Release Note

Shared drafts: a new collaborative editing experience in Guru

Related products: Card Creation
Shared drafts: a new collaborative editing experience in Guru

Hi Guru Community!

Many of you have asked for this feature, so I’m excited to let you know that we began releasing collaborative editing in Guru this morning. Thanks to the feedback shared in posts like Indicate when two people are editing a Card, Real-time collaboration on Guru Cards, and Implement shared drafts, we created a new Card editing experience that will let authors collaborate on content, right within Guru.

We understand that SMEs and authors often need to get feedback, iterate, and refine what they've written before publishing it. With this new functionality, you can say goodbye to workarounds and keep the process of content collaboration inside of Guru. Shared drafts are available for both newly created and pre-existing Cards, so the whole process of knowledge management can take place right within Guru. The experience should feel similar to other apps you’ve used:

Authors working together on a draft.

Shared drafts open up a whole new world of publishing workflows! For example, an author can write a draft of a Card, share that draft with someone who can approve and verify it, and then let that approver publish the Card. 

When it comes to updating existing Cards, we’re making it easier for authors to let readers know what’s changed. Authors can choose to add some context before publishing, so readers that follow Cards can get a TL;DR update before opening the Card. Anyone with access to the Card can also review this note in Card Details.

Here’s what’s changing with shared drafts:

  • Users will no longer have their own individual drafts of existing cards. 
    • There will be NO automatic update for existing drafts.
    • Individual drafts of existing cards will be available until November 30, 2023.
    • Individual draft owners can delete, copy, and publish these drafts as necessary before then.
    • These changes will be communicated in-app leading up to the deletion of these drafts after November 30, 2023.
  • You will be able to share drafts of new Cards that you made before this release began if you’d like. Drafts of new Cards that you created before this release will not be removed in November.
  • Drafts will auto-save (just like the editing experience in apps like Google Docs). 
    • The “Save a draft" button no longer appears.
  • The editor will be in full-screen (vs. in an overlay).
  • A new Publish modal will make it clearer whether an author wants to verify the Card and notify followers of the changes. 
    • This modal includes an open text box so publishers can notify followers with a summary of changes to the Card.
  • In the Drafts area of Tasks, you will see collaborators listed next to each Draft, if there are any.
  • Revision history on Cards will show publish change notes and collaborators on that draft.
  • We're consolidating the actions related to publishing a card to the top right of the Card. 
  • We’ve added new filters to the Drafts area of Card Manager. 

How are you planning to use shared drafts? Let us know how this feature will help your team by leaving a comment on this post!

Such exciting news, @Laura Desmond-Black! Couldn’t have come at a better time too (I have a draft pending for a release but I am heading out on vacation soon! 😅 This will let me share it so someone else can publish it in event of a delay so I can focus on enjoying my time off 🏝️️)

The Guru team is on fire! 🔥 Congrats on another super impactful release! 🚀

p.s. love that you tagged the original, related community posts in your announcement - shows how important it is to clearly articulate what we’re looking for as it helps us help you help us! 💚

 

Aww, that’s wonderful to hear, thank you @Tyler!! We’re happy to know this will help you enjoy your time off. 

And yes, feedback shared through this Community and other channels is hugely influential in helping us decide where to focus our energy; the more info about how and why something isn’t working the more we can determine how changes to the product can best help 😀

This is FANTASTIC news! Great timing as well - we were meeting with alternatives to Guru as the lack of this functionality was becoming a bigger and bigger issue for us.  This was a huge retention win, way to go Guru Product team!

@Renee Lawlor, thank you for letting us know! We’re delighted to hear that this will make it easier for your team to stick with Guru 😄 🎉. Happy collaborating!

I love this feature! We’ve already used it quite a bit!

 

One thing I’ve noticed is a lag in the card editor- even when I am the only person editing a card. It seems the cursor either doesn’t respond or will jump to different places within the card as I type. Is this something anyone else has experienced? If not, I can contact support with supporting documentation. 

 

Thanks!

Hi @Reba Mitchell, we’re so glad to hear you’re finding this valuable! 

I’m sorry to hear about the slowness, this is the first time I’ve heard that since the release began. I think reaching out to Support is a good idea, that’ll give us a chance to investigate. 

We’ve been waiting for this for such a long time, this will make our lives of sharing drafts with relevant stakeholders before releases so much easier! 🎉

@Laura Desmond-Black any chance you are planning to incorporate the possibility for the collaborators to leave comments as on Google Docs? In our team, for example, there is usually one Author assigned to create a Card for a specific product release with process for Customer Care but before publishing the card, we share the draft with the Product and CC stakeholders to review and approve the process. 

It would be VERY helpful if the collaborators with whom we share the draft, could leave a comment to a certain part of the draft because we don’t want them to be rewriting things themselves to maintain our Style and glossary standards.

Hi @Lucia Delicova, making the process of developing Guru content easier was exactly what we aiming for, I’m glad to hear that’s your team’s experience with the update!

Regarding inline comments, I just left a comment on the main feedback post with some details about our progress. TL;DR - we’re full steam ahead and it’ll be similar to the experience you have with other content collaboration tools 🎉

I was hoping that it will be part of the inline commenting project, thanks for the update @Laura Desmond-Black! I already look forward to that experience, I had the opportunity to speak to Kate when you guys were in the planning stage and it will also be a huge improvement when our users can highlight exact part of the card for feedback 🙂 Fingers crossed your team will be able to get to that finish line soon 🤩

Hi @Laura Desmond-Black!

Most of my colleagues using this feature have reported a bug. It seems that when people are editing one draft at the same time, the entire text gets duplicated multiple times. This happens with both tabs and just text.

Is this a know issue and is there any planned fix?
Thanks!

Hi @Luca Addabbo, 

I’m sorry to hear about the issue with duplicated content. We’ve had a few instances of this and we’re resolving them as they are identified (there have been a few different causes). We have a fix in progress for the most recent version of the issue that we’ve been able to identify. The best way for us to know if the in-progress solution will help, or if something else is causing the duplicated content your team is experiencing is to contact our Support team at support@getguru.com.

Hi @Luca Addabbo,

We released a fix last Thursday that we are optimistic will prevent the duplication of content going forward. If your team is still seeing this with drafts you’ve created since then please contact Support so we can investigate!

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