Discussions

What are discussions?

Discussions are threaded conversations for your board, organized into spaces. Open Discussions from the navigation — on a phone it has its own tab in the bar at the bottom of the screen, and on a laptop it is in the sidebar — and everything is on one page. Waiting on you leads, listing the threads with posts you haven't read yet, so the first thing the page tells you is whether any of it is actually yours; it isn't there at all when you're caught up. Below it: your spaces first — the most recently active at the top — with a Recent activity feed directly below them, a single stream of the newest posts across every space you belong to, each item showing its unread count. On a very active board the feed shows only the most recent updates; when there's more than that, a note above the list says so plainly, so the list is never mistaken for the whole history. Every space's "last active" line and the faces beside it reflect that space's own most recent post, even when it's outside the activity feed's visible window, so a space that's genuinely still active is never shown as if it had gone quiet. The unread counts work the same way: they cover every unread discussion post you have, so they always add up to the Unread figure in the summary above them — however busy the board is, and however many notifications of other kinds are waiting for you. Each space holds threads (topics), and each thread holds posts (messages), shown oldest-first so a conversation reads top to bottom.

When you open a thread you've been away from, a New since your last visit line marks where the posts you haven't read begin, so you can pick up where you left off instead of re-reading from the top. Each post shows the author's board role beside their name — a treasurer's read on the numbers is not one director's opinion — and a post a moderator has removed leaves a clearly marked placeholder rather than disappearing without trace.

There are three kinds of space:

• Board — one per board, with every active board member as its audience. It is always there: the first time anyone opens Discussions, the board space is set up automatically if it doesn't already exist, so the page never dead-ends.
• Committee — one for each committee, with that committee's roster as its audience. You can reach it from the committee's page via its Discussions tab, and a committee space links back to its committee from its Space settings popover.
• Custom — a working group an admin creates for a specific set of members (for example, a search committee or an ad-hoc task force). Its membership is an explicit list, and an admin can add to it or remove from it at any time — see Who is in a space.

The activity feed has three views — All, Unread and Mine (threads you've posted in) — with a count on each, so on a busy board you can go straight to the part that concerns you.

Inside a space, Open / All threads / Locked switch what the thread list shows, and each space's card names what kind of space it is, who is in it, and what it's for.

On a phone, a Start a discussion… bar sits at the bottom of every discussions screen (it says Write a reply… inside a thread), so starting or answering a conversation never means scrolling to find the form. On a laptop the same composer opens from the New thread button in the header, and a thread's reply box stays where it always was, at the end of the posts.

You only ever see the spaces whose audience you belong to. Nothing from a space you are not in is visible to you. The space list shows each space's thread and post counts, so you can see at a glance where the activity is.

Who is in a space

Open a space and its card at the top shows a few faces and a count — 5 members. Select that count and you go straight to the Members section lower down the page, which lists everyone in the space in full, in alphabetical order, each name a link to their profile. Nothing is hidden behind "and 3 more": the list is the whole audience.

Where that list comes from depends on the kind of space, and the Members section says so:

• Board space — everyone with an active seat on the board. The section says the list follows the board's own membership; it changes when the board does.
• Committee space — the committee's roster. The section links to the committee, which is where the change belongs; edit the roster there and this space follows.
• Custom space — an explicit list, which an admin can change at any time (below).

Changing a custom space's members

An admin (anyone who can manage discussions) sees two controls in the Members section of a custom space:

• Add member — a searchable picker of active board members who are not already in the space. The person can read and post in the space the moment you add them; nothing else has to happen.
• Remove — beside each member's name. You are asked to confirm first, because it takes effect straight away.

Removing someone:

• ends their access immediately — the space, and everything in it, stops being visible to them and stops appearing in their discussions list, their unread counts and their digest;
• clears their email setting for that space, so if they are ever added back they start from the normal Every post default rather than silently inheriting an old Muted choice and never hearing about the space again;
• leaves everything they wrote exactly where it is. Their threads and posts stay in the space, still attributed to them. Removing a member is not a way to erase what was said.

