Improving Collaboration with Comments & Tasks

Company: Advisr
Role: Product Designer
Device: Desktop
Tools: Figma, G Suite

Advisr is a sales enablement platform that helps teams plan, pitch, and close deals more efficiently.
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By streamlining key parts of the sales process, Advisr empowers teams to sell smarter and faster.

The Problem

Despite strong campaign building tools, Advisr lacked built in collaboration features.

Users couldn’t leave comments, assign tasks, or receive real-time notifications. Leading to a 
static experience and forcing teams
to rely on external tools like email or Slack to communicate.

The Solution

We introduced native commenting and task assignment within Campaigns, along with real-time notifications, allowing users to:


  • Leave contextual feedback directly on campaign components
  • Tag teammates and assign follow-up actions
  • Stay informed with in-app and email notifications

This transformed campaign collaboration from disconnected to fully integrated—keeping everything in one place.

Team Members & Collaborators

This initiative was brought to life through close collaboration across several functions:

Product Manager

Defined requirements and success metrics

Developer

Built the frontend and backend infrastructure

QA Analyst

Ensured quality through testing and feedback cycles

Customer Support

Helped gather early feedback from users

Marketing Team

Supported rollout communications and announcements

Timeline & Phases

This was a multi-phase initiative rolled out over time:

  • MVP Core Commenting System + Notifications
  • Phase 2 @Mentions + Task Creation
  • Phase 3 Task Creation + Assignment within Comments


Each phase was informed by ongoing user feedback, allowing us to build iteratively and deliver more value with each release.

User Personas

Key Pain Points

No Built-In Communication
Users are forced to leave the platform and rely on
external tools
(email, chat, phone) for team communication, leading to scattered, untracked conversations.
Lack of Campaign Visibility
No way to track updates, progress, or shared notes within Advisr, making it difficult to monitor campaign status.
Workflow Challenges
  • Account Executives (AEs) struggle to stay organized and share timely updates.
  • Digital Strategists (DS) juggle heavy workloads without clear, centralized instructions or visibility into campaign changes.
Inefficient Collaboration
The absence of in-app communication hinders alignment, slows decision-making, and creates time management challenges for both roles.

Process

1. Collect Insights & Define Needs
- Worked with the PM and team to get clear on the goals.
- Gathered docs like personas and flows.
- Reached out to CS to surface Users pain points, and mapped out the main use cases and roles.
2. Research & Ideate
- After clarifying on objectives, I went ahead to do some competitor research and UI treatments.
- I sketched out some design concepts and compiled findings in a deck.
- Presented the deck and gathered feedback
3. Design & Mockups
- After landing on a concept with the team, I created lo-fi wireframes in Figma.


- I turned them into clickable prototypes, gathered feedback, tweaked what needed fixing, and prepped two options for user testing.
4. Test & Gather Feedback
- Shared prototypes with both team members
and users.
- Conducted user testing sessions to gather feedback, and iteratively refined the designs based on insights until final approval.
5. Implementation
- Once designs were locked, I built hi-fi wireframes using our design system.


- Worked with the team to fine-tune everything, handed off CSS specs to engineers,
and helped QA the final build.

MVP: Comments with File Upload

As part of the Campaign Files initiative, users can now upload files directly to a Campaign and add comments.

Scope

  • Build out files tab and the ability to upload files in campaign summary page
  • Build out backend for comments & notifications
  • Create email templates for Notifications

Timeline

7 Months: June 2022—December 2022

Actions Menu

Once a user uploads files. A table will appear and they 
can manage their files via the actions menu.

Comments Panel

Users can leave comments and also add links to a file

Notification System & Emails

Users receive email notifications when a new comment is added to a campaign

How Users Used Comments

File Upload Stats (December 7, 2022– February 28,2003)

Takeaways & User Feedback

  • Users were uploading files to campaigns and using the comments functionality
  • They want the ability to comment on other parts of Advisr
  • Users really liked the notification feature that was added to the App
  • Sales felt the product demo’d well with potential clients

Phase 2: Introducing Tasks

This phase introduced task creation functionality along with 
enhancements to comments based on user feedback.

Scope

  • Build out task panel and the ability to assign tasks
  • Add task as part of notifications and email communication

Timeline

4 months: October 2023—January 2024

Task Panel

Users can access the task panel via top nav

Creating a Task

Users can create a task by clicking on the Create a Task CTA

Modal appears where users can fill in details

  • Task Details (Required)
  • Assign a task to a team member
  • Set a deadline

Managaing Tasks

Tags are categorized by tabs

My Tasks

Show tasks assigned to you

Assigned

Keep track of tasks assigned to team members

Completed

Show a list of completed tasks

Takeaways & User Feedback

We were eager to introduce the feature, but adoption did not meet expectations.
Other pressing user needs took priority, resulting in limited onboarding.

The CS team, however, views the feature as valuable for understanding user workflows.
To increase adoption, they will run onboarding sessions with customers to better showcase its impact.

Phase 3: Comments as Tasks

This phase enabled users to assign comments as
actionable tasks, streamlining collaboration and follow-ups.

Scope

  • Add “Assign as Task” functionality within the
 Comments Panel
  • Design and implement additional email templates for Comments-as-Tasks


Timeline

2 months: June—July 2024

Assign functionality on comments panel

  • Added assign task field where users can assign task to themselves or other team members.
  • There is also a date field where users can set a deadline

Takeaways & User Feedback

  • Usage for task increased with this added feature
  • Users found it helpful that they could easily assign a comment as a task

Features Stats

Conclusion

As we introduced features to the platform like comments and tasks, overtime collaboration improved.