Replace Email Chains with Comments and Tasks

In this article, you will learn how to:

• Exchange ideas and feedback with your team through comments
• Set deadlines and maximize productivity through tasks

Comments and tasks are a great way to stay on the same page as your teammates, and to keep others accountable for their work.

Comments

Comments provide a powerful way to drive discussion around content in your Box account. Use comments to request feedback from others, make notes to yourself, notify others of updates to a file, and a variety of other social interactions.

You can view comments in the Preview page of a file within the sidebar to the right, or post your own in the "Write a comment" box at the bottom. Collaborators in that folder can reply directly to a comment or add their own comments.

Communicating with a colleague:

• Start your message with the @ symbol and begin typing the name of an individual to whom you want to message.  Their name displays in blue.
• Click the name of the collaborator you want.  Then finish typing your comment.

The recipient receives an email, and your message populates their Box account.

This message also remains with the file or folder on which you’ve commented.  This gives context for others coming to work with this information.

Note

When @-mentioning, the person to whom you are directing the message must already be a collaborator in the folder.

Tasks

Here’s another way you can use Box to tame the email beast and get your inbox under control: assigning tasks. Example: Instead of shooting your coworker an email asking for quick feedback on a file, consider creating a task for them to keep the whole process right in one centralized location.

This feature enables you to assign a task to yourself, and/or your collaborators.

To create a task:

1. In the right-hand Activity sidebar of the preview window, click Add Task and select the type of task you wish to assign.
2. In Select Assignees, enter the name of the collaborators who you would like to have complete the task.
3. To specify that the entire task is completed when any one assignee completes it, check Only one assignee is required to complete this task. Otherwise, Box marks the status "Completed" or "Approved" when all assignees have completed the task.
4. In Message, add a brief description of your task to help the collaborators understand your task.
5. In Due Date, optionally add the date when the task should be completed.
6. Click Create to assign the task.

Note

You can only assign tasks to existing collaborators in the folder. If you would like to assign a task to a person who is not already a collaborator, you will first need to invite them to join the folder, then assign the task.

When you assign a task to a collaborator, that person automatically receives an email reminder 24 hours before the due date you assigned.

Only the creator of the task can edit or delete a task.  But they can do this only before the task has been acted upon.  When the assignee has completed, approved, or rejected a task -- or, in the case of multiple assignees, when everyone has completed the task -- the task cannot be edited or deleted.

To edit or delete a task:

1. In the All Files window, click the appropriate file name.
2. In the preview window, locate the task and, to the right of the task name, click the ellipsis (...).
3. To edit the task, click Modify task. To delete the task, click Delete task. 

If you have been assigned a task you will receive an email notification containing a link to go directly to the task. Additionally, in the title bar at the top of your Box account window, you can click the clipboard icon to see any open tasks assigned to you.

To complete the task, select the Mark as Complete, Approve, or Reject option, depending on the type of the task.