Thanks to the new highlights minimum viable product (MVP), which is the first iteration of the tool and currently being beta tested on FT.com, corporate, government and education subscribers can select one or multiple sections of a story and add these to a dedicated highlights area within the myFT part of their FT.com account.

Anyone who reads large volumes of documents in their role or as part of their studies knows it’s helpful to be able to highlight particular sections of text or even just a relevant statistic in order to make it easier to find later.

As more of the content we now read at work or university is digital, it’s important that tools are also made available in order to help us do many of the things that we just take for granted when using physical copies. FT Advanced Sharing was recently created in response to user insights about the need to share FT articles with wider audiences, and the development of the highlighting feature has also been driven by feedback from subscribers.

From gathering pertinent points for a client pitch presentation, to having easy access to the references used in a piece of coursework, highlighting offers utility to a broad base of the FT’s corporate and education audiences.

Start highlighting pieces of text on an article page and the highlighting tooltip will automatically pop up (after a minimum of five words have been highlighted). Once the tooltip is clicked on, the highlighted text will then be automatically saved in ‘My Highlights’, which can be accessed in myFT.

Currently the ability to highlight will only be available on desktops, however, saved highlights can also be viewed on mobile devices.

This first release of highlights simply offers the function to highlight text within an article and save this to a dashboard. Future iterations of the tool will enable users to share highlights, which will provide a basis for starting conversations with clients, colleagues and classmates around key sections of FT reporting.

Also on our roadmap is the option to add notes to a highlight, to help provide further context as to why the selected text is important or include some of your own analysis. Ultimately users will be able to highlight some text, add notes and then share these directly with others. For example, client-facing advisers such as consultants or wealth managers will be able to use this tool to better showcase their expertise, and kick-off discussions with clients about emerging risks or opportunities.

If you have any feedback about using highlights or would like to find out more about the tool and its future development, please contact our Customer Success team at customer.success@ft.com.

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