Spaces

A space is a shared set of diagrams. It is where a diagram lives once it is not only yours.

You do not need one to use Diagrammo. The app opens folders on your own disk, needs no account, and nothing leaves your machine unless you decide it should. A space is the thing you add when a diagram stops being a private file — when somebody else needs to change it, or when you want to hand it an address on the web.

What a space holds

Diagrams, and the people allowed to touch them.

Everyone in a space sees the same set. When an editor changes a diagram, everyone else has the new version the next time their app syncs — there is no sending, and no version in somebody’s downloads folder that disagrees with yours.

The three roles

There is one Admin per space and it cannot be handed to somebody else. The space’s own page calls this person the owner — same person, two words, and you will meet both. Viewers are free and unlimited on every plan — a space that many people read and one person writes never costs anything. What plans meter is editors, diagrams and shown links. Your account page draws each of those against its ceiling — diagrams, showing on the web, spaces and people — with the figures read from your account rather than written into the page, so what you see there is always current. The plain-English version is on the sharing page.

Where each part lives

Worth knowing before you go looking. Making a space, and putting diagrams into it, happen in the app. Who is in it does not — the roster, the invite form and the role picker are on the web: your account page, and each space’s own page. The desktop app opens those in your browser for you.

Making one

From the space switcher at the top of the file list, press New space — or, on the welcome screen and the account page, Make a space.

The dialog is headed New cloud space and asks for one thing, a name. Press Create space and it exists, with you as its owner. You have to be online: a space cannot be made offline.

Two spaces may share a name, though the app will point out that you already have one called that, because they are hard to tell apart later.

Adding people

Press Invite someone on your account page, or use the invite form on the space’s own page. Type their email address, choose whether they join as a viewer or an editor, and send it.

Admin is not something you can hand out — see the roles above.

They get an email. The link in it is a hint, not a key: membership is granted when they sign in with the address you invited, so forwarding the link to somebody else does not let that person in. If they are signed in as somebody else the app says so rather than silently doing nothing.

If the email fails to send, the invitation is still saved and the link goes to your clipboard so you can pass it on yourself. Pending invitations can be resent, copied or revoked, and they expire.

Changing a role, or removing somebody

Both are on the space’s page, in the section headed People, and only its owner sees them. A role is a dropdown on the person’s row; removing is a Remove button that asks once before it acts.

Only the owner decides who is in a space. An editor who wants somebody added has to ask; a viewer who wants to edit can request it from the same page.

Your copy stays on your machine

Joining a space does not move your work into a browser tab. The app and the web editor keep a local copy of the space’s diagrams on your device, so you can keep working with no connection. That copy is yours, it is plain text, and exporting it never depends on paying us.

If you are removed from a space, the app deletes that space’s local copy the next time it runs, and tells you so: “You no longer have access to that space, so this device’s copy has been deleted. Everything in it is still in the Cloud.” The diagrams belonged to the space, not to your disk.

If instead the owner deletes the space, your copy of the files stays on your device. The distinction matters: losing access takes the copy, ending the space does not.

Putting a private diagram into one

A file on your own disk is not in a space. Right-click it in the file list and choose Copy to a space… — or select several, or a whole folder, and do the same. It is a copy: the file stays on your computer too.

The first time you do this the app stops and asks, headed Upload to <space>?, and says exactly what happens: the source text and title go up and nothing else from your machine; only members of that space can see it; and you can remove it at any time, with edits syncing while it is there. It asks only the first time.

A diagram already in a space can be moved or copied to another one with Move to… and Copy to another space…. Moving keeps its links, so anyone watching it keeps watching; copying makes a new diagram with its own link and leaves the original where it was.

Spaces and showing are different things

Being in a space and being shown on the web are two separate ways a diagram can leave your machine, and it is worth keeping them apart.

• A space reaches people you named, by role. They sign in; you can change their access or remove them.
• Showing reaches anybody holding a link. There is no sign-in in front of it and no list of who they are.

Showing happens to one diagram inside a space, one at a time — see Showing a Diagram on the Web. Nothing else in the space becomes readable when you show one.

A space’s owner can switch showing off for the whole space, from the section headed Showing on the web on the space’s page. The control reads Diagrams here can be shown on the web; turned off, nobody in the space can start showing anything, including the owner.

It binds new shows only. Anything already shown keeps working until somebody stops it, one at a time — so the switch never silently breaks a link somebody has already embedded. Turning it off lists what is currently shown and offers to stop each one, rather than leaving you to find them.

Where to go next

• Showing a Diagram on the Web — giving one diagram an address anyone can open
• Embedding in Your Docs — putting a diagram inside your own documentation site
• What a space costs — roles, allowances, and what a paid plan changes