Both adding and removing are written to the audit log ("Discussion space member added" / "Discussion space member removed"), naming who made the change, who it was about, and when.

Board and committee spaces have no Add member or Remove controls at all — not even for an admin. Their audience is worked out from the board's or the committee's own roster every time it is needed, so there is nothing here to edit; changing the committee changes the space.

Starting a thread and replying

Choose New thread and a side panel opens where you give the thread a title and write its first post. The button is in two places:

• On the Discussions page — the panel includes a Space picker, so you can start a conversation anywhere you belong without opening the space first.
• Inside a space — the thread posts to that space; there is no picker.

There's also a quicker path from anywhere in the app: the New button in the bar at the top offers Discussion thread (and, for admins, Discussion space) alongside the other things you can create, and takes you straight to the open composer.

Open a space to see its threads, each showing its title, who started it, the number of replies, and when it was last active. Inside a thread, use the composer at the bottom to reply. Either composer can carry files — see Attaching a file to a post.

Finding a thread in a busy space

A space's thread list shows a page at a time, most-recently-active first, with Previous page / Next page controls under the list — the same paging you'll find on a long thread's own posts. The summary line above the list (and the Threads/Posts figures at the top of the page) always counts every thread the space has, not just the page you're looking at.

Use Search to find a thread by its title or by anything said in one of its posts, the Status filter to narrow to just Open or just Locked threads, and Scope to narrow to threads started by you or threads that are anchored to a document or decision. All three live in the page's address, so you can share or bookmark a filtered view; changing any one of them takes you back to the first page of the new, narrower list.

Formatting a post

Both composers — New thread and a thread's reply box — have a small formatting toolbar above the text box: B (bold), I (italic), Link, Quote, List, and Code. Select some text first and choose a tool to wrap it, or place your cursor and choose Quote/List to start a new quoted or bulleted line. Under the hood this writes a few plain characters (**bold**, *italic*, `code`, [label](url), > quote, - list item) — you can type them yourself instead of using the buttons, and either way they render as bold, italic, a link, a quote, or a bullet when the post is shown. Anything that looks like HTML is still shown as written rather than interpreted, and a link only ever renders when it points at a genuine http:// or https:// address — so a discussion stays safe to read no matter who wrote it.

A post that arrived as an email reply (rather than through the web composer) is marked with a small via email label next to its author, so it is clear where each message came from.

Attaching a file to a post

Both composers — New thread and the reply box at the bottom of a thread — have an Attachments field. Choose one or more files (the field takes a multi-selection) and they are saved with the post.

What the field accepts, stated once and applied everywhere:

• Formats: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, CSV, Markdown, RTF, and images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP) — the same list the document library accepts, because it is the same storage underneath and the same protection against a file a browser might try to run.
• Up to 25 MB per file, 30 MB in total per post, and at most 10 files on one post.
• If something you have chosen is outside those rules, the field says so immediately — naming the problem — and the post button stays disabled until you fix it. Nothing is uploaded in the meantime.

An attached file appears under the post as a link with its name and size. Selecting it downloads the file; BoardTools never opens an attachment in the browser. Only people in the space's audience can download it — the check happens on every download, not just when the link is drawn, so a link forwarded outside the space gets nothing.

The post and its files are saved together: if a file cannot be stored, the post is not created either. You will never see a post promising a document that is not there.

Files also arrive on posts sent in by email — see Reply and post by email, which covers the one place the two routes differ (what file types each will take).

Deleting or removing a post hides its attachments along with its text.

Reading a long thread

A busy thread — especially one people reply to by email — can run to hundreds of posts, so a thread is shown a page at a time (20 posts per page), with Previous page / Next page controls under the posts.

Opening a thread lands you on its most recent page, because the newest posts are what you are usually coming back for. Paging back walks into the thread's history; the first page is the beginning of the conversation. The rail on the right always shows the whole thread's post count, not just the page you are looking at.

