Working on the same file at the same time

It is worth being exact about this rather than promising more than the portal does.

What arrives without a reload

Messages and notifications reach you while you are working. A reply appears in the thread and the sidebar badge counts up without you refreshing anything.

What needs a reload

Document lists, folder contents and statuses are loaded when you open the screen. If a colleague uploads or approves something while you are looking at the list, you see it after you reload or move between screens — not the instant it happens.

That is usually fine. It matters in one case.

Two people, one PDF

The document editor does not merge simultaneous edits. If two people open the same PDF and both save, the second save wins and the first person’s changes are gone, with no warning and no conflict to resolve.

So, in practice:

• Agree who is editing a document before either of you opens it. A message takes five seconds.
• Assign the document to one person. An assignment is a visible claim on it.
• For anything long, download, work offline, and upload the result rather than holding the editor open for an hour.

Signature requests are the exception

A signature request tracks each signer separately, so several people signing the same document is normal and safe. Nobody overwrites anybody. See Digital signatures.

Knowing who did what

Where two people have worked on the same document, the activity history is the record of what happened in which order. See Activity history.