Collaborative editing

Collaborative editing lets everyone with edit permissions work on the same article at the same time, instead of waiting for whoever opened it first to finish. Document360 shows you who else is in the article, syncs every change as it happens, and keeps a contributor-level record of who changed what.

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When to use collaborative editing

• Two or more writers are drafting different sections of the same long article against a deadline.
• A subject matter expert needs to read and comment on a draft while the writer keeps working on it, rather than waiting for a handoff.
• You are updating a release note close to ship time and need a second person to fill in details as you write.
• You previously had to wait for someone to release an article lock before you could open it. In articles that support collaborative editing, lock and unlock no longer applies.

Before you begin

• You need edit permissions on the article. Anyone with edit permissions can join a session already in progress.
• In projects that use the Advanced WYSIWYG editor and the Markdown editor, the article must use the Advanced WYSIWYG editor.

• In API documentation, custom (non-spec) articles support multiple contributors the same way as regular knowledge base articles.
• To join as a reviewer rather than an editor, you need the Reviewer portal role or the Reviewer content role. See Reviewing an article.

How to collaborate on an article

1. Navigate to Documentation () in the left navigation bar.
2. Select the article you want to work on.
3. If the article is published, click Edit in the top-right corner.

You join the active session and the other contributors see you appear. Start typing where you want to work. Your cursor shows to everyone else in your assigned color, so they can see where you are.

See who else is editing

• Active contributors appear as colored avatars at the top of the article. Hover over an avatar to see the contributor's full name.
• Each contributor's cursor position updates in real time in their assigned color.
• If you open the same article in more than one browser tab, you still appear to others as a single contributor with one avatar color. Each tab's cursor position is tracked separately.

How changes sync between contributors

• Changes sync to everyone in the session as they are typed. If two people edit in the exact same spot, the most recent edit is kept.
• If another contributor deletes the paragraph your cursor is in, your cursor moves to the start of where that paragraph used to be.
• If your changes cannot be saved because of a connection or server problem, a message tells you that you can continue editing offline. Keep working. Your changes sync automatically once the connection is back, you see a confirmation message, and other contributors' cursor positions start updating again.

Work with media, Eddy AI, and comments

Edit the underlying markup during a session

Both editors let you work directly with the article's markup, and both restrict it while other contributors are in the article.

• In the Advanced WYSIWYG editor, code view is limited to one contributor per article at a time. If someone else already has code view open, you cannot open it, and you keep working in the visual editor until they close it.

To change the markup directly, wait until you are the only contributor in the article.

Publish and change workflow status during a session

• If two contributors select Publish at nearly the same time, the two actions complete one after the other. If the second contributor made new changes, those are published as a new version. If there were no new changes, no new version is created, but the second contributor is recorded as the publisher.
• Everyone in the article sees an Article published notification.
• A new draft is created automatically after publishing. The contributor who published moves to the new draft. Everyone else stays where they were and keeps editing.
• If you do not have permission to publish, the Publish button is disabled. Hover over it to see why.
• If the article moves to a read-only workflow status, everyone in the session drops to view-only and a message explains that the current status is read-only.
• For any other status, you keep working. You see a Workflow status modified message and the status updates for everyone.

Version history while collaborating

An article can have only one active draft at a time, and everyone in the session works on it.

• Revision history shows the active draft with each contributor's additions, deletions, and edits highlighted in a different color. Content carried over from the previously published version appears as plain text. Hover over highlighted content to see who made the change.
• Each version card shows the avatars of everyone who worked on that version, with a status badge of Draft, the version number for published versions (for example, v2), Unpublish, or System Backup.
• Copy to draft on an older version replaces the current draft with that version's content. If a draft is already active, Document360 saves a System Backup first, so the previous draft is preserved. Everyone in the session is notified that the draft was created from an earlier version and can select Take me to the draft to open it.
• You can delete the current draft of an article or page category from Revision history to discard its changes. Because everyone in the session works on the same draft, deleting it discards the changes for all contributors. The article returns to its latest published version, which stays live. Document360 doesn't save a System Backup of the deleted draft, and any existing System Backup versions stay in revision history. To keep a copy of the changes, use Copy to draft on the published version instead.
• If others are editing the draft when you delete it, they see a Draft deleted message that names you. Their only option is Refresh, which opens the latest published version. You don't see this message. The next time someone selects Edit, a new draft is created from the latest published version.
• Compare with shows the overall difference between two versions. It does not break the difference down by contributor.
• Summarize changes gives you a plain-language summary of what changed, either in the active draft compared with the latest published version, or between any two versions. Like Compare with, it describes the overall changes, not who made each one. See Summarize changes with Eddy AI.
• Opening Revision history to view or copy an older version removes you from the contributor list. You rejoin when you return to the current draft.

For the full set of version actions, see Revision history.

When your changes can be overridden

Some changes reach an article from outside the editor, for example through automatic business glossary updates, content duplication detection, global find and replace, machine translation, or MCP.

1. A message appears: "This article has been updated outside the editor. Please reload to view the latest version."
2. Before you reload, Document360 saves your unsaved changes as a System Backup version.
3. Select Reload to load the latest content. If you need your earlier work, restore the System Backup version from Revision history.

Updates through the customer API behave differently. While anyone is actively editing the article in the portal, an API request to update that article's content is blocked and the caller receives an error until the editing session ends.

Considerations

Best practices

• Agree who takes which section before you start. Only the most recent edit survives when two people type in the same place, so splitting the article up front avoids silent losses.
• Leave an inline comment with an @mention instead of rewriting a sentence someone is still working on.
• Tell the others before you run Eddy AI on a shared article. The article goes read-only for everyone until the operation finishes.
• Warn the team before you use Copy to draft or delete the draft. Both actions change the draft for everyone in the session at once.
• Before you approve or publish a draft that several people worked on, run Summarize changes in Revision history to see what changed overall, then check the highlighted changes for detail.
• Decide who publishes. One person publishing keeps the version history clean and avoids two near-simultaneous publish actions.
• Close the article when you finish. That frees your contributor slot for someone else, and it releases code view and markdown view for whoever needs them.

FAQ