When you post a reply, you are taken to the page your reply landed on, so you always see what you just wrote — even if you were reading an older page when you started typing.

Unread counts, and how they clear

The counts you see in Discussions — the badge on a space card, the badge on a thread row, and the Unread figure at the top of the Discussions page and of each space — all count the same thing: discussion posts that arrived for you and that you have not read yet.

They clear in two ways:

• Open a thread. Reading a thread clears that thread's count, and only that thread's. The next time you look at the space, the thread you just read is no longer badged, the space's Unread figure has come down by the same amount, and so has the count on the bell.
• Select "Mark space read". Next to a space's Unread figure — whenever there is something unread — there's a Mark space read button that clears every unread post in that one space at once. Use it when you've fallen behind and want to start fresh rather than opening each thread in turn. It tells you how many posts it cleared.

Both are limited to discussion posts. Neither one touches your other notifications: meeting reminders, votes waiting for you and tasks you've been assigned all stay unread until you deal with them. (The Mark all as read button on the Notifications page is the blunt one — it clears everything of every kind.)

Marking posts read is personal to you. It changes nothing for anyone else on the board, and nothing in the thread itself: no post is hidden, moved, or altered, and you can re-open anything you've read whenever you like.

Linking to a single post

Every post has its own link. Select the copy button in a post's top-right corner to copy a link straight to it — handy for citing a specific reply in minutes, in an email, or when asking a colleague "see what Ada said here".

Opening that link takes the reader to the right page of the thread, scrolls the post into view, highlights it as the Linked post, and moves the keyboard cursor to it — so it works the same whether you read with a mouse, a keyboard, or a screen reader. The link keeps working as the thread grows: it points at the post, not at a page number, so it still lands correctly after another fifty replies.

Anchoring a thread to a document or decision

A board discusses things — a draft policy, a resolution that just passed, a packet for next month. You can anchor a new thread to the document or the decision it is about, so the conversation stays linked to it.

When you start a new thread, the composer offers an Anchor to field — search for a document or a decision, or leave it as No anchor (the default; most threads have none). If you start the thread from a document's page or a decision's row in the register using its Start a discussion link, the composer opens right away with that document or decision already selected — pick the space and write the post; you rarely have to hunt for it in the picker.

A thread's page shows what it is anchored to, as a link straight to that document or decision. If the anchor's target has since been deleted, it reads as "no longer available" rather than a broken link.

The reverse direction is the useful part day to day: open a document's page or look at a row in the Decisions register, and you'll see a Discussions list of every thread anchored to it, with a Start a discussion link to add another. You only ever see a thread there if you're in the audience of the space it lives in — just like everywhere else in Discussions.

Editing and deleting your posts

You can edit or delete your own posts. An edited post shows an "edited" marker so the change is visible; a deleted post leaves a short "deleted" placeholder in place so the thread still reads in order. You cannot edit someone else's post — not even an admin can change another member's words.

Removing someone else's post

Occasionally a post has to come down: something defamatory, or confidential material pasted into the wrong space. An admin (anyone who can manage discussions) sees a Remove button on other members' posts, so a single post can be dealt with on its own — locking the whole thread just to handle one post is no longer the only option.

What a removal does, and does not do:

• The post's text stops being shown, and its place in the thread is taken by a "This post was removed by a moderator." marker — deliberately different wording from the author's own "This post was deleted.", so the thread's record never reads as though the author quietly withdrew it.
• Nothing is erased from your board's history. The thread still reads in order, and the removal is written to the audit log as "Discussion post removed by a moderator", naming who removed it, which post, and which thread.
• Because it is recorded, you're asked to confirm first, and the confirmation says so.
• An admin removing their own post is just an ordinary delete — same wording, same record as anyone else deleting their own post.

Members who cannot manage discussions never see the Remove button; they keep the ordinary Delete on their own posts only.

