Everything you need to know about Coda 4.0 (latest updates)

ToolsMiscellaneous

Oct 14

Coda has recently released their fourth major iteration of the software (Coda 4.0), with a clear mission of becoming a single source of truth for businesses, with the support of Coda AI included in every plan (and currently with some credit limits). The core reinforcing features released by Coda in 4.0 include two-way sync for Packs and native two-way sync pages. This post explores what is new and noteworthy in Coda 4.0. To read the official Coda post, click here.

Sync pages

Sync pages in Coda are the newest and arguably most valuable feature released by Coda in their 4.0 iteration. This allows you to sync Coda docs/pages across docs and workspaces while retaining full synchronization on edits and the same permission settings from the source doc. To create a sync page, select the dropdown menu next to “New page” on the left sidebar, and choose the “Sync page” option. Then paste the doc/page URL you would like to sync or browse through all your docs to select the chosen one. That builds an instant connection between the source doc/page and the new sync page you have just created. You can update content in either place, and it will sync seamlessly across all the instances of the sync page. Coda sync pages are useful for bringing data from multiple docs into one. This reinforces the good practice of data centralization in Coda (and any other tool), without exposing issues in access settings, which, in turn, contributes to Coda’s mission of being the single source of truth for teams.

This improvement, together with full-page embeds (allowing you to embed third-party tools into a Coda doc), and two-way cross-doc tables (giving you the ability to edit the same table across multiple docs where it is synced), build the foundations of Coda 4.0 and consolidate the efforts to empower anyone to centralize their knowledge and internal operations within Coda docs.

Two-way sync for Packs

Packs are a stable and growing ecosystem within Coda. Anyone with programming knowledge can develop Coda Packs to add additional capabilities to their Docs and make them public or private for their own use. The Packs ecosystem in general is an additional—and arguably very important—foundation that signals the purpose of Coda to be a single source of truth. Packs allow you to pull data from third-party tools (or Coda itself) programmatically, syncing anything possible via the APIs of the tools. Before Coda 4.0, Coda Packs could only sync data from third-party tools (e.g., Google Sheets, Jira, Quickbooks) into Coda. Since Coda 4.0, Packs also allow two-way sync. This means that you can make edits to content from third-party tools directly from within a Coda doc, and the updates sync automatically to the third-party tool. Pack admins need to intentionally activate this feature, which can be dangerous (because it may create unintentional syncs) if not used with an awareness of its existence.

Coda AI additions

Coda AI was launched some months ago, as part of the effort to integrate innovation and Language Model capabilities into the software, a trend seemingly embraced by the vast majority of software companies this year in the race to being effectively ambidextrous. Coda AI includes six key features, some of which have been launched as part of Coda 4.0. These are:

AI Assistant: Type the slash command on a Coda page to find AI options among all the Coda commands. Or type CTRL/CMD + SPACE on your keyboard to see all the AI assistant features available on a Coda doc. You can ask the AI assistant to take action on your Coda doc (e.g., create a table, brainstorm ideas, write some text, etc.) while dynamically referencing data from your Coda doc.
AI Block: This is an up-to-date block on your Coda doc that retrieves information from any data you reference in it. It refreshes live as you add more data to the referenced context in your doc. You can use AI blocks for summarizing data from a table, or get any high-level overview of lots of information that would take a human a lot of time to process.
AI Column: the AI add-on to columns in Coda tables allows automatic data population/transformation based on your prompt, which can also be highly customized and reference data from any variable in your Coda doc, including columns in the same table and inline formulas on the doc pages.
AI Chat: This is Coda AI’s on-demand assistant, which you can open from the dedicated icon at the bottom-right corner of any doc page. The Coda AI chat is a conversational agent that can reference data from tables, the whole doc, specific pages, a specific selection on a page. You can also ask general questions not related to the Coda doc.
AI Q&A: This feature is part of the AI chat panel, and is a Q&A interface that allows you to get answers from content across your entire Coda workspace or specific docs. Coda AI Q&A can be particularly relevant for knowledge management purposes. Team members can ask questions about specific policies/regulations within the company, and Coda AI can retrieve the relevant data from the Coda workspace to answer the questions.
AI Reviewer: Coda AI reviewer can provide feedback on specific selections of the content of a Coda doc or a whole page. The conversation happens on the same side panel as the AI Chat. When you ask for specific feedback, the AI Reviewer will leave comments on the specific chunks of text with feedback.

Regarding Coda AI prices, it is free for all doc makers (paid members of your Coda workspace), and not available for anyone else who is not a paid member in your Coda workspace. There are also limited credits per month depending on the Coda plan you own. See the pricing updates post for more details.

Handbooks and Courses

Finally, as part of Coda 4.0, Courses and Handbooks for specific use cases were launched, with the aim of expanding accessibility and the education ecosystem around Coda.