Google has announced some new features within Google Docs, its online document editing suite.

 

The search giant made changes to the comments functionality in order to assist in facilitating speedier discussions as well as to seamlessly integrate discussions with email.

 

Some of these improvements (video posted below) include the addition of ownership and edit rights to individual comments, with every comment now also barring a timestamp and profile picture. Users are also able to resolve comments, which will remove these from the visible document and still be able to view them (and re-open discussions) at a later stage by clicking the discussions button at the top of any document.

 

Google has also integrated comments with users’ email inboxes to allow for quicker communication when it comes to document collaboration. Users can now add another user to the discussion with a ‘@mention’, by typing in @jane@doe.com for instance during a discussion. This will result in a notification email being sent to Jane, featuring the text of your comment as well. When the user responds to the email, their comment shows up in the Google Docs document.

 

This update will only become available for newly created documents for now, so comments made within existing document won’t be enabled with these new features.

 

“We’ve been using this next-generation commenting system inside Google for several months and have seen it make the feedback cycle shorter and get more people involved,” said Nick Cooper, a Google software engineer in a blogpost.

 

“The combination of added structure and intuitive email integration have really given life to the discussions that surround our documents, and we’re excited for this new feature to do the same for you.”

 

The company stated that this new discussions functionality will become available over the next few days to all users with Google Accounts and to Google Apps customers.