An action attaches a named piece of work to an element and hands it to a teammate. Where a comment starts a conversation, an action assigns an outcome: it has a name, an optional description, an assignee, and a done state. Use them to turn a review into a to-do list that lives right on the diagram.
Anyone can assign an action to themselves — signed in or not — so actions also work as personal to-dos on a diagram. Assigning to other people is built on teams: for a diagram in a team's shared library, the picker offers that team's members — joined ones, and invited ones who haven't accepted yet (marked with an Invited badge; they'll get access to the diagram when they join, and the optional email goes to their invite address). A personal diagram is self-assign only — but the dialog offers the fix inline: pick one of your teams and the diagram moves into its shared library on the spot, so its members become assignable without leaving the canvas.
Assigning an action
Right-click the element and open the Collaborate category, then choose Assign Action.
Pick Myself or a member of the diagram's team, give the action a short name, and add a description if the work needs more context.
Leave Email them about this action ticked if you want the assignee to get a notification with a link back to the diagram, then assign it.
The element gains a small clipboard badge while the action is open. Anyone on the diagram can click the badge to read the action; editors can also work with it from there.
The picker only offers members of the team the diagram lives in, so the assignee can always open it. If an older action's assignee has since left the team, they may no longer be able to — reassign it from the action's popover.
The Collaborate panel
As soon as a tab has any actions or comment threads, a Collaborate panel appears with the other floating panels. On a phone (or with the minimal panel layout turned on) the same rule adds a Collaborate button to the compact dock instead — tap it to open the panel as a pop-over. A filter at the top switches between Open (open actions and unresolved comment threads) and Resolved (completed actions and resolved threads), and the small button to its left narrows the list to just comments or just actions. Each row leads with its kind's icon, then the name and a one-line description, with the person's avatar and the time on the right (hover the avatar for their name). Anything assigned to you sorts to the top. Click a row to jump to the element and open its thread or action.
Completing an action (or resolving a thread) moves it to the Resolved filter and clears the element's badge, so Open only ever shows what still needs doing. Clearing the last action and comment removes the panel entirely.
Completing, editing, and deleting
Open an action to work with it:
- Complete marks it done. The action stays on the element as a record and can be reopened if the work turns out not to be finished.
- Edit changes the name, description, or assignee. Handing the action to a new person offers the email notification again, for the new assignee.
- Delete removes the action from the element entirely, after a quick confirm.
Actions are deliberately not undoable: pressing undo after assigning, completing, or deleting an action will not silently reverse it, the same way comments are protected.
Email notifications
When an action is assigned to you (and your deployment has email enabled), you get a short email naming the action, who assigned it, and which diagram it is on, with a link straight to the diagram. You can turn these off any time from your profile page under Email notifications, with the "Someone assigns me an action" toggle.
Keep action names short and outcome-shaped ("Confirm the retry budget", "Redraw the auth flow"). The description is the place for detail; the name is what teammates scan in the panel.
Was this article helpful?