Is there a way to change the channel in an annotation box without having to go to the upper right menu bar?
Unfortunately, no.
As I mentioned previously, we’re currently overhauling the discussion system soon to deprecate channels and create better ways to leave private comments on versions before they go public.
It could be handy to make comments for the author only, even when public.
Understood. The changes we’re working on are a rather large change to the publishing workflow in general – and I suspect it will address most of what you’re looking for. But it doesn’t map 1 to 1 to the current system, or really to any other systems we’re aware of, so it’s hard to say for sure in the abstract. Once we’re closer to having a working demo, we’d love for you to give it a look for feedback.
I’ll also note that changing the channel via the upper right bar was initially a problem for me and others because of the way it hides/reveals: the bar only appears when you scroll down. I created an #editorial channel and the user couldn’t figure out how to see it. They had to scroll down from the first page, or go all the way to the end, which is not intuitive.