Launched: Logged-In Anonymous Editing

News from Coda
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Since launching Publishing in February, we’ve been amazed at the innovative docs you’ve shared with the world. We’ve also heard a lot of great feedback, especially about docs published with ‘Edit’ as their interactivity setting. (As a reminder: You can publish docs in edit mode so that anyone can view, interact with, and make changes to the doc after logging-in. These types of docs work especially well for voting, brainstorming and crowdsourcing.)

The primary feedback we’ve heard? Not everyone that wants to contribute to a published doc wants to leave their name behind! That’s why today, we’re excited to tell you more about our new option for doc viewers: Logged-in Anonymous Editing.

As a safeguard against undesired interactions, we do still require people to login prior to interacting with a doc in edit mode. However, they’ll see a notice that they can choose to edit using an anonymous identity if they’d prefer to contribute anonymously. This can be confirmed by a doc viewer by clicking on their avatar in the upper right hand corner:

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This behavior is also supported for public, unpublished docs. We see this use case a little less often, but users who are shared such a doc can also engage as an anonymous shape:

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When you contribute anonymously to a docーespecially by interacting with or adding to tables that might have a people column logging who voted on something or who made a suggestionーyour anonymous shape identity will be used for that information.

Please Note: If you login and edit a doc, you may not return to anonymously edit it at this time. So please don’t try leaving yourself anonymous fan mail in your own docs :wink:

We hope this launch empowers you to engage even more people with your amazing solutions in Coda, and look forward to acting on your continued feedback for Coda’s publishing tools.

ー Jonathan

p.s. For the more pedantic among us (self-included): Yes, technically editing under a name like “Anonymous Rhombus” is pseudonymous editing (vs. anonymous). However, we found that most comparable solutions available today use the phrase “Anonymous,” and so we chose to follow suit. If someone wants to publish a Coda doc calling for reformation across tech companies in their use of anonymous vs. pseudonymous, please share a link in the comments. I’ll gladly sign it!

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I’d love to read these updates more, but they are too long.
Angel Diaz

CEO

Andia

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As usual Coda is listening to its users and that’s really great for all of us.

I hope that you will soon release an option which allows editing in certain sections (or even tables) while only ‘playing’ in the rest. That’s really going to be a dream come true and opens so many doors.

I know this is a whole new level of granularity and hope that soon you will reach it.

For now, Thank you, codans! for listening to us.

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To add to this, would love the ability to publish only selected Sections, with the rest hidden. This would completely eliminate the need for a 3rd party form entry solution (like Jotforms / Gravity Forms / Etc). Our clients would then be able to easily create online forms for their customers to enter orders, submit inquiries, lookup info, etc without the fear of exposing other sensitive data. It would be a godsend!!!

Matt

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Hi @JonathanGoldman :slight_smile:
Thanks for the update, i have a dubt :slight_smile:
If i enter once in a doc with an “anonymous” circle, does i’m a circle for ever or till the next login? Or does that work with the same name between docs?
Thanks

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Hi @Mario! You will maintain a given anonymous identity for your lifetime of anonymous edits within a given doc, but be given a new identity for each doc you edit anonymously. So if you’re Anonymous Circle on Doc A, you’ll always be Anonymous Circle on Doc A, but you might be Anonymous Square on Doc B.

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@JonathanGoldman Cristal clear, thanks a lot :smiley:
As a doc maker, if i work with User() formula, what could be it outcome?
Something like user().mail of an “anonymous circle” what will give me? :slight_smile:
Thanks!

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I find interesting that logged-in anonymous editing is in higher demand than plain (logged-out) anonymous editing. Is it safe to assume the latter will eventually be supported as well>

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Hey David, we’re exploring how to support logged-out anon in the future but this was the most straight forward starting point that we thought would be valuable.

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Hi @Mario, the User() formula will give the anonymous user name, the anonymous avatar image, and a dummy email address that is unique to that user within the doc. The email address is not currently valid, it will not deliver mail.

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Makes perfect sense – thanks Glenn!

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That’s perfect!
A well-planned feature!
Thanks @JonathanGoldman :slight_smile:

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Amazing, please link logged-out anon temporally to cookies (or better something else, cookies are in a bad shape), so logged-out users can return even if internet fails, this way coda makers can hack it and create amazing smart forms!, imagine the future!

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This is neat. But, how do I turn it off so someone doesn’t have the option to be anonymous when they edit my doc?

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Right now we don’t turn allow the maker to turn it off, we wanted users to always have this option when opening a public-accessible doc. We may revisit that in the future though.

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Actually, it’s tied to the “Anyone with a link” permission setting in the Share section. If it’s set to “Can Edit” then users get the anonymous edit option. If it’s set to say, “Can View” or something else more restrictive than “Can Edit”, then they will not have the option to edit anonymously.

So you’re right in the context of a “public-accessible doc” but it wasn’t clear to me based on my sharing activity that it was publicly accessible; I had shared it with specific people and wasn’t seeing this advanced, global setting for the doc.

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Thank you for the feedback @Thomas_Robbs2. We’ll continue to review these sharing options to make sure we find the optimal setup.

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You’re welcome @BenLee. Thanks go to Coda Support for helping me figure this out. :heart:

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Hi! My document stopped working for anonymous users. Some of the buttons are no longer accessible, table interactions, and filters no longer work in anonymous user mode.
Check: Introducing · Ultimate AI Database

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Is there any limit to how many anonymous (logged in users) can edit a document without corrupting each others data?

For example, we have a published doc we want to send to 50 - 60 different users. They will need to create a Coda account to edit it (not ideal, as has already been covered). A form submission will then generate unique rows in a second table for each user to edit. This second table is filtered by user so if they all choose to edit the document anonymously will it assign two (or more) users to an anonymous shape?