Sharing and permissions
Boards are shared by membership, single items can go to a single person, and connections let you find and talk to people outside your workspaces.
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On this page
There are three ways to share, and they answer different questions.
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Work on a board together | Board sharing, with a role for each person |
| Show one person one note, whiteboard or checklist | Per-item sharing |
| Reach someone who is in none of your workspaces | A connection |
Share a board#
Who can see a board is decided by who is on it. Creating a board puts one person on it, the creator. Until you share it, nobody else in the workspace can open it, even in a team or family workspace.
The share icon in a board's header opens the Share board dialog, which has two tabs: Members and Share links.
Board roles
- Owner
everything, including who is on the board, its settings, archiving and deleting it.
- Editor
adds, edits, moves, completes and assigns cards, and changes columns.
- Viewer
opens the board, reads its cards and comments on them. No edits.
Everything else follows from the board. A card is visible if its board is, and a comment is visible if its card is.
Only a board's owners can change who is on it. Being an editor lets you do the work, not hand the board to someone else.
Invite links#
Share links makes a link that puts whoever opens it on the board.
- Pick the role the link grants, editor or viewer.
- Pick when it expires: 7 days, 30 days or never.
- Optionally cap how many people can use it.
- Create it. The link is copied for you.
The person opening it has to sign in first, so a link never gives access to someone anonymous. An owner can revoke a link from the same tab, and it stops working at once.
Share one thing with one person#
Sometimes one person needs to see one thing without it moving into a shared space. Notes, whiteboards, checklists and imported designs can each be shared on their own, as viewer or editor. Share note is in a note's menu.
The person picker suggests people you already know: members of your workspaces and your connections, found by name. Anyone else on Margin can be reached by typing their exact email. The person you share with gets a notification that opens the item, and finds it afterwards under Shared with me on the notes, checklists or whiteboards list, on the web and in the phone app.
A share never hands over ownership. As an editor you can change the content. You cannot share it on, move it into your folders, delete it, or change its privacy settings. Those stay with the owner.
A view-only link for someone not on The Margin#
A shopping list, a recipe or a note can go to someone who will never sign up: the babysitter, a grandparent. Open the list's Link, the recipe's Share a view-only link, or a note's share dialog, and press Make a view-only link. The link is copied for you. On the phone it opens the share sheet, so you can text it straight away.
Whoever opens the link sees the list's items and what is checked off, the recipe's ingredients and steps, or the note's words. Never a person's name, a picture or an attachment, so a child's details cannot leave through it. The page is not shown to search engines. It is read-only and updates as the list changes.
Stop the link closes it at once: anyone holding it then sees "This link is not available". A note that is locked with a PIN or sealed in the vault cannot be shared this way, and locking a note later closes its link too. Only the person who wrote a note, or a workspace owner or admin, can share it by link. Links work on every plan, Free included.
An assistant connected over MCP can do the same with create_public_link,
get_public_link and revoke_public_link.
Connections#
A connection is two people who have agreed to know each other on Margin, whatever workspaces they are in. Send a request by email from Settings→Connections, and it becomes a connection when the other person accepts.
What a connection gives you
- Finding by name
they show up by name when you share, instead of you having to know their email.
- Chat
you can start a direct thread with them. See Chat.
- Money owed
a debt can name them, and they are asked to confirm it. See Expenses and money.
Neither of you joins the other's workspace. Removing a connection is on the same page.
Who can manage sharing#
| What | Who decides who else sees it |
|---|---|
| A board | The board's owners |
| A note, whiteboard, checklist or design | Whoever made it, and the workspace's owners and admins |
Being given editor access to something never lets you pass it on.
What sharing does not do#
It does not share your assistant. Shared content is readable by the people you shared it with, and the assistant works per person: yours answers from what you can see, and theirs from what they can see.
It does not open the Vault either. A Vault belongs to one person in one workspace, and someone else unlocking their own Vault never shows them yours.
Share your workspace with one other person#
Every plan, Free included, lets you invite one other person into your own workspace. From Settings, People, choose Invite and enter their email. Once they accept, you both see the workspace's notes, checklists, whiteboards, expenses and habits, and you can chat. Boards still go one at a time: open a board's Share dialog and add them from the list of people in the workspace.
A personal workspace holds two people in all, you and them, and an invitation nobody has answered yet holds the second place. The person you invite keeps their own free workspace too, with its own invite.
Inviting a third person is refused with what each plan adds. A household goes in a family workspace on Family (up to 6 people, with chores, allowances, points, the meal plan, the shopping list and the wall display). People you work with go in a team workspace on Team. On Family you can also bring people already in your household into your other workspaces without using the second place.
Availability#
| Free | Pro | Family | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| People in your own workspace (you included) | 2 | 2 | 2, plus your household | one per seat |
| Adding people in the workspace to a board | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Sharing a board with people outside it, and share links | no | no | yes | yes |
| Sharing single items with people outside the workspace | no | no | yes | yes |
| Live cursors and presence | no | no | yes | yes |
| Writing in one note together | no | no | yes | yes |
| Guests (outside people per workspace) | none | none | 10 | 50 |
| Connections | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Chat | yes | yes | yes | yes |
Free and Pro hold you and one other person. Family is for one household: you can invite your household into your workspaces and share a single board or note with up to 10 people outside it. Bringing a group of people you work with into a workspace is Team's, and on Team the people you share with from outside are guests, who never take a seat. On Free and Pro the share dialogs offer the people already in the workspace and show what a plan adds for anyone else, rather than an invite that would be refused. See Plans and limits.