Private comments and replies can only be seen by reviewers in a stage, reviewers with Manage permissions, and your Ziflow administrator.

Available on: Enterprise

There are two types of comments/replies that can be added to a proof:

• Public comments/replies - Public comments/replies, are visible to all reviewers invited to the proof, no matter what stage they are in.

• Private comments/replies - Private comments/replies are only visible to the reviewers in that specific stage, reviewers with Manage permissions, and the Ziflow administrator.

When public and private are selected in Allow comments in the stage settings, you can switch between public and private comments/replies:

For more information about setting comments, see Add reviewers and configure workflows.

When public and private comments are allowed, you can choose whether you want the comment to be public or private using the toggle under the comment field.

A private comment is indicated by a key icon:

Private comments in multi-stage workflows

When private comments are enabled across multiple stages, each stage has its own separate comment thread.

• Private comments added in one stage are not visible in other stages

• Each stage acts as an isolated discussion space

• Reviewers only see comments from the stage they are assigned to

@mentions and private comments

@mentions follow the same stage-based rules:

• You can only @mention reviewers in your current stage

• Reviewers in other stages won’t appear in the list

• Even if they’re part of the same proof

Private replies on public comments 

Available on: Enterprise

If your Ziflow administrator enables private replies, internal teams can post private replies to public comments. For more information, see Enable private replies.

Private replies are only visible to other reviewers in the same workflow stage and reviewers with Manage permissions. 

Private replies example

In the proof workflow example below:

• The first proof stage (CLIENT), has only public comments enabled.
• The second stage of the same proof workflow (INTERNAL) has both types of comments (public and private) enabled.

• Reviewers from the INTERNAL stage can post private replies to public comments made by reviewers from the CLIENT stage.
• The reviewer who posted a public comment in the CLIENT stage will not see any replies made to his comment/markup (because they are not a reviewer in the INTERNAL stage).

Change a comment from public to private

Available on: Enterprise

To change a public comment to private (or vice versa):

1. Open the comment.
2. Hover over your comment, select the Options menu (3 dots) and choose Make public or Make private.