Sharing documents with collaborators
Availability: Essentials, Business, and Enterprise plans
Sharing a document is an ideal way to collaborate seamlessly with teammates from other workspaces or who have lower permissions — or even with colleagues who don’t have a PandaDoc license.
Note:
You can invite users to collaborate on documents in any status. Up to 20 collaborators can be added to your account.Skip to:
Inviting external collaborators
This feature is especially helpful when you’d like to invite someone outside your PandaDoc account to view your document and suggest improvements — all without purchasing a license or granting them access to other documents in the same workspace.
Note:
Any user with a Member, Manager or Admin role with permission to view documents created by other users can invite collaborators.Guest users in a Collaborator role can:
- Access, view, and comment on documents shared with them
- Access the inbox and add their personal information to the account in Settings > Personal info
- Suggest edits in Draft documents
Note:
Users with a Collaborator role do not have permission to create a document, even if they have a Standard license.To invite someone who isn’t part of your team, follow these steps:
- Open the document, then select Invite and choose Collaborator from the dropdown
- Next, once the pop-up window appears, enter their email address, then select Tab or Enter
- Finally, select Send invitation.
External users can also request access to a document in case you send them a link. An Admin will receive an email notification and will be able to grant access.
As soon as you select Send invitation the user will be added to the collaborators' list where you can modify their permission.
As a default, your external collaborator will be invited to the document with the permission level of “View and comment.” They will have a Collaborator role in the workspace, and a Guest license.
Collaborator's view:
Note:
If you’d like your external collaborator to have editing capabilities, this will require a Standard license. If you only change their permission to "Can edit" inside a document, they will still have a Collaborator role with no access to templates and documents created by other users. You can easily change their role and license in Team settings.Warning:
If your account doesn’t have an unused license, an additional charge will apply.Once you select Send invitation, your external collaborator will receive an email notification containing a link to the document. This link will allow them to easily join your workspace with a Guest license and view the document as soon as they create their own guest profile.
Note:
To downgrade a user to the Guest license, firstly, remove the user under Team and seats and reinvite them at the document level by clicking Invite.Inviting internal collaborators
You can grant any user on your account access to a specific document — regardless of their workspace or role.
There are two types of collaborator permissions on a document:
- Can view and comment
- Can edit
To share a document with your colleagues, follow these steps:
- Open the document, select Invite at the top of the page, then Collaborator from the dropdown
- In the pop-up, select your colleagues from the dropdown, or start typing their names to filter the list
- Once all collaborators have been added, select Send invitation.
Once you select Send invitation, you can change their permissions to "Can view and comment" or "Can edit" and your collaborators will each receive an email notification containing a link to the document.
When you invite collaborators from another workspace, they’ll be added to the document with “Can view and comment” as a default permission, and will have a Collaborator role in their new workspace.
Note:
Inviting collaborators from other workspaces won't result in additional charges since they already have a license on your account.If you invite users from the workspace the document belongs to, their permission level will correspond to their account role. For example, if one colleague has an Admin or Manager role, they’ll be granted “Can edit” as a default permission. The default permission for a Member role, meanwhile, will be “Can view and comment.” (Click here to learn more about account roles.)
You can change permissions at any time once you’ve invited collaborators.
Warning:
Any change in permissions won’t be applied until the collaborator refreshes the page.Collaborators can find the documents they've been invited to in the “Shared with me” folder, located in the Documents tab.
If you’d like to change an existing user’s role to Collaborator, you can do this in Team settings or the Admin panel. Once a user’s role is changed in this way, they’ll no longer have access to Dashboard, Contacts, Content library, Templates, Forms, and Documents. However, they’ll continue to have access to documents they have created, as well as documents shared with them.
Learn how to share document folders with collaborators here.
How to remove a collaborator
Note:
Collaborators will have access to the content you shared with them until their access is removed.To remove a collaborator from a document:
- Open the document
- Select the Collaborators section at the top of the page
- Open the permissions dropdown and select the Remove option
Note:
Removing a collaborator on the document level will not completely remove them from the account.To delete a collaborator from the account, select your name in the lower-left corner and go to Team and seats. Hover over a user and select three vertical ellipses on the far right, then select Remove user from the dropdown. If this person is a member of multiple workspaces, you can delete them from all workspaces at once. To do so, check the option "Remove from all workspaces". This way, the collaborator will be automatically removed from all the documents that were shared with them and won't have access to the account.