Lucid offers several tools to facilitate seamless and effective collaboration. You can locate others on the canvas using collaborator cursors, follow others, and invite others to me. You can also use additional tools like chat or collaborator colors.

When you share a document with collaborators and give them editing access, everyone can edit the document at the same time. Any changes made by a collaborator are visible to all other collaborators in real-time.

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Locate others with collaborator cursors

Collaborator cursors are available in Lucidchart and Lucidspark.

Collaborator cursors allow you to see exactly where on a document your collaborators are working in real-time. To locate a collaborator's cursor, click their icon in the top-right corner of the canvas. Each collaborator's icon will display their profile image or initials. Hover your cursor over a collaborator’s icon to see their full name.

collaborator-cursor-icon-with-collaborator-profile-image-or-initials.png

If you are collaborating with more than 20 people, collaborator cursors are only visible for those actively collaborating—idle cursors are hidden for performance purposes.

Hide collaborator cursors

If you don’t want to see collaborators’ cursors on a Lucidspark board during a large collaboration session, follow these steps:

Open the Collaboration Tools at the top-right of the board.
Toggle off “Show Cursors”.
- You can also toggle on “Hide inactive cursors” to only see cursors for collaborators who are actively editing, presenting, or facilitating. This option is only available during large collaboration sessions.

Learn more: If a Guest Collaborator is working in a Lucidspark board, they will be assigned a random name. For more information, check out our Guest Collaborators in Lucid article.

Invite others to follow you

This feature is available in Lucidchart and Lucidspark. It is not available in Lucidscale.

To invite others to follow you as you work on the canvas, follow these steps:

Access the collaboration features by clicking one of the following:
- the collaborator dropdown icon in Lucidspark.
- the collaboration icon in Lucidchart.
Click Invite others to me.

Using this feature invites all collaborators in the document to follow you as you navigate a document and see exactly what you are seeing in real-time.

This is indicated by a banner that says “You’re presenting.” To stop, click Stop in the banner.

Note: The Invite others to me functionality is only available to licensed users on Team and Enterprise accounts.

Follow a collaborator

This feature is available in Lucidchart and Lucidspark. It is not available in Lucidscale.

To follow a collaborator:

Access the collaboration features by clicking one of the following:

the collaborator dropdown icon in Lucidspark.
the collaboration icon in Lucidchart.

Click Follow a collaborator.
Select the collaborator you want to follow.

You will then follow them and see exactly what they are seeing in real-time.

A banner at the top of the page will remind you that you’re following that collaborator. To stop following the collaborator, click Stop in the banner.

If a collaborator invites you to them, you will receive a notification that your collaborator is ready to present to you. To accept and follow their cursor, click Follow. If you don’t want to follow their cursor, click Cancel.

Note: Following a collaborator is available for all account types.

Live emoji reactions for followers

When you are following a collaborator on a Lucidspark board, you will see a bar of emojis at the bottom center of your screen. To send an emoji, click on the emoji from that bar. Reactions sent are visible to the collaborator you are following, as well as any other users that are following that collaborator.

To disable live emoji reactions:

Click the collaborator dropdown icon.
Toggle off “Show Reactions".

Chat with collaborators

With cursor chat hotkey

To enable cursor chat in Lucidchart or Lucidspark, press “.” on your keyboard. You can also use the following hotkeys: “Ctrl + /” on PC or “Command + /” on Mac.

The character count limit is 120. Once you use one of the hotkeys mentioned above to enable cursor chat and then type in your message, it will persist for about 20 seconds and will be visible to all collaborators on the Lucid document. To clear the message sooner, you can click on an object or the canvas. To replace your chat with a new message while one is live, click “Enter” and type in your new message.

From Collaboration Tools menu in Lucidspark

Use this chat feature in Lucidspark to converse with collaborator(s) in a pop-up window when you’re all online and editing the board. Anyone currently working on the board has access to the conversation. To start a conversation, select the Chat icon in the Collaboration Tools menu in the upper-right corner.

Lucidspark does not store chat messages. Be sure to save important messages elsewhere before you close the board.

Note: Admins on Team and Enterprise accounts can disable the chat feature. If you don't see this feature in Lucidspark, reach out to your admin to verify that it is enabled.

Enable collaborator colors

Collaborator colors are available in Lucidspark.

To help identify collaborators and their work on a Lucidspark canvas, use collaborator colors. To enable collaborator colors, follow these steps:

Click the collaborator dropdown icon.
Toggle on “Collaborator colors”.

Each collaborator is assigned their own color, which styles their icon, cursor, freehand drawing, and sticky notes.

Set a preferred collaborator color

To set a preferred collaborator color for your Lucid account, follow these steps:

Open a Lucidspark board.
Click your Profile image or initials in the top-right corner.
Select My color.
Choose a color from the available options.

The color you select will be set as your preferred collaborator color. Anytime you join a new Lucidspark board, you will be assigned that collaborator color as long as it is available.

Note: A preferred collaborator color will not be applied if the color is already in use on a board. This functions on a first-come first-served basis. If your preferred collaborator color is already in use, you will be assigned another available collaborator color.

Add a color legend to your view

To easily identify the colors assigned to each collaborator, add a legend by toggling on “Color Legend” on the Collaborator Colors panel. This legend only appears for you—other collaborators will need to add it to their canvas separately. From the Color Legend, you can edit your own color and your collaborators’ colors by clicking the circle next to a name and selecting a new color from the options.

Remove a collaborator color from legend

When a collaborator closes the Lucidspark board, their name next to their collaborator color will be grayed out. To delete an inactive collaborator color, hover your cursor over the collaborator’s name and click the trash can icon that appears. If the deleted user reconnects to the board, they will be assigned a new collaborator color.

Show authors on sticky notes

Showing authors on sticky notes is available in Lucidchart and Lucidspark.

Lucid’s authors feature allows you to display the name of a sticky note’s creator in the bottom-right corner of each sticky note. If edits are made by different collaborators, you can see who last modified the sticky note by hovering over the author’s name.

Note: Show authors is not available on published documents.

On all sticky notes

To show the author of all sticky notes on a board, toggle on "Show authors" by following these steps:

In Lucidchart

Share the document.
Open the View menu from the Formatting bar at the top of the workspace.
Hover your cursor over "Show/Hide".
Click Show authors.

In Lucidspark

Share the board.
Click the collaborator dropdown icon.
Toggle on “Show authors”.

show-authors-in-collaboration-menu-in-lucidspark-and-team-spaces.png

On a specific sticky note

To show the author of a single sticky note without enabling it for the entire document, follow these steps:

Right-click a sticky note.
Click Show Author.

Follow the same steps to hide author names on specific sticky notes.

Add comments and assign tasks

In addition to the real-time collaboration features covered above, Lucid also offers commenting and assigning tasks. Check out the Add comments and assign tasks to collaborators article for details.

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