7. Communication

Mosaic provides tools to promote close collaboration between clinical and research teams, ensuring that all data and discussions are available in a single location. Keeping discussion attached to the data it concerns — rather than in email — means the reasoning behind a decision is never lost, is visible to everyone who needs it, and stays with the case.

7.1. What is a conversation?

A conversation is a discussion thread within a project or a collection. There is no limit to the number of conversations that can be created, so new conversations can be created for discussion of, for example, a patient's clinical presentation, any individual variant of interest, the different data types that are available for the case, and so on. A conversation created in a project is only available within that project and cannot be seen from any other project or from collections that it is a part of.

All conversations in a project can be viewed by selecting the Conversations option from the left menu. The Conversations view is a table showing every conversation in the project. By checking the checkbox next to any conversation and clicking the Actions button, there are a number of tasks that you can perform:

Create Conversation: if you want to create a conversation without explicitly tying it to something in the project (a genetic variant, for example), you can select this option and begin a new conversation.

Start Watching: if you are watching a conversation, you will receive a notification within Mosaic as well as an email every time a comment is made in this conversation. Select this option if you want this level of notification. An alternative way of toggling the watcher status is to click the eyeball icon — blue: the conversation is being watched; grey: the conversation is not being watched.

Stop Watching: select this (or toggle the eyeball icon) to stop watching a conversation.

Pin to Dashboard: selecting this, or toggling the pin icon to blue, will pin a conversation. Pinned conversations appear as cards on Project Home. Important, active conversations can be pinned for easier access.

Unpin from Dashboard: selecting this will remove the conversation from Project Home, but it will always appear in the conversations table.

Delete: Select this to delete a conversation. Confirmation will be required to delete a conversation.

7.2. The Conversation Inbox

Conversations are visible within the project or collection in which they were created, but we often want to access messages across all projects, especially if there are messages requiring attention. The Conversations icon in the top menu bar takes us to an Inbox where we can see conversations we have access to. The Inbox at the left consolidates all unread conversations by project so you can see which projects have activity. By default, the main display includes all unread messages that you have been directly mentioned on. The filter panel at the top of the table allows you to update these filters to see all messages. In particular, toggling @ Mentions me will show all unread messages, including those that you were not directly mentioned on.

Tip: The Inbox is the fastest way to start a working session: open it to see, across every case you are involved in, where you have been mentioned and where there is unread activity, then click through to the conversations that need your attention.

7.3. Mentions and Notifications

To draw a specific colleague's attention to a message, mention them with @ followed by their name (for example, @Jane Doe). The mentioned user is notified both within Mosaic and by email. The message remains visible to everyone with access to the conversation — mentioning is a way to flag someone, not a private channel. Mosaic does not support private messaging between users; every comment in a conversation is visible to all users with access to that conversation. (See the FAQs.)

You control how much you are notified through watching:

• Watching a conversation notifies you (in Mosaic and by email) of every new comment, whether or not you are mentioned. Use this for conversations you are actively driving.
• Not watching means you are notified only when you are directly mentioned. Use this for conversations you want to be reachable in but not follow comment-by-comment.

Because mentions always notify regardless of watch status, a colleague can reach you in any conversation by mentioning you, even one you are not watching.

7.4. Where Conversations Live

Conversations can be attached at three levels, and choosing the right one keeps discussion organized:

• Project conversations — for discussion about a single case. Created and viewed from the project's Conversations page.
• Collection conversations — for cohort-wide topics such as study coordination or shared protocols. Created and viewed from the collection's Conversations page. See Collections.
• Variant conversations — for discussion of a specific genetic variant, started from the variant's full annotations view so the discussion stays attached to the variant itself. See Variants.

7.5. Organizing Conversations Effectively

A few habits keep communication useful as a case or cohort grows:

• Give conversations clear, specific names (for example, Clinical Presentation, Variant Review — FLNB c.6928A>G) so the table stays scannable and so templates can recreate the same standard threads on every case.
• Pin the active conversations to the dashboard so the current state of a case is visible on entry; unpin them when they are resolved.
• Use mentions to assign, watching to follow, and the Inbox to triage — together these let a busy team stay coordinated without relying on email.
• Standardize with templates: conversations created in a template are recreated in every target project (without duplicating ones that already exist), so a research group can guarantee that every case has, for example, a clinical-presentation thread from day one.