Studio Collaboration

Working Together

A survey team works best with one person editing a document at a time and everyone else able to watch and comment. Studio is built that way: one editor per document, others following the edits live, comments on questions, pages and flow nodes, and a Save that notices when someone else saved first. This page covers edit locks, drafts, comments, Save conflicts and roles.

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One editor per document

What is locked

Document	Locked when
The questionnaire	someone has the Builder open (once the questionnaire has been saved at least once)
Each flow, separately	someone has that flow open on its canvas (once the flow has been saved at least once)

The questionnaire and each flow lock independently, so one person can build the instrument while another builds the analysis. Project settings (study metadata, runtime, reports, connectors) are not locked. A brand-new flow that has never been saved is private to the person creating it.

Timing

• Opening the Builder or a flow takes the lock; Studio renews it every 30 seconds while you are on that screen.
• Leaving the screen releases it at once. If your browser closes or loses its connection, the lock lapses 2 minutes after the last renewal.
• When the editor leaves, the first colleague still following takes the lock automatically and can edit.

When someone else is editing

You see a banner above the tabs:

Anna is editing — you are following their changes live (last edit 2 min ago). Your own edits are off until you take over; comments stay open. [Take over]

While you follow:

• your screen shows Anna's unsaved work, refreshed every few seconds (her edits reach the server about 1.5 seconds after she stops typing);
• the version chip reads Version 17 · being edited;
• Save is disabled (its tooltip says "Anna is editing"), editing and undo/redo do nothing, nodes on a flow's canvas cannot be moved, and Ctrl/Cmd + S has no effect;
• you can still select things, read the Inspector, preview, and comment.

Take over

Click Take over to move the lock to you. You can edit immediately.

The previous editor learns at their next renewal — within 30 seconds — with the message "your name took over editing — you are now following their changes". Their screen switches to following you. Their unsaved edits stay stored as their own private draft, but they get those edits back only if the document has not been saved in the meantime. Otherwise Studio says "An unsaved draft from an older version was not restored — the document has been saved since."

Tip. Before taking over, ask the editor to save — or leave a comment. Take over is for when someone left a tab open and went to lunch, not for tug-of-war.

Renaming, duplicating and deleting a flow

The edit lock also protects a flow from being renamed or deleted under the person editing it:

• In the flow editor's More menu, Rename flow… and Delete flow… are disabled while you follow a colleague (tooltip "Anna is editing").
• From the ⋮ menu on the Flows screen, Rename… and Delete… of a flow a colleague has open are refused with "Anna is editing flow; it can be renamed once they are done." ("… it can be deleted once they are done.").
• A flow with your own unsaved changes cannot be renamed either. In the editor, Rename flow… is disabled with the tooltip "Save first"; from the Flows screen, Rename… is refused with "flow has unsaved changes. Open it and save them (or undo them) first: renaming saves the last saved version, and the changes would be lost."
• Rename… and Duplicate… always start from the flow as last saved on the server, including a colleague's Save made after you opened the project, so they never bring back an older copy.

A rename moves the flow's schedules and comment threads to the new name, and Live keeps showing its latest tiles; its past runs and reports keep the old name. Restoring a Save from before the rename moves the schedules and comments back. Each of these actions is an ordinary Save ("Rename flow a to b", "Duplicate flow a as b", "Delete flow a"). See Rename, duplicate or delete a flow.

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Drafts are per person

Every person has their own autosaved draft of each document. Studio writes it about 1.5 seconds after you stop typing and clears it when you save or discard. A draft is never validated or published, and nobody else sees it — except colleagues following you live while you hold the lock. The sync messages and what they mean are listed in Drafts and autosave.

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Comments

Comments are the place for "should this be single or multiple choice?" — not email.

Where you can comment

On	Where the thread is
a question	the Comments section at the bottom of the Builder's Inspector when the question is selected
a page	the same section when the page is selected
a flow node	the Comments toggle in the node's inspector on the flow canvas
a whole flow	the Comments toggle in the flow's inspector when no node is selected

Blocks, codebook entries, settings and Saves have no comment thread. In the Builder the Comments section starts collapsed and shows the number of open comments. Question cards and flow nodes with open comments show a small count badge ("2 open comments").

Writing and handling comments

• Type in Add a comment… and click Comment, or press Ctrl/Cmd + Enter. Up to 4,000 characters.
• Each comment shows its author, how long ago it was written ("just now", "5 min ago", "3 h ago", "2 d ago") and the text.
• Resolve closes a comment when it is handled; resolved comments fold away behind Show N resolved. Reopen brings one back. Anyone with the member role can resolve or reopen any comment.
• Delete removes a comment immediately, without asking. You can delete your own comments; owners and admins can delete anyone's.
• With nothing open the section says "No comments yet."

