How to restrict access to Coda docs - Sync page access control feature updates
In Coda, you create Docs composed of pages. Each page contains specific content that can be simple text or more complex inline formulas containing variables, tables, views of tables, and more.
One widespread use of Coda Docs is for team collaboration - e.g., project management, content management, knowledge management, KPIs tracking, and other internal operating systems. This means that often entire teams have access to and collaborate on a Coda Doc.
The larger the team and company, the more likely it is that there must be clear divisions of access to specific data in the Coda Docs. That is because of the sensitive nature of some data in larger teams (e.g., employee data, financial data), which also depends on the culture of that team and company more broadly. Transparency of communication and data flow across people in the company is a continuum that is dictated for the most part by the behaviors and beliefs of the leadership and all the people working at the company.
By design, Coda tends to be a tool optimized for transparency of information. Once a user gets access to a Coda Doc, he/she can see all the content within that Doc, without restrictions. There can be restrictions in terms of editing the content of a Doc, but no restrictions as for viewing the content.
This fact has made it challenging for some teams and companies to adopt Coda to its full potential, because of the lack of granular access control to specific parts of a Coda Doc. This is why Coda has been developing more granular access control capabilities within the software. Their plan is to roll out new features on this aspect in four phases, which are detailed here by Coda’s product manager.
What are synced pages
The key element of access control restrictions so far are synced pages. These are pages you can add to a Coda Doc that pull data automatically from a page in a separate Doc, or the entire Doc. You can add as many synced pages as you want to a Doc. And you can define the access level to the synced page in two ways: (1) only people who have access to the source doc; or (2) everyone who has access to the destination doc. That’s where the latest updates come into play.
Latest updates on sync pages access control
On the sync page options, now you can define the specific access to the sync page, also setting it to “everyone in this doc”. This allows people in the destination Doc to see the content of the sync page, without having access to the source Doc. Currently, when allowing this option, people in the destination Doc who don’t have access to the source Doc will only be able to view the content, not edit it (yet).
