To provide for additional communicability, Birdview offers @mention functionality on message boards, both project's and activity's. The essence of the feature is that as you type in the message box a "@" character (preceded by a space or being the first character of a line) a list of available users will pop up for you to select from.  To narrow the list, proceed to type any letter or sequential letters occurring in the name of the user you want to mention. As you select the user on the list, a tag, e.g. , is inserted. The process of inserting such a tag is called mentioning. Then you can proceed to finish your message. When you hit Post, two things happen:

1. The user is notified about a message added. 
2. The user is added to the followers of the activity (for activity message boards only) (provided the auto-follow option is enabled in the user's personal notification settings). 

There are a few important points to know about the @mention feature:

• The user is notified only once, regardless of how many tags mention him in the same message.
• The @ character should be the first on the line or there should be a space before @ for the functionality to work, e.g. if you type an email address, the @ character will not be recognized as a @mention one.
• If the Birdview notification system is disabled, the mentioned user will not be notified.
• The mentioned user will be added to the followers of the activity if the auto-follow option is enabled in the user's settings (User Menu | My Settings | Notifications | Follow)).
• Guest users are notified when mentioned, but not added to the followers.
• Even @notified, a user may be unable to access the activity or project s/he was mentioned from, due to lack of permissions in his/her project or global access level. In this case, when trying to access the activity/project referred, the user may get an error (Page does not exist). 

Mentionees

In an activity message, you can mention any user available in the system with the following exceptions:

1. "cannot login" users, and
2. disabled users.

Mentioning of and by guest users

The following rules apply:

• You can mention a guest if and only if the user is an assignee or creator of the activity.
• Guest users can only mention themselves.

Mentioning a user

Use the steps below to mention a user on an activity message board. 

1. Type a @ character (as the first character of the message).

2. If the list is short, select the user by clicking it (for mouse users), or move up or down the list with the Up or Down arrow keys and press Tab (for keyboard users). If the list is long, proceed to type the first or any sequential letters in the name, only matching users remaining on the list as a result.

A yellow tag () denotes a user mentioned by himself.

3. Proceed to finish the message.
4. Click Post ()  (for mouse users) or press Ctrl+Enter (for keyboard users).

Outgoing message grace period

Message notifications are sent 2 minutes after being added. If the message is edited during this grace period, the mentionee will receive one notification about the updated message 2 minutes after the last correction. If the message is edited within more than 2 minutes after adding – they will receive an additional notification about the updated message (however, the notification will be about an added message, not an edited message).

Mentionee-to-follower conversion

A user being mentioned (mentionee) is added to the activity's followers only if the auto-follow option is enabled in the personal notification settings (User Menu | My Settings | Notifications | Follow).