About the Web Discussions feature

The Web Discussions feature enables anyone with discussion permissions to attach comments to a Web page or any document that can be opened with a browser. Comments appear with the document but are stored on a discussion server. The discussions are threaded.

Note The term Web page is used generically here to refer to any file you are viewing with a browser.

Anyone reviewing your Web page can use the Web Discussions toolbar to view and reply to any discussion. The Web Discussions toolbar is available in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later to users of a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible client program, such as a Microsoft Office 2003 program.

You can discuss the whole page, using general discussions, or insert comments in a particular part of a page, using inline discussions.

General discussions When you discuss a page in general, discussion comments appear in a Discussion pane at the bottom of the window. If the page you are discussing is a frames page, the Enter Discussion Text dialog box presents a list of the frames so that you can specify which frame a discussion refers to.
Inline discussions When you use inline discussions, discussion insertion markers appear at the end of every paragraph consisting of more than 30 characters, in every table cell that contains more than 5 characters, and at the end of every graphic that has a height or width of at least 30 pixels. These insertion markers indicate where you can start a discussion.
Note For pages that you view in a browser, inline discussions are available only in HTML-formatted files.

You can filter discussions — for example, view comments that are from a particular person or posted on a particular date. You can also show or hide discussion information so that you can focus only on the information you want to see:

Show and hide individual discussion comments or entire discussions.
Show and hide the Discussion pane.
Drag the top border of the Discussion pane to make it larger or smaller.
Close a discussion once the issues have been resolved. The discussion is not deleted; you can choose to view closed discussions, and you can reopen a closed discussion.
Show or hide the subject, user name, or other header information.
Note Discussion header information includes two names for each participant: Display name and User name. Display name is the name that participants set in a client program, such as an Office program; User name is the logon name that a system administrator sets.

When you add discussion comments to a Web page, your text is stored in a database on a discussion server. The Web page you are discussing must be located on the same computer as the discussion server where your comments are stored.