners have the ability to access the public annotation details and download the PDF document (including all the annotations made by all the app users on the document).

This is done via the Documents module, where Backstage users can access a document's annotation details by clicking on the number of annotation for the document:

To note, if the document is only set to "private" then this will not be available.

This will open the Public annotations tab, that contains a list of all the comments that were added to the document by app users, with the author listed for each comment, as well as the time and date when the comment was posted:

Backstage users can also download the PDF document with all the annotations, by clicking on the Download document button:

Please note that there is currently a document size limit of 6 MB. Documents that exceed this limit cannot be downloaded.

How to enable or disable the public PDF annotation email notifications

By default, when using public annotations, whenever an app user comments on a comment that was posted by another app user in a document, a notification is sent to the author of the comment via the app and via email in order to inform them of this activity.

App users can also directly tag one another in their comments using the mention symbol "@". This will also send the mentioned app user a notification via the app and via email. 

These email notifications can be enabled or disabled via Backstage, and the app user can choose whether or not to receive any of these notifications via the Notifications section's settings.

The email notifications are enabled by default. To disable or re-enabled them:

Go to the Documents > Preferences section in the workspace:

Here you can choose whether to send out automatic email notifications for:

• Mentions: When an app user mentions or tags another app user (using the "@" symbol).
• Replies: When an app user replies or adds a comment to another app user's existing comment.

How to download a report containing all interactions with documents

In Backstage, the Documents report available in the workspace dashboard contains a summary of all data for interactions on PDF documents that are set to "Public annotations": 

Summary of data for all documents: names, creation dates, total number of document views, views over time, as well as the number of document downloads (when document downloads are enabled).

Individual reports per document, with the same data but including user information, such as the number of views or downloads per user and per document.

Summary of all data for interactions on PDF documents that are set to "Public annotations":

In the report that summarizes all documents:

• New "Summary - Annotations" sheet that contains a total number of annotations (all comments and replies), per document, and also broken down per day.
• New "Overview per user - Annotations" sheet that contains the total number of annotations, per user and per document.

In the individual document report:

• Added "Total number of annotations" column to the "Summary" sheet, that includes a total number of annotations per document.
• New "Number of annotations per user" sheet, that contains the total number of annotations per user, broken down per day.

Starting December 10, 2025, please note that these reports will no longer include any comments that were deleted in the documents. Deleted comments will still be listed in the Public annotations list in Backstage (as explained above).