Work at the speed of conversation
Invite your whole team to collaborate and design in real-time. No more asking your architect to "move that building to the right." Now you can jump in and co-author any design.
Co-authoring requires Edit access to a project. Team and Enterprise accounts can grant Edit access when sharing a project. Core accounts can only share a project at View access, so co-authoring is not available on Core.
Why Live Cursors?
Live cursors display the location of other users' cursors in a virtual environment. When users interact online, they can see where their teammates are. It creates a sense of community in a digital space.
Coauthoring in Giraffe is the best way to work on a design project with your team. Coauthoring allows you to design a project at the same time. Everyone is always working with the most current updates, regardless of where or when they decide to work. Live cursors boost your workflows by allowing you to see what other teammates are doing in a shared project.
Project Access
To collaborate on a project, all participants must have at least Edit permissions to the project. Provision permissions by sharing the project.
Co-authoring works in Projects. It is not available in Spaces.
Live Cursor Controls
Once two or more participants enter a project simultaneously, the Live Cursor controls appear in the top bar, and on the map.
Each person's cursor shows their name on the map. The top bar shows a colored initials badge for everyone currently in the project. Hover a badge to see that person's full name.
A person's cursor color is assigned for that session, based on connection order. It can be different the next time they join, or in a different project.
Flows
Editing a flow's node graph syncs the same way as any other edit, with one difference: a flow's graph saves as a whole, not node-by-node. If two co-authors edit the same flow's nodes at the same time, whichever change saves last can overwrite the other person's, instead of merging the way two edits to different shapes do.
Nothing shows you when a teammate has a flow open, or is running the solve engine. Pausing the engine and previewing a flow's output are only visible to you, not to other co-authors.
🚨 Warning: Avoid editing the same flow's node graph as a teammate at the same time. Whoever saves last overwrites the other person's changes.
Baking a flow's output into real geometry is safe alongside co-authors. Once baked, it syncs and merges the same way as any other shape.
The Layer Tree
The layer tree, the list of layers and groups in the Layer panel, does not sync live the way the map and flows do. A co-author will not see your changes to it until they reload the project.
Adding, deleting, moving, renaming, or reordering a layer or group saves automatically. Visibility, opacity, lock state, group toggles, and lens changes do not: they only save when you click Save Visibility in the Layer panel, or Save layer in the feature table, and are lost if you close the project first.
🚨 Warning: The layer tree saves as a whole document, not one change at a time. If two co-authors edit it at the same time, whichever save lands last wins completely.
Have one person own the layer tree during a session, instead of two people reorganizing it at once.
Click Save Visibility or Save layer as soon as you finish a change. Until then, neither your teammates, nor you after closing the project, will see it. Even after you save, a teammate already in the project needs to reload it themselves to pick up your change, since the layer tree does not push updates to people who are already there.
Apps
Whether an app's changes show up for other co-authors depends on how that app stores its state. An app that saves its settings to the project syncs live to everyone already there, the same as the map. An app that only keeps its state in your browser never shares it with anyone, even after they reload.
When an app does save to the project, each save replaces that app's entire stored state at once, not just the part that changed. Two co-authors changing the same app's settings around the same time can overwrite each other, the same as a flow graph or the layer tree.
🚨 Warning: Avoid changing the same app's settings as a teammate at the same time. Whoever saves last wins, for that app's entire stored state, not just the part they changed.
Best Practices
Live Cursors show where someone is working. They do not lock or reserve any part of a project, so two people can still edit the same geometry at the same time.
Agree on who is editing which part of the project before you start, especially in a dense area of the map.
Watch for a teammate's cursor near what you are about to edit, and check in before making a change there.
Only Editors and Admins appear in Live Cursors. A Viewer cannot see anyone's cursor, including their own. If someone needs to watch a session without editing, they will need Edit access.