Connected Files

Add a tab that opens a file from any liveworkspace app, so every part of a project is one tap away.

A project rarely lives in one file. The delivery plan is here, the architecture is a livediagram canvas, the brief is written in livedocuments and the screens are in livedesign. A connected file is a tab in your plan's tab bar that stands for one of those files. It shows the file's app logo and its name, and pressing it shows a preview of the file with a button to open it.

Connecting a file

Add a tab with the + at the end of the tab bar (or open a plan's empty tab). Start Planning opens on it.

Press Connect File, at the very bottom of Start Planning's sidebar (just above Import). Your most recent files from every liveworkspace app are listed, newest first, each with its app's logo. Find a file narrows the list by name.

Choose the Role anyone opening the tab gets on that file: Editor (chosen unless you change it), Participant or Viewer.

Press the file. The connected tab takes the empty tab's place at the end of the tab bar, and opens.

Connecting makes a share link on the file you connect, at the role you chose, so everyone who can open your plan can open it from the tab, even if they could not open it before. It is listed in that file's Share dialog as Connected from your plan, where its owner can see it and end it. You can only connect files you could share yourself: your own, or your team's.

Both ways

Turn on Add connection to both files before you press a file, and that file gains a tab back to this plan too. It needs you to be able to share this plan as well (its owner, or a member of its team). If the other file cannot be reached just then, its tab back is not made and a message says so; your plan keeps its connected tab.

Opening a connected file

Press the connected tab to see its page: a preview of the file, its name, and a button under the preview. Press Open in and the app's name (for a file in another app), or Open (for another plan), to go to the file. A file in another app opens in a new browser tab (the tab carries a small arrow for that), and another plan opens in place. The tab's page stays behind with Open Again, in case your browser held the new tab back.

Nothing opens by itself. Pressing the tab, opening the plan on a connected tab, or connecting one only shows its page; the file opens when you press the button under the preview.

The tab's name follows the file's: when the file is renamed, the tab takes the new name the next time an editor opens it. A connected tab holds no boards, sheets or cards of its own.

Arranging and removing

A connected tab is a tab like any other: drag it to reorder, and put it in a tab folder from its menu (⋯ on the open tab, or right-click it) with Organise in Tab Folder.

Remove Tab in its menu removes the tab and nothing else: the file stays exactly as it was. Its share link is deleted with it, so anyone it let in is let out again. Undo brings the tab back, without its link: it offers Connect Again.

When a connected tab needs attention

A small amber dot on the tab means it opens nothing just now. Its page says why:

  • This file is no longer there. The file was moved to the Trash or deleted. Remove the tab.
  • This connection's link was removed. The file's owner ended its link from its Share dialog. Connect Again makes a new one.
  • Connect this copy. The tab came with a copy of the plan or an import, so it does not open the file yet. Connect Again connects it here.
  • Connected files open when you are online. A plan saved only in this browser, or no network.

Who can do what

  • Editors connect files, reorder, folder and remove connected tabs, and use Connect Again.
  • Participants and Viewers see connected tabs and open them; the file opens at the role the tab was connected with.

Connected tabs are made from the editor only. Agents and the CLI can see a connected tab's app and name, never where it leads, and cannot make one.

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