Commenting in a Bill of Materials (BOM) in Altium 365

There are many potential issues that can impact and cause delays for supply chains, such as fluctuating availability of components, hold-ups in customs, spikes in demand, and supply issues. Commenting in BOM was created to facilitate communication among stakeholders and users.

Note: This is an Open Beta feature, and we’d love to hear from our users on how it could be improved further and any issues encountered.

Commenting in a BOM allows users to communicate about changes or unexpected issues to reduce discrepancies and time spent on design changes. This feature is widely used in the following examples:

• To make suggestions for change to a specific part or component
• To highlight supply chain issues (e.g., delivery time, minimum order quantity (MOQ), changes to the product, price, availability, scheduling, inventory, product life cycle)
• To create information transparency for managers, buyers, sourcing teams, supply chain departments, procurement groups, and other users
• To reduce the number of communication channels
• To keep track of the BOM's comments for future reference in one place

These are the key features of commenting in BOM:

• Add comments to a specific BOM line
• Tag other users in the comments box using the @ function: the recipient will receive an email notification
• Assign a comment as a task to the person mentioned by selecting the Assign to checkbox
• Store all comments even if they are resolved or if the BOM line is deleted; you can still find all the history in the comments panel or when exporting comments
• People outside of your Workspace team—invited by you—can view and leave comments via a web-based application without an Altium Designer License