@Mentioning, Text Formatting, and Likes

As we ring in the new year, we’re excited to announce three big improvements that make Flow an even better tool for helping your team communicate.

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Comments have always been one of Flow’s most important features. They’re an invaluable way to focus your team’s communication around action-based tasks, and we love how discussions in Flow help to foster a sense of inclusivity and encourage everyone to contribute.

After we launched the new Flow, we started thinking about how we could improve comments even more. Today we’re bringing you the results: together, they make comments more readable, accessible, positive, and more fun to write, all without adding unnecessary noise to your workday.

@Mentioning

First up, you can now mention teammates in comments! It’s a great way to call someone’s attention to a comment when you need to ask them a question or think they might have useful input. It works just the way you’d mention a friend on Facebook—type the @ symbol and the first few characters of someone’s name, and Flow will match what you type to the people in the workspace.

Mentioning also gives you a lightweight way to bring someone into a discussion without subscribing them to the other comments and activities on the task. When you mention someone, they’ll be able to receive notifications in-app, via email, and on their Dashboard.

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Text Formatting

Second, it’s now pretty easy to write super-readable comments using Flow’s new visual editing options. When you highlight text while writing a comment, you’ll see options to make your selection bold or italic, link it to a website, or quote it like in an email. You can also use keyboard shortcuts like those available in apps like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, like Command-B (or Control-B on Windows) to make text bold.

(If you prefer to format comments with Markdown, you can switch back to Flow’s Markdown editor using the Text Editor setting in Account Preferences.)

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Liking

And last but not least, you can now Like comments in Flow! We love getting positive feedback, and we think Likes are a great way to quickly and effortlessly let someone know that you’re a fan of what they’re doing. They’re also a valuable way of showing your approval even on tasks where you’re not directly involved. Plus, since our team has started liking each other’s comments, it seems like everyone’s in a better mood 🙂

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Happy New Year! Thanks for helping to make 2013 so great. We’re excited for what 2014 has in store.