What comments do not do

• No mentions and no notifications. Nobody is emailed or alerted; people see comments when they look at the element.
• Not live. Comments load when you open the project. To see colleagues' new comments, reload the page or reopen the project.
• Tied to ids and names. A thread belongs to a question's id (the Advanced → Id field, "names the question in scripts and comments; logic and data use the variable"), a page's name, a node's id or a flow. If you change a question's id, a page's name or a node's id, its comments no longer appear on it; changing it back makes them reappear. Renaming a question's variable does not touch its id, so its comments stay. A flow's comments follow it when you rename it with Rename… (see above).
• Comments cannot be edited in the app, are not part of Saves and bundles, and are not recorded in Activity.
• Only the oldest 500 comments of a project are loaded.

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Save conflicts

Each Save records the Save it was built on. If anyone saved the project after your Save dialog's starting point — a colleague, or you in another tab, on any document — the dialog shows:

Anna saved #18 (“Reworded the screener”) while you were editing on top of #17. Reload their Save to see it (your edits stay as an unsaved draft), or save yours on top of it as #19.

with Cancel, Reload #18 and Save on top:

• Reload #18 loads the latest Save. Your unsaved edits stay on screen, now on top of #18, and you save when you are ready.
• Save on top saves your version as #19 anyway. This replaces the document with yours; nothing is merged. If Anna changed the same document, her changes are gone from #19 onward. They remain in #18, and Compare with in History shows exactly what differs. To recover them, re-apply them by hand or restore #18.

Settings changes (study metadata, runtime, reports, adding a connector), restores, and renaming, duplicating or deleting a flow are saved without this check. A rename or a duplicate reads the flow as last saved on the server first, so it does not undo a colleague's newer Save of that flow.

Because the edit lock normally keeps two people from editing the same document at once, a conflict usually means someone saved a different document, or the same person saved from two tabs. Reload unless you are sure.

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Roles in practice

Every member of an organization can see every project in it. What each role can do in the areas on this page:

	member	admin	owner
Edit, Save, restore, pre-register, deposit	yes	yes	yes
Rename, duplicate and delete flows	yes	yes	yes
Take the edit lock, take over	yes	yes	yes
Comment, resolve, delete own comments	yes	yes	yes
Delete anyone's comments	—	yes	yes
Upload and delete files, create schedules, add connectors	yes	yes	yes
Run connectors, add or delete secrets, manage webhooks	—	yes	yes
Create, rename and delete projects; delete responses	—	yes	yes
See the organization-wide Activity	—	yes	yes
Billing, the AI assistant consent	—	—	yes

Most owner-and-admin controls tell a member up front — they are disabled with a short reason, or left out:

Control	What a member sees
New project	disabled — "Only owners and admins can create projects"; an empty Projects screen adds "Only owners and admins can create projects — ask one to set it up."
New project on Library → Templates and on an Organization library questionnaire	disabled — "Only owners and admins can create projects"; under Templates: "Only owners and admins can create projects — ask one to set it up."
Save changes on Settings → General (rename)	disabled — "Only owners and admins can rename a project."
Delete project on Settings → Danger Zone	disabled — tooltip "Only owners and admins can do this"; the card says "Only owners and admins can delete a project."
Add secret and Delete on Settings → Secrets	disabled — "Only owners and admins can add or delete secrets."
Run export / Run import on a connector	disabled — "Only owners and admins can run a connector"
Delete on a row of the responses table (Data tab)	not shown
Webhooks card in Organization settings → Integrations	"Only owners and admins can see and manage the organization's webhooks."
Activity tab in Organization settings	not shown

One owner-and-admin action still answers only when used: Save secret inside a connector's dialog ("Could not add secret. You do not have permission to do this.").

In the organization Library (Plus), any member can save items, but only owners, admins and the member who saved an item can replace or delete it. For a member, the delete icon of an item someone else saved is disabled (tooltip "Only owners and admins can delete an item another member saved"), and a note under the table says "Only owners and admins can delete items other members saved." See Question Bank, Templates and Library.

The full matrix, and how to invite people and change roles, is in Organizations and Team.

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A workable team routine

1. One person owns the questionnaire; others review with comments.
2. Reviewers without an account use a share preview link — see Testing Your Survey.
3. Save with real messages. History becomes the project's changelog.
4. Say "saving now" in a comment or chat before a big Save, and reload when a colleague says the same.
5. Publish to pilot for internal testing and main for fieldwork.
6. The analyst builds flows on simulated data while the questionnaire is being finished, and switches the source to the responses on launch day.
7. Resolve comments as you act on them, so the open counts stay meaningful.
8. Archive a research bundle of each deliverable Save — see Reproducibility.

See also

• History and Versions
• Organizations and Team
• The Builder
• Analysis Flows
• Keyboard Shortcuts

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