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Sharing & Permissions

Copera gives you fine-grained control over who can access each document. You can share documents with specific workspace members, control their permission level, and even publish documents publicly with a shareable link.

Permission Levels​

Each person you share a document with receives one of the following permission levels:

LevelWhat They Can Do
ViewerRead the document. Cannot edit content, comment, or change settings.
CommentsRead the document and take part in comment threads, but cannot edit the content.
EditorRead, edit, and comment on the document content. Cannot manage sharing settings.
AdminFull control --- edit content, comment, manage sharing settings, and delete the document.

The document creator is automatically an Admin. Workspace administrators also have Admin access to all documents within the workspace.

tip

The Comments level is perfect for reviewers and stakeholders: they can read the document and leave feedback through Inline Comments without the ability to change the content itself.

Sharing with Team Members​

To share a document with specific people:

  1. Open the document and click the Share button in the header.
  2. The Share dialog opens showing the current list of people who have access.
  3. Search for a workspace member by name or email.
  4. Select the person and choose their permission level (Viewer, Editor, or Admin).
  5. Click Add to grant access.

The person immediately gains access and can navigate to the document from their Shared With Me section in the sidebar.

Removing Access​

To revoke someone's access, open the Share dialog, find the person in the list, and click the remove button next to their name. Their access is revoked immediately.

Changing Permission Levels​

To change a person's permission level, open the Share dialog and adjust the role dropdown next to their name. Changes take effect immediately.

Publishing Publicly​

You can publish any document as a public web page accessible to anyone with the link --- even people outside your workspace. Public documents are a great way to share handbooks, help articles, proposals, and announcements with the world.

Draft and Publish​

Public documents use a draft-and-publish workflow so your in-progress edits never appear on the public page before you are ready. This means you can keep refining a published document privately and only push the polished version live when it is done.

Here is how it works:

  1. Publish for the first time. Open the Share dialog, switch to the Public tab, and click Publish. Copera takes a snapshot of the document as it is right now and makes that snapshot the public page.
  2. Keep editing privately. Any changes you make afterward are saved to your private working copy. The public page keeps showing the last version you published --- your edits are not live yet.
  3. Publish your updates. When you have unpublished changes, a Publish Updates button appears in the document header. Click it to push your latest version live, replacing the public snapshot.
note

Until you click Publish Updates, visitors always see the most recently published version. This lets you draft, revise, and review in private without worrying that half-finished edits will leak to the public page.

Publishing a Branch of Documents​

If the document you are publishing has child pages (subpages) with their own unpublished changes, Copera asks whether you would also like to publish updates to all subpages. Choose Yes, include subpages to push the whole branch live at once, or No, this page only to publish just the current page.

Public Document Options​

When a document is published publicly, you can configure additional options from the Public tab. Changes to these options take effect the next time you publish.

  • Allow indexing --- Enable this to allow search engines like Google to index your public document. When enabled, the document may appear in search results, increasing its visibility. Disable it to keep the document accessible only to people with the direct link.
  • Allow feedback --- Let public visitors leave reactions or feedback on the document.
  • Show subpages footer --- Display a footer that links to the document's subpages, helping visitors navigate a multi-page public site.
  • Contact form --- Add a contact form to the public document to capture leads or inquiries from visitors. You can set the button label and choose which form receives submissions. Learn more in Contact Forms.

From the same tab you can Copy link, View site to preview the public page, or Unpublish to take it down.

Document Icons on Public Pages​

If you have given your document an emoji icon, that icon appears on the public page and in its navigation too --- so your published site keeps the same friendly, recognizable look as it has inside Copera. You can set a document's icon from the document header. See Creating Documents for details.

What Visitors See​

Published public documents faithfully render the editor's full range of blocks --- headings, lists, tables, callouts, toggles, multi-column layouts, images, video, audio, files, diagrams, and embeds all appear on the public page just as they do inside Copera.

A few things stay private and are never shown to public visitors:

  • Inline comments --- Your team's comment threads remain internal.
  • Transcriptions --- Meeting transcription blocks are not included on the public page.

Before you publish a document that contains these, Copera shows a reminder telling you how many comments or transcriptions will be hidden, so there are no surprises. You can continue publishing (the rest of the document is unaffected) or remove those elements first if you prefer.

Revoking Public Access​

To make a public document private again, open the Share dialog, switch to the Public tab, and click Unpublish. The public URL immediately stops working, and the published snapshot is cleared. Anyone who tries to access the old link will no longer be able to open the page.

Document Sections and Visibility​

Documents appear in different sections of the sidebar depending on the viewer's relationship to them:

  • My Docs --- Documents you created.
  • Team Workspace Docs --- Documents shared with the entire workspace.
  • Shared With Me --- Documents other people have explicitly shared with you.
  • Starred --- Documents you have starred for quick access.

Inherited Permissions​

When you share a parent document, child documents in the tree may inherit the sharing settings depending on your workspace configuration. This makes it easy to share an entire branch of your document tree without configuring each page individually.

Next Steps​