Hi Suzanne,
It looks like you are using the Note Subject as the “Grouping” mechanism for department/client Notes and then you are using Replies within a Note to keep all department related conversations together. That is a creative option, but any new Notes made within the Client Review Site (CRS) will not be addable to your client thread, which can only contain Replies. A Note and a Reply are two different entities and handled differently in the UI.
Each new Note created on the CRS will only be added into Shotgun as a new Note linked to it’s specific Version/Parent Link/Playlist. The Subject of the Note coming from the CRS will always be the title of the Playlist the Note came from. Additionally, Notes from the CRS will have the Client Note field checked. This field by default is only visible to users of the Manager and Admin Permissions Roles and is a good way to quickly filter for all client Notes.
I’d like to offer up an alternative solution. Instead, make use of your Note Type field. You can add the departments as a list item in that field, including “Client”. Then you can group or filter by the Type field to find all Notes that pertain to that department, or to the client. Within each individual Note, users can have threaded conversations as needed.
This would require a change to your workflow and users would need education to ensure the Type field is filled out on Note creation, but I feel it’s a better way to manage Notes based on the way Shotgun works.
Here is some more reading on the Note entity:
Cheers,
Beth