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How to Create Zones
Who is this article for?Please Review Users creating zones.
Review Owners with permissions to set up zones.
In Please Review, "zones" refer to specific sections or parts of a Word document that users can mark up and comment on during the review process. These zones can be predefined or customized to fit the needs of the document being reviewed.
What is a Zone?
Zones allow the review Owner to determine different review permissions for specific zones of a document, for example to prevent individual users from commenting or marking-up changes to specific zones, or even prevent users from viewing certain zones of the document. It also provides a powerful capability that allows different zones to be authored, using Microsoft Word itself, in parallel, and then for each zone to be released for review once it is available.
Please Review has an optional Microsoft Word plugin which may be used in conjunction with zones to create a seamless editing experience. However, there is a ‘zero footprint’ option and the Word plugin is not mandatory.
Here are some things to note about zones:
- Zones are applicable to Word documents only.
- Zones can be created and edited by the review Owner whilst the review status is ‘Not Started’.
- Zones can only be used by Reviewers and Contributors whilst the review status is ‘In Progress’.
The review Owner and any Authors; Author-Contributors or Super-Contributors can continue to use zones whilst the review status is ‘Closed’.
Enabling Zones
All reviews containing at least one Microsoft Word document will have review permission zones enabled by default. Zones for the Review Owner can enable co-authoring by assigning permissions containing ‘Contributor’:
Note: If the review Owner wishes to co-author the document in the review, then he/she must edit their role to ‘Owner-Contributor’. This can be done using the ‘Edit’ link in the ‘participants already included on this review’ section.
Additional email options relating to zones are available in the ‘Email options’ tab:
Of the new review wizard, zones can be created before starting the review by clicking the ‘Preview’ link, or they can be set after the review has started. However, to avoid user confusion we recommend they are set up before starting the review.
How to Create Zones
- After clicking the ‘Preview’ link, the document for review will open in ‘Preview’ mode. Alternatively, the review Owner can start the review and enter the review in the usual way to create zones.
- In the review interface, click the ‘switch to zone creation mode’ and then the four bars icon to begin creating the zones:
- When in ‘zone creation mode’, the document will display in red, and no reviewing icons are displayed on the toolbar (e.g., general comment; reporting; accept/close icons).
Note: If there are existing comments/changes in the review, the comment boxes to the right of the document will not display.
- To set the first zone, click the paragraph where the zone should start. Press the Shift key on your keyboard and click the paragraph where the zone should end.
- You may select as little as a single paragraph or as much as the whole document to be a zone.
Tip: Please Review may select associated paragraphs to be included in the zone if, for example, you start the zone at a heading level. The selected paragraph(s) to be included in the zone will be indicated by a blue line to the left of the paragraph.
- The zone title is pre-populated from the document’s contents and may be over-typed, and you can also add an optional description. The zone permissions for each participant can be set and the permission for any future participants added to the review can also be defined.
Here are some things to note about creating zones:
- The ‘switch to zone creation mode’ icon is available to the review Owner, and any Super-Contributors in the review.
- Zones may not overlap and must be on discrete parts of the document.
- An entire table can be included in a zone. You cannot select part of a table.
- You cannot start or end a zone inside a header or footer unless they are both inside the same header/footer.
- If a participant is added to the review after it has started, the permissions granted will be based on the ‘New participant zone role’ for each zone and/or the default zone.
- One or more Contributors may be assigned to each zone. If multiple Contributors have been assigned the same zone, only one Contributor can download it to Word at a time (see Downloading a Zone).