Real-time editing and presence

Several people can work in the same document at the same time. Nobody is locked out of the editor, and edits merge rather than overwrite each other.

What you see

Who is here. Avatars in the document header show the other people who have the document open in the editor. Hover over an avatar to see who it is.
Where they are. Each person’s cursor appears in the text with their name, in their own color.
Their changes as they type. There is no save button and nothing to refresh.

Follow a collaborator

Click someone’s avatar to follow them. The document scrolls to keep their cursor in view as they move, and a Following bar shows whose cursor you are following. To stop, click Stop in that bar, click their avatar again, or press Esc.

Following is also the quickest way to jump to where someone is working: click their avatar, then stop once you are there.

How edits hold together

Edits merge rather than compete. Two people typing in different paragraphs do not affect each other. Two people typing in the same sentence both keep their characters, which may leave the sentence needing a tidy afterwards.

If your connection drops, keep the tab open: your edits sync when the connection comes back. Workover does not store unsynced edits in your browser, so closing the tab while you are offline loses them.

Where editing is one person at a time

For a document linked to a WordPress post whose block markup Workover can read, you can edit the post as Gutenberg blocks. That view does not merge edits, so opening it claims it for you. While you hold the claim, anyone else who opens the block view sees it read-only, with your name. The claim is released when you leave the block view or close the tab.

The claim is cooperative: if Workover cannot check it, the block view opens for editing anyway, so treat it as a way to avoid accidents rather than a lock.

Working well together

Comment rather than rewrite when someone is active in the document. Their cursor tells you they are there.
Use suggestions for changes to someone else’s draft, so they can see and accept or reject each one. See Comments and suggestions.
Use tabs for parallel work, so two people work in separate tabs of the same document. See Document tabs. Guests do not see the tabs rail.

Who appears as present

Anyone signed in with the document open in the editor: project members, and people the document is shared with or who opened it in the app through a Commenter or Editor link.

People reading a Viewer link see a read-only public page, not the editor. They do not appear in the avatars and do not see changes as they happen.