Who can do what

• Anyone in a space's audience can read its threads. Everyone except members with the read-only Observer role can also post — start threads, reply (on the web or by email), and edit or delete their own posts. An observer (an auditor, counsel, or prospective member) can read every space they belong to but cannot write; see What can each role do?.
• Admins can create custom spaces (choosing the members), add and remove the members of a custom space afterwards, rename a space, archive a space they no longer need — or un-archive it later — lock a thread to stop further replies while keeping it readable, then unlock it again if the conversation should reopen, and remove an individual post that shouldn't stay up.
• A committee's chair can rename or archive their own committee's space and lock or unlock its threads, without needing any board-wide admin permission. This applies only to the space of the committee they chair. A committee space's membership is the committee's roster, so it is changed on the committee's own page, not here. Removing an individual post still needs board-wide discussion-management permission.

Archiving a space keeps its threads and posts readable in your records; a later Un-archive brings it back to active so new threads and posts can be added again. Renaming a space changes only its display name — its email address and links stay the same. The board space itself is permanent and cannot be archived.

Both archive and un-archive show a brief notification with an Undo button that reverses the change on the spot — a quick fix for a stray click, as long as you act before the notification disappears on its own.

Where archived spaces live

An archived space leaves the space list and the Recent activity feed, so day-to-day conversation isn't cluttered by spaces nobody is using — but it is never gone. Scroll to the bottom of Discussions and you'll find an Archived spaces section listing every archived space you belong to, each labelled Archived with when it last changed. If nothing has been archived, the section says so.

Select one to open it exactly as before: the whole thread history is still readable, the space is marked Archived at the top, and New thread is gone because no new posts can be added. From that page you can Un-archive space to bring it back to active — or Rename it — so archiving always round-trips.

The Archived spaces section is shown only to admins, since archiving and un-archiving are admin actions. It also respects space audiences like everywhere else in Discussions: an admin sees the archived spaces they belong to, never a space they were not a member of. A committee's chair reaches their own archived committee space a different way — through the Discussions tab on the committee's page — and can un-archive it from there.

Email

Every space has its own email address. Open a space — a breadcrumb at the top (Discussions / the space name) always leads back to all spaces — and it is right there on the space's card, under Post by email, with a Copy button beside it, ready to share with the group. Posting and replying by email is covered in Reply and post by email.

Choosing how much email you get, per space

Just below the address, Email me about this space shows how much email that space currently sends you, and selecting it opens the choices. It is a setting for that one space, independent of every other space you belong to:

• Every post (the default) — email for every new post.
• New threads only — email when a new thread starts, but not for replies.
• Daily digest — no email as posts arrive; instead, one summary email a day covering everything new across your digest-mode spaces. It arrives once each morning (around 7am in your board's own timezone, set on its Settings page) and lists every thread that got a new post since your last digest — title, who posted, a short preview, and a link straight to the thread.
• Muted — no email from this space at all.

Leaving a space — including losing your seat on the committee behind a committee space — ends its digest mail on the very next day's send, with nothing further to do: the space (and anything in it) simply stops appearing in your digest, the same "nothing from a space you are not in is visible to you" rule the rest of Discussions follows. If your seat or your place on the committee comes back, so does your Daily digest choice for that space.

Being removed from a custom space by an admin is the one case that also clears your setting for it: if you are added back later, that space starts again at Every post rather than at whatever you last chose. That is deliberate — it is the only way to be sure a Muted choice from months ago can't leave you in a space you're never told anything about.

This only changes EMAIL. Your in-app notifications for discussions (the bell icon) are unaffected — they follow your master "Discussions" switch on the Notifications settings page, not the per-space setting.

You can also stop email from a space straight from the email itself: every discussion email carries a one-click unsubscribe link (recognized by most mail apps as an "Unsubscribe" button near the sender). Using it sets that space to Muted immediately — no sign-in required. You can turn it back on anytime from the space's own setting.