Launched: Sync pages and content sharing updates

Update: We’ve launched Sync page access control, view-only. Read more here.

:wave:t5: Hi everyone,

I’m Ayuba, the product manager working on the evolution of content sharing in Coda, and as part of our Coda 4.0 announcement, we’re introducing sync pagesformerly known as Coda full-page embeds. Sync pages let you have the content you need, everywhere at once, by allowing you add a page—and all it’s sub-pages—into multiple docs.

I wanted to take this opportunity to give an update on how this launch relates to our previously shared plan for sub-doc sharing, diving deeper into what you can expect to come.

One of our top requested features is the ability to share pages and subpages of a Coda doc without access to the whole doc. This scenario comes in handy when a manager needs to share a 1-on-1 page with a specific team member from their manager hub, a contractor needs to share a specific client’s invoice from their projects hub, or a writer is seeking feedback on a blog post from their drafts doc. More generally, sharing a page comes in handy when you need to share anything sensitive or that’s audience specific.

Though Cross-doc tables—now with two-way sync—are useful here, they aren’t always sufficient in every scenario—sometimes you want to share a whole page, not just a table on it.

Given how connected and interactive Coda pages can be, this turns out to be a tricky challenge. We’ve been taking this challenge head on at Coda and have staged our development into four steps, with today’s Coda sync pages update being step two of four.

Four steps to enable sharing a page, aka sub-doc sharing.

For step three, we plan to improve sync page access control, so you can add a sync page to a doc without viewers having access to the whole source doc. Instead, they will only see and have access to the page you added, with no shortcuts like we’ve seen in other tools. As we mentioned before, this will meet our maker’s expectations on the data boundaries of what people can or can’t access, building with enterprise grade security in mind — it can’t just look secure.

Completing step three unlocks step four, where you’ll be able to easily right-click to share a page—no other doc involved.

Each step we take is crucial, as it builds on the previous one, allowing you reuse your content across multiple Coda docs, while avoiding issues with content being duplicated or copy-and-pasted or out-of-date.

Finally, many thanks to you all for your incredibly valuable feedback. We continue to use it to inform our plans—and it’s one of many highlights of the community for me personally.

We’ll share updates on the sub-doc sharing roadmap as we have them—stay tuned!

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Thanks for sharing this. Congratulations on getting this far! What about Notion style synced blocks?

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thanks @Ayuba_Audu , what a wonderful update, I have been waiting for this kind of explanation since this summer.

Is it possible to give us a heads up before the end of year to give as an idee when the step3 can be beta tested?

merci, cheers, Christiaan

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At my workplace, there are Zillions (with a B…, um, Z), of cases where we need to share contracts, purchase orders, materials for road shows / conferences etc., with specific business groups, customers, clients, dealers - down to sole individuals as you outlined here.

We were originally using Box, (ugh), now we’re using SharePoint (ugh’er) - and it’s messy and slow to say the least.

Finally having Coda provide this similar ability of safely sharing information only to specific groups, or individual will be a timesaving, convenience of JOY!

"…Make It So!.." - Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

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You’re welcome and many thanks for the feedback @Shaheed_Fazal!

Would love to hear more about what you imagine being able to do or any examples of things you’re unable to do easily today?

Thank you so much for the continued push and support, @Christiaan_Huizer!

We’re committed to continue to share updates as we have them. Once step 3 is in a ready, we’d be happy to have you and others in the community try it out and let us know what you think — so stay tuned!

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Thanks for the update @Ayuba_Audu ! We’ve been waiting for this way to long and we are still patient because it’s worth it :face_with_peeking_eye::heart_eyes:

Congrats for getting this far!

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Just want to add my voice that this will be open up a huge amount of additional use cases and I’m waiting very eagerly for it!

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Now this is the best update for 2023!

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What a great update. Congrats on Coda 4.0 as a whole - it’s awesome to see that Coda has not lost its ambition to keep moving the product forward in big leaps, rather than just fiddling around the edges like some product teams do. The Sync Page feature is very encouraging, but the biggest step change in available use cases - probably bigger than Coda 4.0 itself - will be when Step 3 is available.
Like quite a few others here, we have a lot of use cases (internal and external) on the back burner waiting for this.

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This is the big one, to my mind. For me, it moves the question of schema design from the doc level to the workspace/organization level. I’d love some content around how to think about designing an org’s overall schema from a top-down view. For instance, one doc for projects, one for tasks, one for events, etc. all syncing with each other and more operational docs via sync pages.

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THIS IS JUST FANTASTIC
“Tricky” is a soft word to describe the size of the challenge at hand. Keep it up Codans!!

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Ayuba, this is an amazing update. I’m so excited. I’ve already switched a bunch of my cross-doc tables to two-way syncing and have synced several pages too.

Very excited about sub-doc sharing.

Thanks so much! You guys do an amazing job for your customers.
Jeb

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Hey, @Ayuba_Audu .
I wrote the question bellow in another thread but I think here it’s the right place.
One thing that bothers me about two-way sync is that you can’t use CFL in the embedded Doc. This limits a lot its potencial.
Have you guys thought of a way to tackle that? Maybe passing values in the url the same way you do with Coda forms?

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Thanks for the reply. One scenario I used in Notion was when documenting product requirement. Sometimes the same flow chart needs to be put in multiple places. I know one can link to it but that takes you out of context. I need to study all your new features and see how I can use them. I do think we could use Coda to combine other tools but to be honest I feel like it would take a lot of making time to do this.

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Thanks so much for this update, @Ayuba_Audu! Sharing information is easy - sharing information in a way that takes the reader along and allows them to see the nuances involved is the gold standard - thanks for that!

I fully second @Tim_Richardson1’s thought:

And also agree with @Breno_Nunes - I would love to be able to formulaically set the full-page embeds dynamically (ie if user does X, then show this doc as embed, if user does Y, then show the other doc as embed).

But, of course, there’s always more things to figure out and progress. For now, I want to share my sincere appreciation with all Codans involved - 4.0 is a big leap, and I think you are all absolutely nailing its inception, its execution AS WELL AS its communication. Kudos to all of you!

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I cannot wait for Step 4 to be completed! Great progress so far and thanks for the visibility on future plans. Super excited about them!

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This new feature of sync pages is really great. Let me just share two things I tried to do and couldn’t (not saying this is an error, just sharing a user experience).

I tried to make one “help” page in my document, to distribute accross different plans. First, it didn’t allow me to embed same-doc pages. Second, when opening the embeded page, there is no top navigation back, forcing the user to the left menu.

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This is an issue I have experienced as well.

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Thank you for this feature! This solves one of our biggest issues around deduplicating content.

I noticed some of the icons did not sync across - is this a bug?