Feature Focus: Discussion Threads on Application Results

2 June 2022

Other features (application links, custom indicators, etc.)

CAST Highlight now allows you to add comments about application results, organized by insight category (Cloud readiness, score and size trends, Open Source risks, etc.) with the application-level discussion thread feature. Learn in this article how to use this new product capability.

If the “Business” and “Technology” organizations were to one day grow up and get married, we’d like to think of CAST Highlight as the place they met, went on their first date, and continue to visit regularly on date night – at least that is how we like introduce the product to new users…😊 But this metaphor would not work quite well if the Business and Technology organizations cannot communicate with each other while on a date.

This was the inspiration for this new capability: allow users to add comments to application results and create/share structured discussion threads with other users of an application portfolio. The feature supports various goals: 1. Help technical experts share details more seamlessly and within the context of the application 2. Make remediation planning easier and more collaborative 3. Better track notes across large application portfolios. Let’s see how the feature works.

How to use the feature

Discussion threads can be created at the application level, directly from the application overview or from each application tab. There are 9 categories of discussion threads:

Overview: this will be comments on the high-level scores and KPIs of the application
Surveys
Health Distribution
Code Insights
Trends
Cloud readiness
Benchmark
Software Composition
Keyword Scan

To start a new discussion thread, click on the comment icon at the bottom right of the screen from any tab of the application results page. E.g., if you create a discussion thread from the Software Composition tab, your comments and other users’ responses will be visible within this Software Composition category.

A modal opens that lets you read existing comments and add your own with some text formatting and table options. Click on the Add button to publish your comment.

You can also mention a user by typing @ in the comment area. This user will automatically get notified by email about being mentioned in a comment.

To delete one of your comments, click on the trash icon on top right of your comment.

Finally, to quickly see if an application has new discussion threads created, a counter is visible on top of the comment icon. The first digit indicates the number of unread comments for the given section (Overview, Trends, Code Insights, etc.), while the second digit indicates the total number of posted comments for the section.

That’s all for now! We hope that this simple feature will make your application result reviews easier and more collaborative.