Your comments are accurate, editing is not possible at the moment.
The full scope of this functionality is very large, and Coda is taking a phased approach, and releasing parts of it as it is finished. The first part, in my limited understanding, was the functionality to share a subset of a doc with other people in such a way that they do not have access to the original document anymore.
Now that Coda has the ability to “carve out” and share parts of a doc, the next, and more difficult part, is to make it possible to edit the sections in this new document.
Kyle — welcome to the community and many thanks for your question!
@Piet_Strydom covered it well and I can confirm that as part of Sync page access control (Step 3) we’re hard at work to enable editing and real-time updates — including comments.
Our general principle is that if there are creative ways to enable some use cases sooner, rather than later, we’ll do so and why we’re making view-only available now, while we make progress on editing.
We’ll continue to share updates as we have them, so stay tuned!
PS: I’d settle for interact with controls and allow commenting before the other stuff:) I am super excited about the possibilities this opens. And how it makes the design of the docs simpler and cleaner for the end user.
Hi Ayuba, I’m new to Coda just signed up to team plan for this page sharing feature, went through this post, could you confirm if my understandings are correct?
As sync page currently stands (phase 3)
it is possible to share a READONLY sync page in container doc while protecting source doc.
Editable sync page while protecting source doc is CURRENLY IMPOSSIBLE due to
Allow only those with access to the source doc to view/edit the sync page in the container doc
Editable sync page while protecting source doc is possible in next stage
If a Hidden Subpage in source doc containing table views for layouts, and Sync Page contains a table with OpenRow() referring these views, then in Container Doc the function button doesn’t work, it will open source doc in a new browser tab in my test
Sincerely appreciate you being on this journey with us and your feedback — so much more to come!
On this, if you have an example doc or specific things you’d love to see enabled, please let me know — you can message me directly if you prefer! It’s an area we’re actively exploring.
First off, welcome to Coda, the community here and many thanks for choosing us! Glad to see you already in the community, as we find it’s such a educational and supportive space.
Now to your questions:
it is possible to share a READONLY sync page in container doc while protecting source doc.
Correct — this is true once you sync a page from one doc to another, and who can see this to “Everyone in this doc”. Read more from our help articles here.
Editable sync page while protecting source doc is CURRENLY IMPOSSIBLE
Correct. More specifically, we’re working to enable this as part of step 3 and need to make sure we get it right. We chose to release the view-only now since we could do it sooner and it already unlocks various scenarios like dashboards and reporting.
Editable sync page while protecting source doc is possible in next stage
See above.
If a Hidden Subpage in source doc containing table views for layouts, and Sync Page contains a table with OpenRow() referring these views, then in Container Doc the function button doesn’t work, it will open source doc in a new browser tab in my test
Yes, this is currently by design since hidden pages aren’t synced over. This is similar to if you had a reference to a page that wasn’t synced.
If you have access to the source doc, you’ll see the hidden page in a new tab. If you don’t have access, you’ll be sent to an access denied screen.
Please keep the feedback coming and again, welcome!
Hi @Ayuba_Audu , Here are specific things that would make make all the difference to my use cases (happy to share a sample doc with you - will follow up on that):
I embedded a sync page with charts and filter bar enabled. The field being used in the filter bar is not part of the columns being used in the chart. When someone clicks on the filter - it says ‘The Filter is unavailable in this sync page.’
Sync page with a card view – in the original doc, you can click on the card and see a modal view with more fields (but of course, not all the fields). In the sync page, when you open the modal, you can only see the field visible on the card (which funnily enough is not part of the modal in the original).
The more I think about it…this is really all about the fundamental view → comment → edit → doc maker permissions.
Unless specifically enabled for a doc, only doc makers should be able to unhide hidden pages and show hidden columns. This one change also make my docs more functional. And then perhaps the sync page guardrails would need to do less heavy lifting.
And then…
Viewers of a sync page should be able to use filters (both filter bar and canvas filters). But not buttons…which I imagine gets messy/tricky.
And the sync doc card view /modal should function like it does in the original – all columns being used both in the view and in the modals should come over. I imagine the tricky part here is the expand row feature – which if not configured could accidentally bring over all the columns. So yeah…I don’t know how the team would solve for that.
Update: Thanks again to folks for all the feedback to help make Coda even better.
Hi everyone,
If you’ve recently thought “gaaaa, if only i could edit this access controlled sync page” or “sync page access control needs editing, else it’s useless for me and my scenarios” or similar, we’d love your help making sure we get this right for your scenarios, so please sign up here!
I am eagerly looking forward to the next stages. For now, I am using synced pages where they have some extra benefit. I have noticed that synced pages do not reflect changes that are made in the originating doc - until you refresh the page or doc. For dashboard type pages (and many others), you really would want the page to refresh upon a change in the mast doc.
Will this behavior be addressed in an update?
Greetings, Joost
How will notifications work? Where will they lead when clicked on mobile or email notifications? If a person has access to both documents, how will they know which one it is?
How will the table layouts be transferred when the tables are not transferred and are on hidden pages? Maybe it’s time to eliminate the need to build a new table view for every new layout and start using layouts as anticipated.
The option to add an editor on specific pages is literally a crucial feature. Even with this page sync people won’t be able to edit the pages, only view them. Not having this literally cripples the entire platform.
I also shared sensitive data as it was not clear I was giving people access to the entire doc, not a specific page.
Thanks for the invitation. Following this thread again to see how things are progressing. Looking forward to innovations and refinements in this space as it will be tremendously helpful for our organization. Thanks!!
While I don’t have a Christmas or New Years present, I can confirm the same team is actively working in this area, and we’ll share updates as soon as we have them!
We’re as eager to enable more scenarios for you all, and so as soon as we can, you’ll be hearing from us, thank you!
Kyle — welcome to the community and many thanks for your question!
