Real-Time Template Collaboration

ALIVE's template editor supports real-time collaboration — invite clients or team members to edit a template together, with live cursors, element locking, and instant syncing.

How It Works

When you invite someone to collaborate on a template, they get access to the same editor canvas. Every change either person makes shows up instantly for the other. You'll see their cursor moving around the canvas and which elements they're working on.

This is built on real-time sync, so there's no saving and refreshing — everything happens live.

Inviting Collaborators

1. Open a template in the Template Editor on the web dashboard
2. Click the Collab tab in the sidebar
3. Click Invite Collaborator
4. Choose how to share:

• Share via Link — Generate a collaboration link you can send however you like
• Send via Email — Enter the collaborator's email and ALIVE sends the invite automatically

Access Levels

When creating an invite, you choose what the collaborator can do:

• View Only — They can see the template but can't make any changes
• Text Only — They can edit text content, fonts, colors, and sizes, but the layout and images stay locked
• Full Edit — Full access to edit images, layout, background, and add or remove elements

Link Expiration

Every collaboration link has an expiration date. When creating the invite, you can set it to expire in:

• 24 hours
• 3 days
• 7 days
• 14 days
• 30 days

You can also revoke a link at any time from the Collab tab if you need to cut off access early.

Collaboration Limits

Each collaboration link has built-in limits to prevent abuse:

• Save limit — Collaborators can only save a certain number of times before the link needs to be refreshed
• Upload quota — There's a cap on total file upload size per collaboration link

These limits reset if you generate a new collaboration link. If a collaborator hits a limit, they'll see a notification explaining what happened.

Live Cursor Tracking

When a collaborator is active on the canvas, you'll see:

• Their cursor — A colored cursor with their name label moving in real time
• Their selection — A colored highlight around any element they have selected
• Element locking — When someone selects an element, it's temporarily locked so you don't both edit the same thing at once

Managing Invitations

From the Collab tab, you can see all your active invitations:

• Status badges — Active, Expired, Revoked, or Limit Reached
• Copy link — Grab the collaboration URL to share again
• Revoke — Immediately disable an active invite
• Delete — Remove an invitation from the list entirely

Who Can Collaborate?

Collaborators don't need an ALIVE account. Anyone with the link can join the session based on the access level you set. This makes it easy to loop in clients who just need to approve or tweak a design.

Tips

• Start with Text Only access for clients — let them personalize text without risking the layout
• Use Full Edit for team members you trust with the full design
• Keep links short-lived — Set expiration to match your timeline so old links don't float around
• Check the Online Now section in the Collab tab to see who's currently editing

What's Next?

• Using the Template Editor
• Importing and Exporting Templates
• Adding Text Overlays

Updated on: 05/07/2026