Collaborate on documents within Productboard

Document boards are designed to help you create, manage, and share essential documentation within Productboard instead of having to go to an external tool like Notion, Google Docs, or Confluence.

Document boards behave like other boards in that they live in teamspaces and are integrated with your workspace and product hierarchy, meaning you're able to embed items like features and insights in-line during a discussion or tag teammates in a comment to get their attention. 

In this article:

• Who can work with documents?
• Creating new documents
• Editing documents
  • Blocks
  • Comments
  • Mentioning people or items
• Sharing documents
• Managing documents
• Converting existing text into entities
• Linking documents to work items
• Document use cases and capabilities
• See also

Who can work with documents?

All member roles can view documents, but only makers and admins can create and delete documents. 

Contributors can generally only view documents unless they are granted the can edit docs member access level within a teamspace. See Teamspace types and member access levels for details.

Creating new documents

You can create a new document in the same ways you can create most other types of boards: 

From main navigation

1. Hover over a teamspace name and click + Create a new board or folder.
2. Choose Document from the dropdown.

From a teamspace hub

1. Click on a teamspace name to open its hub.
2. Click Create in the top right corner.
3. Choose Document from the dropdown.
   
   

Editing documents

All documents are called "Untitled document" when they're created. You can edit the title directly within the document or from the document's header at the top of the screen. 

Blocks

Documents are based on blocks. Editing a block is like editing any text field—just click and type. An empty block looks like this:

Formatting blocks

At any time while editing a block, press / forward slash to open the Command menu. Selecting an option here will either change your current block's formatting or start a new block depending on your selection.

This menu includes headings, horizontal rules, tables, quotes, code blocks, to-dos, and lists (toggle, bullet, and numbered).

Highlight any text to reveal a contextual formatting bar, which allows you to apply basic formatting like italics, font color, or hyperlinks. You can also change the format of the block from here, or leave a comment in the right-hand margin. 

Managing blocks

When you hover over a block, you'll see its handle appear in the left margin. You can click and drag the handle to move the block around in your document. 

You can also click on the handle to access more block options likecopy link to block, duplicate, change to (which lets you change an existing block's formatting as above), and delete.

Comments

Highlight a piece of text and select Comment from the formatting bar. You can then write a message related to your selection. When you press Enter/Return, your message will appear in the Comments sidebar of your document for others to see. You can access this sidebar by clicking the speech bubble button in the top right corner of a document.

You can click on any comment to reply to it. If you're the one who made the comment, you can click ••• More actions to edit it or delete the whole thread, or click Resolve to hide the comment from view. 

If the text which anchors a comment is deleted by any means (human or AI), the comment will be preserved in the Comments sidebar with a message indicating that its original content was deleted. Preserved comments can still be resolved or deleted manually. 

Mentioning people or items

When you type "@" into a block or comment, the mention menu appears. As you continue to type, the mention menu will search for related elements related to your input. Hit enter to select the top option or click one of the other options to confirm the mention.

• If you mention a person, they'll receive a notification.
• If you mention a team, every member of that team will be notified in the app and by email.
• If you mention an item of a supported type, that item will appear in-line. When you click on an in-line item, its detail sidebar will open, allowing you to inspect the item without leaving the document. Supported item types are:
  • Features
  • Objectives
  • Key results
  • Initiatives
  • Customers
  • Users
  • Topics
  • Segments
  • Releases
• If you mention a board, a link to that board will be placed in-line. Clicking the link will take you to that board.

Note: You can only mention products (and their underlying hierarchy items) which are associated with the same teamspace that your document lives in. If you need to mention a product that is not associated with the right teamspace, you can move your document to a different teamspace or associate the product with this teamspace.

Attribute mentions

Some mentionable items can display extra information when you hover over them. To toggle them:

1. From the top right corner of a document, click ••• More actions.
2. Under Mention attributes, select an entity type.
3. Toggle one or more options.
   
   

 Eligible items will display the attribute's icon, and when you hover over it, a tooltip will appear to show you more details about that attribute.

Attribute mentions are:

• On by default.
• Document-specific (turning them on for one document won't affect other documents).
• Non-personalized (if one person turns it on, all visitors to that document will see it). 

Pasting links

When you paste a link to a given entity into a document, you can select Paste as link or Paste as preview. Supported external link types for preview include Miro, Figma, Figjam, Mural, Loom, and Youtube.

Sharing documents

Documents inherit teamspace permissions. For example, if you create a document in the General teamspace, all makers and contributors who are members of the General teamspace will be able to access the document.

Generally, makers and admins can create, edit, delete, and comment on documents, while contributors and viewers can only comment on existing documents.

See Teamspace types and member access levels for details.

Tip: You can copy a link to a specific block by clicking on the block's handle. This is great for pointing members with access toward a specific part of your document.

Managing documents

Hover over a document in the main menu and click ••• More actions (or click the same button in the top right corner after opening the board) to move, duplicate, or rename the board. From here, you can also copy a link to it for easy internal sharing, pin it to your Favorites section, or access its version history and restore previous versions if necessary. 

You can also access a document's version history by clicking directly on the date beside Last edit on, which can be found in the document's header (below the title and beside the author's name).

Tip: Use document duplication to create copies of important document templates. Make sure the template document itself is clearly marked so that users don't edit it accidentally.

Converting existing text into entities

You can convert text into new Productboard entities like features and initiatives while you're writing in a collaborative doc—and link to them with an inline mention—all in one simple action.

To convert an existing piece of text into an entity:

1. Highlight the text you wish to convert.
2. In the menu that appears above the text, click Convert.
3. Select the type of entity you'd like to create. 
4. Select the location in the product hierarchy where the new item should live, if applicable. 
5. (Optional) The newly-created entity's sidebar will open. You can immediately edit its data from here, if you wish.

If you select multiple lines of text, the first line will become the new entity's name, while the other lines will become its description.

If you select multiple lines of an ordered list, unordered list, or checkboxes, each list item will convert to a discrete entity. Any subordinate list items will become the description for their top-level parent list item. This allows you to create many new entities with only a few clicks.

Linking documents to work items

You can link a document to an item so the document appears in that item's details sidebar. This makes it much easier for people to find relevant documents while browsing through your product hierarchy, for instance. 

Note: At this time, documents can only be linked to initiatives. In the future, other item types will support document linking.

To link a document to a work item:

1. Open the item's details sidebar by clicking on it.
2. Scroll down to the Documents section and click Add document.
   
   
    
3. In the menu that appears, browse or search for a specific document and select it. 

Note: Linking a document to an item does not change the permission structure of that document. Permissions are inherited from the teamspace in which the document is placed. See above.

Document use cases and capabilities

Collaborative documents are very flexible. Here are the most common product-related use cases:

See also

• Collect feedback using standardized forms
• Best practices for teamspaces
• Organize members into teams