A ten-page quote, a plan, a proposal: to react, your client sends screenshots one by one, or writes “page 2, third paragraph” in an e-mail. To annotate a PDF with your client, Kolinea does better: everyone leaves a remark directly on the document, inside the folder, and the replies stay on the spot they are about.
How do you annotate a PDF or a photo in a folder?
You open the PDF or the photo from the thread, from the folder’s documents or from the answer to a request. You choose “Point” to touch the page, or “Area” to draw a rectangle. On a PDF, any page can be annotated. You write your remark, and an @mention alerts the person who has to answer.
Each annotation carries a number on the page. The list beside the document shows the page’s open annotations, or all of them, with their author and their replies. Your client installs nothing: they annotate in their browser, from their folder’s link, without creating an account.
How do you reply, and how do you know a point is settled?
The others reply on the spot, inside the same annotation. Once the point is settled, “Mark as resolved” puts it away; “Reopen” brings it back if the question returns. Under an annotated document’s card in the thread, a line sums up where things stand: “3 open points · 2 resolved”, with the last word and its author. Nobody has to dig through the file to find out whether questions remain.
What if a remark calls for more than a reply?
A remark sometimes asks for a new version, a document to provide or a decision. In one click, the annotation becomes:
- a post: the composer opens with the annotation’s text and the people in the discussion already mentioned, and the post shows the excerpt of the document;
- a request: you choose who it is addressed to and, if needed, a deadline; it arrives in the thread with the excerpt.
The annotation then moves to the “In the thread” state and the discussion continues in the folder’s thread. Its earlier replies stay readable on the document. If the post is deleted, the annotation reopens to replies. For requests, the page Write a request like an email, track it like a folder describes what the composer offers.
Who sees the remarks, and who can leave them?
Anyone who reads the document and can comment on its post leaves an annotation and replies to it, your clients included. An annotation never goes further than its document: if the post is internal or confidential, so are its annotations. You can also keep an annotation “Team only”, like an internal comment. The author and the team can mark it resolved, reopen it or delete it; deleted, it takes its replies with it.
People who are mentioned are notified as for a comment, and your clients find new annotations in the e-mail that sums up the folder’s activity. For the detail of where annotations appear, the page The folder thread, where nothing gets lost tells the rest.
And on a phone?
Since the latest version, annotating is done with a finger. The document opens full screen: in Point mode you touch the page; in Area mode you drag a finger, and two fingers move and enlarge the page. The remark is written in a panel that rises from the bottom of the screen. PDFs and videos also load in pieces instead of arriving in one block, so a large file no longer has to finish downloading before you see its first page.
What is included, and what is not?
Leaving an annotation, replying to one or turning one into a post or a request requires the Premium plan. Every new workspace gets 2 months of Premium free, with no card. On the Free plan nothing is deleted: annotations already placed stay readable, can be marked resolved, reopened and deleted. The team sees the tools marked with the plan; your clients do not.
Annotations are also a folder option: switch them off for the whole workspace, in its settings, or for a single folder, in its “Edit” sheet. Kolinea’s API lists, reads, creates and settles a document’s annotations, and a webhook tells your tool when one is created or resolved.
What the feature does not do, to avoid bad surprises:
- no freehand drawing, arrows or highlighting: a point or a rectangular area;
- no file versions: an annotation stays on its file, and a new version is a new file;
- no export of a PDF with the annotations drawn on it;
- neither audio, video nor voice messages can be annotated.
To get started
Open a PDF in one of your folders, choose “Point” and leave your first remark. The full description of the feature, with its frequently asked questions, is on the page React to the exact spot of a document, with your clients.