How to add files and comments to a task
Attach files to a task, talk about it in one activity feed, and read back what happened and when.
Everything said about a task and every file belonging to it lives on the task itself, in one merged feed. This page covers both, from the panel described in How to edit a task.
How do you attach a file?
Attach files on the task panel, or the file picker in the New task dialog while you are creating one. Files upload as soon as you pick them and show a live progress state.
Files can be up to 25 MB each. Images preview inline on the task, and everything else downloads when clicked.
You can remove any attachment, including one somebody else added. That is deliberate: the file belongs to the task rather than to the person who happened to drop it there.
Attaching is checked against the task's department, so you attach files where you can edit.
The iPhone app does all of this too, which is usually where photos come from.
Why did a file refuse to attach?
Two reasons come up. An empty file is rejected with a message saying it looks empty, which is almost always a failed export rather than a Tideswell problem.
The other is a repeating task. A schedule produces many tasks and a file belongs to one of them, so attachments go on an individual occurrence rather than on the series. See How to make a task repeat.
How do you comment?
Write in the composer at the foot of the panel and submit with Cmd+Enter or Ctrl+Enter. Type @ to mention a teammate, which puts the comment in their Inbox.
Edit your own comment with the pencil, or remove it with the bin, which asks first.
You can always edit and delete your own comments. Removing somebody else's is a lead's job in most workspaces.
What is the activity feed?
One ordered list holding both the comments and what actually happened: created, assigned, status moved, completed, reopened, approvals. There is no separate comments tab, because reading the two apart tells you less than reading them together.
Show earlier at the top of the feed loads older entries a page at a time.
The feed answers "what happened to this task". For a full field-by-field audit of a record, including who changed which value, use the history on a record, covered in How to comment on a record and see its history.
When should the conversation live in chat instead?
When it is a conversation rather than a note on the work.
A comment on a task is read by whoever opens the task, usually later. A message in a chat channel is read now, by whoever is in that channel.
The useful habit is to talk in chat and then turn the outcome into work, which keeps a link back to the conversation. How to create a task covers that.
If what you are writing is longer than a paragraph or two and other people will need to find it again, it is a document. See What are documents?.