Collaboration Add-Ons

Collaboration Add-Ons

Use these when teams share work.

The menu

• Comments
• @Mentions
• Assignments
• Activity feed
• Shared saved views
• Notification center
• Approval workflow
• Change history
• Version history
• Internal notes
• Role-based visibility

The prompt

Add collaboration features to this workflow.

Recommend where each of these should live without cluttering the interface:
- Comments (with @mentions, edit, delete)
- Activity feed (who changed what, when)
- Ownership / assignment (who owns this record)
- Notifications (in-app and optionally email)
- Approval workflow (if this product needs it)
- Internal notes (visible only to the team, not to clients)

For each feature, propose:
- Where it lives in the UI (inline, drawer, dedicated tab, page)
- Whether it's primary or secondary (always visible vs. collapsed)
- How notifications are triggered
- Whether it requires backend changes (and if so, what)

Don't add all of these. Pick the 2-3 that match this product's actual collaboration pattern.

The collaboration sequencing rule

In every product, collaboration should be added in this order:

1. Ownership. Each record has an owner. Visible at a glance.
2. Comments. Threaded discussion attached to a record.
3. @Mentions. Notify a specific person from inside a comment.
4. Activity feed. Chronological list of changes, who made them, when.
5. Notifications. In-app first, email as opt-in.
6. Approvals / change history. Only if compliance or audit requires it.
7. Roles and permissions. Last, when sharing pain becomes real.

Skipping early steps to add later ones (notifications without comments, approvals without ownership) creates collaboration debt.

The “internal notes” pattern

If your product is client-facing (CRM, support tool, agency tool), separate public-facing comments from internal notes at the schema level. Visually distinguish them so the team never accidentally writes a public message thinking it’s internal.