Roles
Each person has one of four roles on a doc. Each role includes everything the one before it can do.
| Role | Can |
|---|---|
| Reader | Open and read the doc |
| Commenter | Also comment, and reject edits Chat suggested |
| Editor | Also edit, move to trash and restore, accept edits Chat suggested, and sync databases with tables |
| Manager | Also change who has access, publish the doc, and delete it for good |
Where a role comes from:
- Shared spaces. Every workspace member gets the space's default role, which is Editor unless a manager changed it. Workspace admins are Manager on every doc in a shared space.
- Read-only workspace members are never more than Commenter, whatever the doc says.
- Personal spaces are private. Nobody else can open a doc in your personal space unless you share it with them.
Share a doc
Click Share at the top right of a doc.
- Invite other members — add workspace members to the doc and choose their role. Up to 200 people can be added to one doc. They get a shared [doc] with you notification.
- Manage members — see who has access and change or remove their role.
- Members in space — the general access for everyone in the space: no access, or the Reader, Commenter, or Editor role (shown as Can edit for Editor). Subpages inherit it from the doc above them.
- Copy Link — copy the doc's address. People who open it see the doc only if they already have access.
Workspace links
A workspace link gives anyone in the workspace who opens it a role on the doc — Reader, Commenter, or Editor, never Manager — and can have an expiry date. If a link is revoked or expired, people see This link is no longer active.
To create one, open the doc menu (⋯) and choose Share links, or choose Link options… in the Share menu. The Links panel opens beside the doc:
- Under Workspace link, click Create link. The link starts as Can read.
- Change the role with the role menu: Can read, Can comment, or Can edit. People who already opened the link get the new role.
- Choose when it expires: Never expires, or in 1, 7, 30, or 90 days.
- Copy the link and send it to your teammates.
Click Turn off to revoke the link. Access people gained through it goes with it. Only a doc's Manager sees the Links panel's controls.
Public links
Set Anyone with the link in the Share menu to publish the doc as a read-only public page. Anyone with the link can read it without signing in. A doc can be published as a page or as a whiteboard.
On the public page:
- The doc shows its title and Updated [date].
- Comments and version history are never shown.
- Links to other docs show as Linked doc and do not reveal them.
- Whiteboard shapes are shown in the app, not on the public page.
- The page is not indexed by search engines.
In the Links panel, under Public link, a manager can also:
- Turn on Allow Markdown download to show a Download Markdown button on the public page.
- Choose when the link expires: Never expires, or in 1, 7, 30, or 90 days. An expired link reads as missing until you choose a new expiry or unpublish.
- Click Publish to the web to publish from the panel, or Unpublish to stop.
To stop sharing, set Anyone with the link back to no access. The old link stops working immediately.
Admin controls
Who can use Spaces
An admin can turn Spaces off for a group of people with the Spaces restriction under Modules in a permission group. They cannot open, create, or edit docs and whiteboards.
Embed allowlist
Embeds — a YouTube video, a Figma file, a page in a frame — only load from sites a workspace admin has allowed. The list starts empty, so embeds are off until an admin adds a site.
- Up to 50 sites.
- Use a host name such as
youtube.com, or*.figma.comto allow all its subdomains. - Only
httpsaddresses load.
To change the list, go to Settings → Spaces (workspace admins only), add or remove hosts under Allowed embed hosts, and click Save. Leaving it empty turns embeds off. People need to reload Spaces to see a change.
Publishing to the web
Only a doc's Manager can publish it. To stop sharing a published doc, its manager sets Anyone with the link back to no access.
A workspace admin can turn publishing off for the whole workspace in Settings → Spaces with Allow publishing to the web. While it is off:
- Every public page from the workspace reads as missing, including downloads and images.
- No one can publish a doc. The Links panel says an admin turned publishing off.
- Existing links are kept. Turning publishing back on brings them back at the same address.
Spaces asks before turning publishing off. Workspace links are not affected.
Retention
Settings → Spaces shows how long doc history and trashed docs are kept. On Enterprise plans, organization admins change these in Data retention, under the organization defaults: Doc history and Trash, from 1 day to 5 years. Both are 30 days when unset.