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About brainstorming

lists ideas gather
Sometimes your project may start from virtually nothing. You want to invite suggestions for what a document should contain. You are asking your colleagues to brainstorm. For example, you might be
To do this, people could simply add comments to a more-or-less blank page in the usual way. Using a brainstorming document makes dealing with this kind of approach easier, both to see the evolving document and to collect the comments at the end so you can paste them into the next, more finished version.
When adding a plain or formatted text document with or adding a new version with you can ask for a "brainstorming" background by ticking the box.
You can do anything with a brainstorming document that you can do with any other kind of document. For example, you can set deadlines for comment contributions in the usual way. If you or the document, you'll get the background document that you originally provided just as you would any other.

Background text

A brainstorming document doesn't have to be blank. Indeed, if you only tick the box, you'll get a line of text at the top inviting comments. You can add some introductory text to the page.

Making contributions

People make comments by clicking on the page in the usual way. However, for brainstorming documents the text of the comments is shown alongside the marker superimposed on the page itself. You are in effect adding bullet points to the page.
You may run out of space on the page or pages initially provided by the background. Therefore, unlike ordinary documents, you can . (The button is at the very bottom of the last page).
If you want to make room to insert a comment or stop comments overlapping (for example, if additions have been made to them or two people made a comment in the same place simultaneously) you can move the comments arround by clicking the red proof mark icon and dragging it to a more convenient location. That can be on a different page. (You can do this on any document, but it is particularly relevant for brainstorming).

Getting the text out again

When building up a document in this way, the natural next step is to take all the comments and incorporate them in a new version, either a finished product or a new version or new document for which you would then invite further comments.
To facilitate this, there are several ways in which brainstorming documents behave slightly differently from others: