Review and approval

Review cycles break down in the same way every time. Someone emails a PDF with comments. Someone else sends notes in Slack referencing "the section about compliance." A third person leaves feedback on a call and somebody takes approximate notes. By the time you sit down to make revisions, you're reconciling feedback from three channels, trying to match vague descriptions to specific locations in the document, and hoping you haven't missed a comment buried in a thread. The actual reviewing takes minutes. The overhead of collecting, locating, and reconciling the feedback takes hours.

This page is for creative teams, agencies, marketers, and anyone who runs review cycles on documents, designs, or other deliverables, and needs feedback pinned to the work itself, not scattered across communication channels.

The problem

Feedback arrives in the wrong places. Comments come by email, Slack, text, and phone. None of them are attached to the file they refer to. You're left interpreting descriptions like "the chart on page three" or "that bit near the top" and mapping them to the actual document. The more reviewers, the worse it gets.

You can't tell what's been addressed. After a round of revisions, it's unclear which comments have been resolved and which are still outstanding. There's no single view of the feedback status. You end up re-reading every email and message to check whether you've covered everything.

Versions multiply. The original goes out for review. Comments come back. You make revisions. A second reviewer comments on the original, not the revised version. Someone sends feedback on a PDF they annotated locally and emails back. Now there are three versions and the feedback is fragmented across all of them. Keeping track of which comments apply to which version is its own job.

What Fabric changes

Feedback lives on the file itself. Reviewers annotate directly on the document, the image, the PDF, or the design. Comments are pinned to the exact spot they refer to. "The chart on page three" becomes a pin on the chart, with the comment attached. No interpretation required.

The review status is visible. All feedback on a deliverable is in one place, attached to the file. You can see which comments are outstanding, which have been addressed, and which items are approved. The review state is clear without checking three communication channels.

Everyone reviews the same version. The file lives in Fabric and reviewers annotate on it there. No emailing copies back and forth, no locally annotated PDFs, no confusion about which version the feedback applies to. One file, one set of comments.

How it works

Annotate directly on any file. Annotations let reviewers pin comments, questions, and approvals to the exact spot on a document, PDF, image, slide deck, or design file. The feedback is spatial and specific rather than described in text.

Share for review with tracked links. Publish the deliverable with a link for reviewers. Optionally add password protection. Track when each reviewer has accessed it so you know who's seen the latest version.

Track approval status. Use tasks and reminders to track which items are approved, which need revision, and which are waiting on a specific reviewer. The approval workflow lives alongside the files rather than in a separate tool.

Search across all feedback. Fabric's AI search includes annotations, so you can search for a specific piece of feedback across all your review cycles. "What did the client say about the headline" finds the relevant comment on the relevant file.

An AI that knows the review history. The AI assistant works from the material and annotations in the space. Ask it to summarise all outstanding feedback on a deliverable, list which items are approved, or pull together feedback themes across a set of files.

Capture related context. Forward review-related emails to your email-to-note address so they live alongside the files and annotations. Meeting notes from a review session can be recorded as voice notes and transcribed into the same space.

A review and approval workflow in Fabric

Upload the deliverable. Add the document, design, or file to a Fabric space. This is the single version that reviewers will comment on.

Share with reviewers. Publish the file with a link. Send it to the reviewers. Track when each person accesses it.

Collect feedback on the file. Reviewers open the link and annotate directly on the deliverable. Comments are pinned to specific locations. All feedback accumulates on the same file.

Review the feedback in one pass. Open the file and read through the annotations. Every comment is visible in context, pinned to the spot it refers to. No channel-switching, no reconciling, no guessing what "the bit near the top" means.

Make revisions and update. Address the feedback, update the file in the space, and the link reflects the changes. Reviewers see the current version.

Track what's approved. Use tasks to mark items as approved, pending revision, or waiting on a reviewer. When everything is cleared, the deliverable is done.

Keep the record. The file, the annotations, and the approval history stay in the space. When someone asks "why did we change the headline," the feedback and the decision are there.

What compounds over time

Review and approval workflows in Fabric build a record of how work evolves. Every round of feedback, every annotation, every approval decision is captured and searchable. Over time, this becomes a useful reference: you can see how feedback patterns repeat, which kinds of comments come up on every project, and how the team's standards have developed.

Teams that run review cycles in Fabric find that the process speeds up as everyone gets used to annotating on files rather than writing descriptive emails. The time saved per cycle is modest individually but significant over dozens of reviews per quarter.

Related use cases

For managing the full arc of a design project including review, see design projects. For per-client spaces where review happens alongside other deliverables, see client work and deliverables. For a team's shared document and asset library, see digital asset management. For the broader project record, see project documentation.

Get started

Pin feedback to the exact spot on any file and stop reconciling comments from three different channels. Try Fabric free.

FAQs

Can reviewers annotate directly on a PDF or image?

Yes. Annotations work on PDFs, images, documents, slide decks, and design files. Reviewers pin comments to the exact spot on the file.

Can I share a file for review with a link?

Yes. Publish the file with a tracked link, optionally with password protection. Reviewers access it from the link and annotate directly.

Do reviewers need a Fabric account?

To annotate, yes. To view a published file, no. You can share a view-only link with anyone and reserve annotation access for people with accounts.

Can I see whether a reviewer has looked at the file?

Yes. Link analytics show you when each reviewer accessed the file. You can follow up with people who haven't viewed it yet.

Can I track which items are approved and which need revision?

Yes. Use tasks and reminders to track approval status per item. Mark deliverables as approved, pending revision, or waiting on a specific reviewer.

Can I search across feedback from all my review cycles?

Yes. Annotations are searchable by meaning. "What did the client say about the headline" or "feedback about compliance language" finds the relevant comments across any file in your library.

Can the AI summarise all outstanding feedback on a deliverable?

Yes. The AI assistant can list unresolved feedback, summarise annotation themes, or pull together what reviewers have said across a set of files.

Can I keep review feedback alongside meeting notes from a review session?

Yes. Record the review meeting with voice notes and the transcript lives in the same space as the file and its annotations. Everything from the review cycle is in one place.

How do I handle multiple rounds of revisions?

Update the file in the space after each round. The link stays the same and reflects the current version. Annotations from earlier rounds are preserved as a record of how the feedback evolved.

How is this different from commenting in Google Docs or Figma?

Google Docs and Figma support comments within their own file types. Fabric supports annotations across every file type, PDFs, images, documents, decks, and designs, all in one place. The difference matters when your review cycle spans multiple formats and you need feedback in one unified view rather than scattered across tool-specific comment threads.

Can I use this for legal or compliance review?

Yes. Pin comments to specific clauses, flag items for legal review, and track approval status per document. The annotations and approval history create an auditable record of the review process.

Is feedback visible to everyone or just the reviewer and me?

Annotations are visible to everyone who has access to the space. You control who's in the space. For external reviewers, share individual files via published links rather than giving access to the whole space.