An action attaches a named piece of work to an element and hands it to a teammate. Where a comment starts a conversation, an action assigns an outcome: it has a name, an optional description, an assignee, and a done state. Use them to turn a review into a to-do list that lives right on the document.
Anyone who can edit the document can assign an action to themselves, signed in or not, so actions also work as personal to-dos on a document. Assigning to other people is built on teams. For a document in a team's shared library, the picker offers that team's members: joined ones, and invited ones who haven't accepted yet. Those are marked with an Invited badge; they get access to the document when they join, and the optional email goes to their invite address.
A personal document is self-assign only, but the dialog offers the fix inline: under "Move this document into a team library to assign teammates", pick one of your teams and the document moves into its shared library on the spot, so its members become assignable without leaving the canvas. As a guest, the dialog suggests signing in and joining a team instead.
Assigning an action
Right-click the element (long-press on a touch screen), open the Collaborate category, then choose Assign Action. If the element already has an action, the tile reads View Action instead: an element holds one action at a time.
In Assign an Action, give it an Action name (up to 200 characters), add a Description if the work needs more context, and pick Myself or a member of the document's team.
When you pick a teammate, an Email (their name) about this action switch appears, already on. Leave it on if you want them to get an email with a link back to the document, then confirm with the dialog's "Assign action" button.
The element gains a small clipboard badge while the action is open. Anyone on the document can click the badge to read the action, including who it is assigned to and who assigned it; people who can edit the document can also work with it from there.
The picker only offers members of the team the document lives in, so the assignee can always open it. If an older action's assignee has since left the team, they may no longer be able to; the dialog warns you, and you can reassign it with Edit in the action's popover.
The Collaborate panel
As soon as a tab has any actions or comment threads, a Collaborate button appears in the bottom-right row, just before the Layers button (hidden in Zen), with a small count of what is still open. Press it to open the panel as a pop-over above the button, in every layout; press it again or click the canvas to close it. The button disappears when the tab has nothing to collaborate on. At the top, Open and Resolved switch between what still needs doing (open actions and unresolved comment threads) and what is finished (completed actions and resolved threads), each with its count. When a tab has both comments and actions, the All, Comments and Actions chips underneath narrow the list to one kind. Actions assigned to you lead the Open list under For You. Each action row starts with a round check: tap it to mark the action done right there (or, under Resolved, to reopen it). Each comment row shows the element it is on and the latest reply, with the author's name in their colour. Click a row to jump to the element and open its thread or action. When the thread or action lives on a comment panel or an action panel on the canvas, the row simply selects that card and brings it into view, since the card already shows it.
Completing an action (or resolving a thread) moves it to the Resolved filter and clears the element's badge, so Open only ever shows what still needs doing. Clearing the last action and comment removes the panel entirely. If you would rather not have the button at all, turn off Enable Collaborate Panel in Settings › Panels › Collaborate; comments and actions still work from the elements themselves.
Completing, editing, and deleting
Click an action's badge to open its popover:
- Complete marks it done. The action stays on the element as a record, and the button becomes Reopen if the work turns out not to be finished.
- Edit reopens the dialog to change the name, description, or assignee, then Save action. Handing the action to a new person offers the email switch again, for the new assignee.
- The bin removes the action from the element entirely: press it, then Confirm. Delete Action in the edit dialog does the same, with Confirm Delete.
Someone on a Participant or Viewer share link can read actions but not complete, edit or delete them.
Actions are deliberately not undoable: pressing undo after assigning, completing, or deleting an action will not silently reverse it, the same way comments are protected.
Email notifications
When an action is assigned to you (and your deployment has email enabled), you get a short email naming the action, who assigned it, and which document it is on, with a link straight to the document. You can turn these off any time with Someone Assigns Me an Action in your email notifications (Settings › Notifications, signed in). Assigning an action to yourself never sends an email.
Keep action names short and outcome-shaped ("Confirm the retry budget", "Redraw the auth flow"). The description is the place for detail; the name is what teammates scan in the panel.
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