Launched: Email & Password Login (Non-Google Login)

Hey @anon61766597, good question! We’re working on getting an update out for our iOS and Android apps very soon, targeting this week. Until then, you can log into Coda on your phone/tablet with an email login using the mobile website.

Is there any advantage of separating the docs contents (on Coda servers) from the permissions (on Google servers)? I cannot see anything obvious.

So the login type determines where the permissions are stored: email & password (new) going to Coda and Google OAuth (old) staying at Google Drive.

Thanks,

Hi Chris! Thank you very much for this. I was re-reading your post and now I understand what you mean. I misread it.

Thank you.

Hi @rwd,

There aren’t really any stand-out advantages to one or the other. If your team uses Google accounts for other purposes, some like having the option of organizing their docs in G-Drive alongside other projects. There’s not really a functional difference that would make me choose one over the other.

No problem! Let us know if you’d like to migrate your account and we’d be happy to help.

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My thoughts on the practical differences between storage of permissions/metadata in Google Drive vs. Coda:

Google Drive

Positives

  • No need to remember yet another password
  • Can share your docs with Google Groups
  • Full text search across your Coda docs via the Drive search bar
  • Can see your Coda docs alongside other doc types in the Drive UX
  • Respects (some) of Google Drive’s administrative settings (e.g., don’t share outside the domain).

Negatives

  • Can only share with Google-backed accounts
  • Depending on your privacy viewpoint, you may not be happy sharing any information with Google.
  • Restricted from changing doc ownership across team/company/domain boundaries with a set of hard-to-understand rules Google never documented fully.
  • Weird corner case where access to a doc from a Coda Folder doesn’t mesh well with Google ACLs if you’re not otherwise an editor - we turn off the Share dialog in this case.

Coda

Positives

  • Can share with any email address; doesn’t need to be Google-backed (unlike above).
  • Faster doc opens - the Google Drive API isn’t particularly fast at responding to access checks.
  • No need to share data with Google

Negatives

  • No full-text search across all docs (this is on our roadmap)
  • No ability to see other doc types beyond Coda in the Coda doc list
  • Still lacking some administrative limitations (e.g., don’t share outside domain)

In my opinion, not having to worry about your sharees needing to have Google accounts is a big win, especially in cases where you’re sharing outside of your team - working with external contractors, cross-company initiatives, etc.

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That makes sense! Thanks. In my case I am the only person in our company that has created docs and setup sharing, so I assume this should go well in regards to the auth token. And we haven’t shared with google groups (although that’s a cool idea).

And thank you for all the additional post info :slight_smile:

Hi Chris,
Some questions on the above bullets (referencing by number here):

  1. What full-text search ability? When I type some text that appears in one of my docs in my root Coda workspace view, I don’t get any hits anyway.
  2. Also not sure what this means, when would I see anything but a Coda Doc in the Coda doc list? My docs are all coda docs, AFAIK.

I agree sharing/inviting without a google account requirement is a big win. I’m interested in switching.

Thank you!

  1. What full-text search ability? When I type some text that appears in one of my docs in my root Coda workspace view, I don’t get any hits anyway.

In the GDrive UX, you can search across the text content of your Coda docs, though note it won’t work for all content in docs (some grid content, comments, etc.)

  1. Also not sure what this means, when would I see anything but a Coda Doc in the Coda doc list? My docs are all coda docs, AFAIK.

You wouldn’t - this is a GDrive feature, not a Coda feature.

Aha right - ok yes those are definitely not a priority for our purposes at least. Thanks for answering.

@Rohan_M I used the support interface in the account settings and got this taken care of that way:

  1. Go to account settings:
    image
  2. Click on the “Resources” menu and select “contact support” to open a chat window.

Hi @Rohan_M,

It looks like we’ve sent you two response emails and never heard back. You may want to check your email inbox and perhaps even your spam folder in case we were mislabeled?

Cheers,
Chris

Hi Chris, I’ve had our workspace transitioned to Coda managed, thank you. Is it possible to edit our profile pictures now that they are not being pulled from google?

Hi @Ed_Liveikis,

For non-Google backed accounts, we pull profile images from Gravatar at the moment. We don’t yet sync those images on a regular basis, but will be adding that in the next week or so.

We have a work item on the roadmap to allow uploading an image directly, but that probably won’t be prioritized for a while.

Cheers,
Chris

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I’ve turned my Google Login into an email + password login. Now, I’d like to change my email address because I’m going to delete this GSuite account.

Questions:

  • Is there a way for my to change the email address of my Coda account?
  • Otherwise, will I be able to log in again after deleting my GSuite account?

Thanks for your help.

I’m not 100% sure on this one. If you can wait on deleting your email account til Monday or Tuesday and write into support to double check, then you’ll still be able to email from that account for us to verify.

I’m not promising we can do this, but that would be the safest bet while we see what we can do.

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I used this without realizing that it was a new feature. My girlfriend cannot use google login due to her work which barred her from using google sheets. I built her a ‘app’ within this that did the previous job faster and she used the email based login. Very empowering.

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OK, I’m doing this. Thank you!

What happens if you switch from google-backed to non google-backed? Does everyone have to make a new coda account? Do their usernames align after the switch, if so?

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Hello Tim,
I have done that with my account - and nothing had to be changed. I can still log in with my google account, but I can invite people with non-google email addresses. You need help from support to make the change, but that is a one-time affair.
Greetings,
Joost

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