Together with Coda 2.0, we launched Locking - a new way for makers to stay in control of their docs, and offer a cleaner, focused experience for your contributors.
Today, we’re extending this feature with new ways to further restrict what changes editors can make in a doc, available in the Team and Enterprise plans.
With Locking, you can lock a section or a whole doc, so that teammates can only make certain types of changes. This helps prevent accidental changes, but by default, all editors can still choose to unlock a section for temporary full control.
You can now specify that only specific users are able to unlock. Additionally, these users are the only ones who can add sections or make other configuration changes in a doc.
This helps you stay in control in docs where many editors only have very specific needs, and never need to change the structure or config of a doc.
How it works
To use the feature, open the Locking panel by clicking the Settings icon in the toolbar or right-clicking on a section. Within the Locking panel, open the Settings tab, where you can specify a set of Doc Admins.
Once you specify Doc Admins, other users will not be able to
- Unlock locked sections
- Add, move or delete sections
- Configure Packs and automation
- Change the doc title or icon
- Change the doc time zone
A note on security
Locking is not a security feature. While this feature removes the most direct way to make changes in a doc, anyone with Edit access to a doc can still make changes through other mechanisms, like our API.
For those who want to understand more, Locking is currently a usability improvement enforced by the Coda client, and is not enforced on Coda servers. This approach helps keep Coda a flexible surface for a wide range of scenarios. We see many docs where customers want to enable changes through one part of a doc, while restricting the same or similar changes elsewhere in the doc. For example: allow people to change values only in one filtered view, but not in other views of the same table. Or, allow people to press a button in one section that adds a row, but prevent them from directly adding rows in other views of the same table.
Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!