Product guides

Real-time collaboration

Excaliwow is a multiplayer canvas. Anyone with access to a diagram works on it at the same time, sees the same picture, and watches changes appear the instant they happen.

Working together in real time

Open a diagram in your browser at excaliwow.com and you are in the editor. There is nothing to install and no setup. When teammates open the same diagram, everyone is editing the one shared canvas at once.

Every change is saved automatically and synced to everyone viewing. There are no copies to merge and no file to pass around. The diagram you see is always the current, up-to-date version.

Live cursors

As collaborators move around the canvas, you see their cursors move in real time, each labelled with their name. When someone draws a shape, types a label, or drags an element, it appears for everyone immediately. You can watch a teammate sketch something out and respond as they work, the way you would standing at the same whiteboard.

Presence

The editor shows who is currently in the diagram, so you always know who else is here. As people open and close the diagram, the list updates on its own. This makes it easy to tell whether you are working alone or alongside the rest of your team.

Comments

Leave comments pinned directly to a spot on the canvas, so feedback stays attached to the thing it is about. Each comment opens a thread that you and your collaborators can reply to, keeping a focused discussion in one place.

New comments and replies show up for everyone in real time, just like edits. When a thread has run its course, resolve it to tidy up the canvas. Resolved threads are not gone, so you can reopen one later if the conversation needs to continue.

Use comments to review

Comments are a good way to give feedback without changing someone else's work. Pin a note where the question is, and your collaborators can answer in the thread.

Who can do what

Access to a diagram is granted by role. Your role decides what you can do once you open it, from viewing along to editing the canvas to managing who else has access.

Role	Description
`Owner`	Full control of the diagram. Can edit the canvas and manage who has access, including each person's role.
`Editor`	Can edit the canvas.
`Viewer`	Can open the diagram and follow along live, but cannot change the canvas.

There are two ways to get a role on a diagram: the owner invites you to that diagram directly, or you are a member of the owner's workspace, which grants a role on every diagram in it. If both apply to you, you get the stronger of the two — a workspace viewer who was also invited to one diagram as an editor can edit that diagram. A grant can only ever add access, never take it away.

The owner is always the owner. Whoever created a diagram keeps full control of it no matter what else is granted, and some operations stay with the owner alone: deleting and restoring a diagram, starring it, moving it between folders, managing who has access and at what role, and publishing a public link. Folders work the same way — creating, renaming, and deleting folders is reserved for the workspace owner, even for members who can edit every diagram inside them.

Trash and access

When the owner moves a diagram to the Trash, workspace members lose access to it until it is restored — a workspace never shows you someone else's trash. A direct per-diagram invitation is different: it keeps working even while the diagram sits in the owner's Trash — you can still open it from a link or an already-open tab — so a deliberate share survives a tidy-up. It won't appear in your Shared list until the owner restores it, though.

To bring people into a diagram and choose their role, head to Sharing & public links; to share everything you make in one move, see Workspaces & members. Once you are working with a team, the Organizing your work guide covers keeping a growing set of diagrams tidy.