Collaborating with PullRequest Reviewers

When a pull or merge request is assigned to a PullRequest reviewer or team of reviewers, they'll typically be assigned to it until it is merged, closed, or PullRequest network review is canceled.

After review feedback is posted by PullRequest, our reviewers can revisit it to answer your questions and review follow-up change commits.

What PullRequest reviewers have visibility into

PullRequest reviewers have access to:

• The pull/merge request diff and the contents of the files involved.

• Metadata including the pull/merge request title, description, author username, branch names, event timestamps, and commit history.

• In some cases, other files in the repository can be referenced via a search tool if this functionality is enabled by the account owner.

  • To check on your account's status and see if this setting is enabled, email [e-mail].

• Your repository's README.md file.

• Any dependency management files such as package.json belonging to the repository.

  • These are referenced so reviewers can provide recommendations based on things like the version of a framework being used.

• Any project-level notes provided by your organization.

Reviewers DO NOT have access to any external resources that are not publicly accessible. Examples of things PullRequest reviewers do not have access to include:

• Other pull requests or issues in a private GitHub repository.

• Project management tool links such as Jira tickets.

• CI/CD tools such as CircleCI or Jenkins.

• Any of your team's internal documentation that requires user login.

• An IDE and your full repository.(Reviewers are not a custom configured IDE but can give you pointers on how to properly set yours for style)

• The ability to commit their own corrections to your pull request.(Unless you are an OSS customer but this is generally not expected).

Get the most out of PullRequest by adding a great description

Just like for members of any development team reviewing teammates' code, a thorough description of the change, the intent of the changes, and any other relevant information will help PullRequest reviewers provide great feedback and suggestions.

This includes screenshots, however these are only supported for Github Repositories!

How and when PullRequest reviewers are notified of changes

The PullRequest platform notifies reviewers whenever important updates are made. These include:

• Comments that you've posted that require their attention.

• New commits are pushed to address feedback.

• When you request the changes are reviewed again.

Addressing PullRequest reviewers in comments

PullRequest reviewers will receive a notification that they've been mentioned in a comment in several ways.

Replying to a comment

If you reply to a reviewer in an inline thread, any reviewer that participated in the thread will be notified.

Reviewers will be alerted when you reply to one of their comments

Including the reviewer's display name or `pullrequest` in a comment

If you post a comment that includes the reviewer's display name or string pullrequest (all one word, case insensitive) reviewers will be notified of your comment.

NOTE: To be notified by display name, the reviewer will need to be already assigned to the code review.

Mentioning `pullrequest` or a reviewer's display (if assigned to the review) will send alerts to reviewers.

New commits that address reviewer feedback

When you push additional commits to a pull or merge request branch that "outdate" comments posted by reviewers, they'll receive a notification that you've made a change that likely addressed one of their comments and that they should circle back and verify the new state.

Pushing a commit that addresses a reviewer's comment will alert the reviewer,

Requesting another review

After at least one feedback submission has been posted to your pull or merge request by reviewers in the network, you can send a notification to any reviewers assigned asking to re-review the changes.

This is useful if you've updated the branch to include additional changes that would otherwise not alert reviewers.

NOTE: We strongly recommend adding a comment to the pull or merge request, or update the description, letting PullRequest reviewers know why you've sent this notification.

You can do this by accessing the PullRequest dashboard and clicking the Notify reviewers of updates link.

Click "Notify reviewers of updates" to send a notification to assigned reviewers.

Read more about code review statuses here