The canvas
Working at the same time
Cursors, live edits, the one-tab rule, and what the board does to protect itself when two people disagree.
Open a board someone else is already in and their cursor is on your screen, moving, labelled with their name. Everything they do arrives as they do it: an image lands, a note appears, a frame resizes. Nobody saves and nobody refreshes. ## What you see of each other - **Cursors**, live, with the name and colour of whoever is behind them - **Edits**, as they happen, at the granularity of the change rather than the document - **Who is here**, in the avatars at the top of the board The colour assigned to a person is stable while they are in the board, so on a busy board you learn the colours before you learn to read the labels. ## Why edits do not collide A board is a shared document with conflict resolution built into its data structure rather than bolted on as a locking scheme. Two people editing different things never interact. Two people editing the same thing converge on one answer instead of one overwriting the other. The practical version: you do not have to coordinate. You do not have to ask whether someone else has the file open. Nothing gets checked out. :::caution[One board, one browser tab] Open the same board in two tabs of your own browser and Plnty holds the edit claim in one of them. The second goes read-only. This exists because the failure it prevents is severe. Two tabs of the same person both writing, one of them holding a stale or half-loaded copy of the document, is how a board loses content. The read-only tab is the guard, not a bug. ::: ## Sharing outside the workspace Anyone in the workspace can open the board. Anyone outside it sees nothing until you share it, which produces a read-only link that needs no account. Someone on that link sees the board and its live updates and cannot change anything. It is the right thing to send a client and the wrong thing to send a collaborator, who should be in the workspace instead. :::note[What a viewer does not get] A shared link is the board, not the workspace. A viewer sees no tool cards, no generating pills, no other people's cursors, and no route into your asset library. ::: ## Working well together on one board A few habits that make the difference between a shared board and a crowded one: - **Lock what is settled.** Approved frames and reference walls stop drifting. - **Frame the sections.** A named frame is something a teammate can be pointed at. - **Leave the reasoning beside the result.** A voice memo takes a moment and saves the next person from re-deciding something you already decided. - **Stack the sets you are done with.** Eight takes collapse into one pile, and the board stays readable without anything being deleted.Open a board someone else is already in and their cursor is on your screen, moving, labelled with their name. Everything they do arrives as they do it: an image lands, a note appears, a frame resizes. Nobody saves and nobody refreshes.
What you see of each other
Section titled “What you see of each other”- Cursors, live, with the name and colour of whoever is behind them
- Edits, as they happen, at the granularity of the change rather than the document
- Who is here, in the avatars at the top of the board
The colour assigned to a person is stable while they are in the board, so on a busy board you learn the colours before you learn to read the labels.
Why edits do not collide
Section titled “Why edits do not collide”A board is a shared document with conflict resolution built into its data structure rather than bolted on as a locking scheme. Two people editing different things never interact. Two people editing the same thing converge on one answer instead of one overwriting the other.
The practical version: you do not have to coordinate. You do not have to ask whether someone else has the file open. Nothing gets checked out.
Sharing outside the workspace
Section titled “Sharing outside the workspace”Anyone in the workspace can open the board. Anyone outside it sees nothing until you share it, which produces a read-only link that needs no account.
Someone on that link sees the board and its live updates and cannot change anything. It is the right thing to send a client and the wrong thing to send a collaborator, who should be in the workspace instead.
Working well together on one board
Section titled “Working well together on one board”A few habits that make the difference between a shared board and a crowded one:
- Lock what is settled. Approved frames and reference walls stop drifting.
- Frame the sections. A named frame is something a teammate can be pointed at.
- Leave the reasoning beside the result. A voice memo takes a moment and saves the next person from re-deciding something you already decided.
- Stack the sets you are done with. Eight takes collapse into one pile, and the board stays readable without anything being deleted.