Concurrent editing

Key point: Real-time display of details when another user is editing the same document.

This feature makes it easier to avoid edit collisions and to work with other people on the same documents.

Active editing

When you focus on a fragment for editing, first, a thin blue bar to indicate that the fragment is in focus is displayed to the left.

Once you start editing, a thicker yellow bar to the left indicates that changes have been made and that a draft is saved at the first opportunity.

For any other user editing that document at the same time, a red bar with a flashing ellipsis is shown next to that fragment to indicate that someone else is actively editing the fragment. The fragment becomes uneditable for them to avoid conflict. They cannot see your changes – only the last saved content.

If you see a red bar with flashing ellipsis next to fragment, it indicates that another user is also editing that fragment.

Drafts

When you pause editing, a draft of your edit is auto-saved. A blue bar and the icon is seen to the left of your fragment. It indicates that there is a saved draft.

If you resume editing, the bar changes to yellow to indicate unsaved changes as explained in the preceding section.

If you leave your document and return, any fragment that has a draft has a icon displayed to the left, but it shows the current content not the draft content unless you start editing again.

You can see all your drafts in the my drafts page.

The current content of the fragment is the last saved content, not the content of the users’ draft as they haven’t saved that content yet.

Locked content

When you save your drafts, other users see a red icon to its left. Conversely, if you see a red lock, it indicates that another user has saved a draft for that fragment. Holding the cursor over the icon reveals the author, the date, and time the draft was saved.

In edit mode, a red bar is also displayed and the fragment becomes uneditable.

If the content is locked, you need to edit it before the other user saves their changes – you can attempt to accept or reject their draft. Click the icon to open the unlock fragment dialog.

Updated content

If another user has edited and saved a fragment while you were editing the document, you see a red bar with the icon. You can hold the mouse over the icon to see who made the update and when it was made.

Click the icon to refresh the content of the fragment and replace it with the latest content.

If the update is recent and the other user is still working on the same document, it is more prudent to avoid editing that fragment to avoid conflicts.

Conflicting changes

If another user modifies and saves the fragment content while you were editing it, PageSeeder detects a conflicting change and prevents you from saving your edit. This is because you started editing from an earlier version of the content. In that case, a red bar is displayed with an icon.

In that case, you can save your content as a draft and attempt to resolve the situation using the unlock fragment dialog.

Although this situation is rare, it can happen when a user has network issues, leaves their window open in edit mode for a long time, or forces editing using the Ignore option.

Also see: handling drafts from other users