Sharing and collaborating
Vecta has extensive collaboration tools to enable you to work productively in a team, including multiple ways to share your drawings privately or publicly on social media.
On the dashboard, hover over a drawing and click the Share button to share your drawing. On the editor, click on the Share menu to do the same.
Sharing a drawing
Share with others is the primary way of sharing a Vecta drawing for collaboration. You can choose to share with an email or without an email.
Sharing with email (requires signup)
To share drawings using emails, simply type in or select emails with auto complete in the Invite by email input, then select the permissions.
Remember to include a message for the invitation, so your email have a good chance of response, and click Invite.
Sharing a drawing through email requires that a user has the valid email you entered. If a user with a different email has access to your link, access to the drawing will be rejected.
However, the user can request for access, and Vecta will send an email notifying you of this request, for which you can approve or deny.
Sharing with a public link (no signup required)
To share a drawing with just a link, click on Get share link, then on Copy link button and send the link to your intended user.
No signup is required, and anyone with the link will be able to access the drawing.
Choosing Only invited users can access this drawing resets the shared link, and the drawing will no longer be publicly accessible using this link.
Managing access and invites
To manage access to your drawing, click on Share | Share with others | Who have access button, or on the dashboard, right click and select Manage access.
Permission types
View only
- Allows the invited user to preview and export drawings only.
Commenter
- Able to view and export drawings.
- Able to leave comments on drawings.
- Able to add and edit on own layer which doesn't make any changes to the actual drawing.
- The layers outside of the commenter's own layer will be locked, and cannot be edited by the commenter.
- Owner can show or hide the commenter's layer.
Edit and share
- Able to perform everything that a "View only" user can do.
- Able to rename, edit, duplicate and delete a drawing.
- Able to add new drawings to a team, change permissions of other invited users who are not an owner, and share drawings to others.
Owner
- Full permission, can perform everything mentioned above.
- Able to change the permissions of invited users or revoke access of invited users, including other owners.
- Do note that an invited owner can remove your access to a drawing that you were an original owner of.
Sharing to social media
To share a drawing to social media:
- Click on the Share menu, and select share to facebook, twitter, slack or reddit
To share to social media, your drawing must be made public, to ensure viewers can access your drawing and a preview can be provided to social media sites.
Publishing a drawing
In Vecta, you can edit a drawing and upon completion, publish your drawing for public view only access. This allow you to create and update drawings, and only push changes for public consumption when your work is completed.
Good examples for publishing includes changes to your schematics, graphical instructions or flow charts.
If changes were made to your drawing, you will have to select Publish drawing again, and click on the Publish changes button, to update your published drawing.
To remove a published drawing, click on the Remove Publishing button.
By making a copy of published drawing, a new drawing will be created. However, ownership of the new drawing is still the same as the published drawing. This allows other users to make a copy of the published drawing and make changes visible to the owners of the published drawing.
Real time collaboration
Vecta is built for team diagramming, and therefore has real time collaboration built in, for all drawings. Changes you made to a drawing is automatically saved and synced to all collaborators.
Viewing who is online
To see who is online and collaborating on your drawing, click on the Profile icon.
Chatting with teammates
Vecta contains a built in chat box for real time chat with your teammates.
To view the chat box, click on View | Show chat box in your editor.
To insert an emoji, click on the Emoji icon, on the right of the chat box.
The chat is limited to a maximum of 50 messages per drawing.
Viewing notifications
To view notifications, click on the notification icon at the right top of your screen.
Integrating with Slack
To integrate with Slack for better communication:
- On your dashboard, click on Add to Slack
- At Slack's integration page, click on the Authorize button
Once integration is completed, Vecta's Slack app will be automatically integrated into your Slack team.
Creating a team from your Slack channel
To create a team from your Slack channel:
- In dashboard, click on create new team
- Then click on Invite your Slack channel
Sharing a drawing to Slack
To share a drawing to slack:
- Click on the drawing's Share button in the dashboard or on the Share menu in the editor
- Then click on Share to Slack
If you have installed Vecta's Slack app in your Slack channel, all drawings shared to Slack will have a preview for easier discussion and collaboration.
