Launched: Sync page access control (view-only)

:wave:t5: Hi Everyone,

I’m energized to share a long-awaited update: sync page access control (step 3) is now available! With this updated level of sharing controls, you can sync specific pages into another doc without everyone needing access to the source doc, giving collaborators visibility while keeping information secure.

You can access this new option from the sync page options panel, for both newly created and existing sync pages. For now, these sync pages will only be view-only, not editable.

As I’ve mentioned previously, this unlocks step 3 of 4 in our broader sub-doc sharing roadmap.

So, what does this mean for you?

  • If you’re a project manager with all your projects in a single hub. You can now take a project specific page with a task list, and securely sync just that page into a doc with a contractor you’re working with. The contractor won’t have access to your project management hub, nor will they able to access your other project pages or content.
  • If you’re the team lead working out of the team hub. You can now take a team progress summary page, and securely sync just that page into a status updates doc for others look at. They won’t be able to see how the sausage is being made and can focus on the high level status update you’re communicating — nothing else.
  • If you’re a consultant managing all your clients from a single hub. You can now take your invoice page, and securely sync just that page into a doc with the client you’re billing. The client won’t be able to make any changes to the invoice, nor see invoices or other details from your other clients.
  • If you’re a communications manager working out of a comms and PR hub. You can now take the announcements page with a table of all the announcements ready for everyone to see, and securely securely sync just that page into the all company hub. All the employees will only see that page and won’t be able to see any of the future announcements you’re staging or that aren’t ready for prime time.

These are just a few of the ways you can leverage sync page access control and I’m looking forward to seeing the creative ways you all use it to solve problems!

Since this introduces a more flexible way to share, we know it was important to make sure you have visibility into how your content is used. To that end, we’ve also added more visibility for makers and admins as part of this launch, so you can triage quickly and there are no surprises.

  • For makers, this means from the sharing dialog you can quickly see if there are sync pages with access control and decide what to do next.
  • For admins, this means the org docs dashboard will reflect the number of sync pages going in and out of a given doc, with the ability to see which pages and revoke access to a sync page if necessary. Audit logging has also been added for the actions of creating, updating, and removing sync page access control.

Random

As a next step, our team will be hard at work developing editability and live updates for access-controlled sync pages. From there, we’ll move to step 4 of the roadmap: single-page sharing with no other docs involved. While we don’t have specific timing, we continue to be guided all your feedback, customer and maker expectations of security, quality and reliability, only releasing once it meets that bar.

Many thanks to this community for your continued feedback and partnership as we work towards this ambitious goal. We’ll continue to share updates as we have them and I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts, so please sound off in the replies!

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Yeehaa!!! There are a lot of happy people in Coda land today.

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That’s great news! Thanks to the developers!

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This is how we are using it at my company, today:

I have a big Coda doc with all the documentation for my SAP area of responsibility. Now I can give access to endusers of the transaction codes that they need into a separate doc, and they will not accidentally end up in the large source doc.

Next step is to put this in their Teams Channel.

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This is a big step to one of the most game changing features coda has been missing. Once single page sharing is working it will change how people use coda forever!

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Sing hallelujah :pray:t3::joy: it’s there, finally

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I don’t mean to dampen the spirit here, but as with 2-way sync, we are promised a feature for ages and then an obviously critical piece of functionality is excluded.

In this case, the fact the pages are not editable reduces the usefulness of this feature dramatically.
And in the case of 2-way sync, canvas cells not being editable has a similar effect on the functionality.

It really does feel like you’re shipping features half baked. At least here you acknowledge that this feature is missing, but it’s a big component.

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Good news that could be great if there were the possibility to edit the pages. Hopefully it won’t take long to come.

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Awesome! I work solo for the moment but I can see the big benefit of this update for those that work with teams!

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OH god!, i tough this day will never come. Thanks!, will be implementing this on all our documents since day 1 .

This is amazing, Ayuba. I love how you’ve shown us the roadmap and have followed it systematically. Great job. This is powerful new functionality.

Jeb

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Very good but unfortunately there is still problem with to open the file in sync pages, will appear “This page has been blocked by Chrome”… idem with safari.

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Yessssss! This update is a huge step forward for Coda. I hope editing is supported soon, it will change how we structure basically all our documents for the better. Just allowing reading permission for now won’t do much for us, but I am very hopeful for the future.

Do we have an ETA on editing permissions? It cannot come soon enough.

Great job, Coda team!

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Congrats, Codans!

:+1: Exciting that there is a progress. Some great signs that Coda could provide us with proper hidden pages, tables and columns soon.

@Ayuba_Audu Some feedback:

  • Everyone can change the Sync options, even if they are not the owners or doc makers.
  • Table views are not retained in the synced doc.
  • We can’t apply different layouts, except for the Default layout.
  • “Show hidden columns” is in there and everyone can see all columns which are not hidden in the table view and the current view.
  • Attached files cannot be previewed. They can be downloaded, but no preview in Coda.
  • Sharing, locking, access settings get even more complicated. A single Share & Access panel is very much needed.
  • Referring synced pages or tables or columns in other places of the document is not possible. This means that cross-doc is still a better option.

My verdict: :-1: This feature is still in beta. Use with caution!

Looking forward to stage 4 and hopefully short after there will be stage 5 which would deliver what I actually need: hidden tables, pages and columns accessible only by doc makers of the specific doc. :pray: :pray: :pray:

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Would be interesting to have the edit access feature. We have a large doc with pretty much everything and not everybody need access to it. Want to have each team there set of pages and without edit access this 2-way sync is not much useful for use cases like ours. Thanks for your efforts though!

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Thanks for the feedback, @matteo_barbuscio!

This is one we’re aware of and tracking. So, please keep the feedback coming.

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Many thanks for your feedback, @Stefan_Stoyanov!

I’d like clarify two of your statements.

  • By design, there is no way for a user without access to the source doc to expand their access: Sync page access control options are only visible to and can only be changed by people who have source doc access. If you don’t have source doc access, you’re not able to see or change it.
  • Columns not shown in a view on the sync page will never be accessible to users without access to the source doc: “Show hidden columns” only shows when you have a table or view that has a column that’s hidden in your row modal detail. For example, if you table or view shows columns A, B, C and your row modal detail shows A, B, D — “Show hidden columns” would show. Expanding it would only show D. Even though there might be more columns in the source doc e.g., E, F, G hidden, we will not show those.

In our research over the past few months, we’ve learned that makers are hoping to use sync page access control in a wide variety of different ways. Instead of waiting until we supported each and every one of those scenarios, we decided to release major updates periodically that unblock a range of use cases. That is to say, many more improvements to come!

We’ll continue working towards all the steps we’ve outlined and continue to come back to the community as soon as we have updates to share.

Thanks again for your congrats and feedback, cheers.

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@Ayuba_Audu

I think I just found a use case that is not implemented yet?.

I have a synced page in a new CodaDoc. The page has a table with a list of products. Now, in the new document, I’m creating a new page / table that will extract data from the linked page, with a “Relation” field.

Usually, when you use a select field, you can select between all the tables in your document, however, the “Synced Page Table” is not available in the list at the moment.

So basically you can only see the data on the Synced Table, but not use it in other tables in the same document.

  • It’s normal behaviour?
  • This use case is considered in your roadmap? It will be possible to do?

Thanks for the nice work!

Short answer, don’t know when Ayuba will be able to respond:
Yes, it is the designed behaviour. Allowing formulas in the destination doc to access the sync table will cause all kinds of access problems.

Hopefully when the ability to edit becomes available?