Collaborative editing in draw.io for Confluence Data Center and Cloud

Breaking down technical barriers

Ever since we’ve had collaborative editing in Confluence Cloud, Data Center customers have approached us asking, “When are you going to have collaborative editing in DC?”

Two years ago, our answer would have been, “This is a major challenge, if not impossible!” – This is simply not easy to do from a technical point of view, given the nature of DC and how everything exists behind the user’s firewall.

However, we’re excited to announce that our engineers have pushed the technical boundaries as far as possible, and have come up with a solution that allows users to benefit from collaborative editing in DC (from version 13.0 onwards).

In this blogpost, we’ll take a look at the difference between collaborative editing in DC and Cloud, along with draw.io features like autosave and revision history, which ensure all changes are preserved, but can be reverted if need be.

Collaborative editing in DC just got a whole lot easier

At draw.io, we actively support DC, and we constantly strive to bring as many features available in Confluence Cloud to DC where this is technically possible.

draw.io for Data Center is a must for any team looking to use a diagramming app in their Confluence instance, while keeping all their data behind the firewall.

While this adds an extra layer of security, it means that some features that are available in Confluence Cloud, are not available for DC. Namely:

• Smart Templates: which uses AI to automatically generate custom templates;
• Live collaboration: where users can collaborate in real time, and see individual mouse cursors of other collaborators on a diagram.

How it works

In a similar way to Confluence Cloud, you and your colleagues can edit a diagram and any changes made will show up in the editor for all users. This is achieved by the autosave feature, which synchronizes the changes made by multiple users after a delay period of a few seconds, while draw.io regularly polls the Confluence DC instance to check for these changes.

While it isn’t in real time, when a user makes changes to the diagram, any changes made will appear after a few seconds, and the diagram will be automatically saved to the Confluence page attachment.

These changes will then be merged, and loaded for other users automatically. Your administrator can determine the synchronization speed with which the changes happen and will appear in the editor for users. For more detailed information, see, Collaborative editing in draw.io in Confluence DC.

Changes a user makes to a diagram in DC will appear for other users collaborating on the same diagram after a few seconds

Live, real-time collaboration in Confluence Cloud

Confluence Cloud is the place to be to guarantee you are always using the most recent version of draw.io, along with the latest feature releases and security fixes.

draw.io for Cloud also offers the highest diagramming security: all your diagrams are securely preserved as page attachments in your Confluence instance, stored on Atlassian servers.

For further peace of mind, you can enable the lockdown feature, to prevent all traffic apart from that between your browser and your Atlassian server instance.

How it works

draw.io for Confluence Cloud enables live, real-time collaborative editing, using draw.io’s autosave feature. Users can see each other’s cursors as they are editing the document. Changes are autosaved and visible to users in real time.

What other draw.io features promote collaborative diagramming?

Autosave

As mentioned, in both draw.io for Confluence Cloud and Data Center, autosave is a built-in feature in your draw.io diagram or whiteboard editor. This means your diagram data is always up-to-date and saved automatically, reducing the risk of you losing precious diagramming data (and time).

draw.io autosave feature in Confluence Cloud

Revision history

Track and revert changes, either on a diagram level by using draw.io’s built-in revision history, or on a Confluence page level:

Start collaborating today

If you’re looking to start using draw.io for Confluence Data Center, or looking to move from DC to Cloud, we hope this information is useful in helping you decide which is best for you and your teams, to enable you to collaborate on your diagrams and ensure you are working as dynamically and effectively as can be.

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.