Collaborate live on a canvas

Live collaboration helps people work on the same canvas at the same time without losing each other. Presence, avatars, cursors, page indicators, comment activity, chat, and calls all answer the same practical question: "Where is everyone, and what are they doing?"

Use live collaboration for workshops, design critiques, planning sessions, async reviews that overlap, and support conversations where someone needs to point at the same canvas content.

Live collaboration is a current-session experience. It is not an audit log, a permission report, or proof that someone reviewed the work. Use Activity, comments, project updates, or meeting notes when you need a durable record.

Live collaboration features

Prepare for a live session

Share the canvas with the right permission before the session. Comment access is enough for a review. Edit access is needed for workshops where participants add notes, move content, or fill in tables. Guest participants should test the link and name entry flow before the meeting starts.

Clean up the canvas enough that people know where to land. Add page titles, fold irrelevant pages, lock instructions, and place starting notes or prompts. A blank or messy canvas forces the facilitator to spend the first five minutes explaining the interface instead of the work.

If the canvas uses large media, upload files before the live session. Give previews and thumbnails time to finish processing. Large PDFs, images, spreadsheets, and embedded files can affect how quickly collaborators see the same state.

Use presence during work

Use avatars and cursors to understand where collaborators are active. If someone is discussing a part of the canvas you cannot see, use their presence indicator or follow-style navigation when available to jump toward them.

In a page canvas, check the slide rail for page context. If everyone is on page 3 and you are editing page 1, you may be working outside the current review area.

In a freeform whiteboard, use spatial labels, regions, and comments to keep orientation. Freeform whiteboards can spread out quickly; presence tells you where people are, but labels tell everyone why that area exists.

Presence can include guests and external collaborators when they have entered the shared canvas. Their name or avatar may come from the guest entry flow or account state. Presence does not make those people workspace members.

On lower-performance devices or during heavy zoom and pan gestures, some presence details can be reduced or delayed so the canvas stays usable. If cursors briefly fade, off-screen indicators do not appear, or page thumbnail presence is simplified, use page names, links, comments, or a call to keep the group oriented.

Use comments and chat together

Use chat for live coordination: "Can everyone move to page 2?" or "I’m starting the timer." Use comments for feedback that should survive the session: decisions, questions, approvals, objections, and assignments.

After the session, review open comment threads in the Collaboration side panel. Resolve what is done and mention owners on anything that still needs action.

Use calls while collaborating

Use Call or Join from the canvas header when your workspace supports canvas calls. The call state tells you whether a room is empty or already active. Once joined, microphone, camera, end-call, and device controls appear in the call UI.

Calls are useful when typing would slow the group down. They do not replace writing down decisions. If the call produces an action, put the action on the canvas or in a comment.

Use Team chat alongside a call for links, side notes, quiet questions, and short coordination. Use comments for the final record of what changed.

Present during live collaboration

Use Present when one person needs to walk others through a page canvas in order. Presentation hides editing UI and uses the page sequence. It is not available for freeform whiteboards, mobile, or guests.

If the group needs to edit together, stay in normal canvas mode. Presentation is better for readout than co-editing.

Follow behavior is different from Present. Follow keeps everyone in the live canvas while one person's navigation guides another person's view. Present is better for a structured readout; follow is better when people still need to collaborate.

Performance and large canvases

Large canvases, many images, heavy PDFs, dense comments, and many simultaneous collaborators can affect performance. ALLO can reduce some nonessential presence details, such as live presence in slide thumbnails, to keep navigation responsive.

If performance drops during a session, reduce the number of active heavy pages, close unrelated browser tabs, wait for uploads to finish, zoom out less aggressively on media-heavy pages, and move detailed work into sub-canvases when one page has become overloaded.

What can go wrong

If you do not see someone’s cursor, they may be on another page, outside your viewport, disconnected, or using a device state where cursor broadcasting is limited.

If collaborators cannot edit during a workshop, check whether they have edit permission, whether they entered as guests with the correct role, and whether the objects are locked.

If people are talking past each other, use page titles, direct page links, object links, comment links, or follow-style navigation. Directional phrases such as "the item on the left" stop working once people are on different pages, zoom levels, or areas of a large canvas.

If live updates feel delayed, check network stability and heavy media processing. Use comments for anything important so the decision is recorded even if live presence lags.