Impacts on the UI

Partitions: What's this?

articy:draft's multi-user approach centers around so-called partitions. To allow multiple users to work on the same project simultaneously and at the same time avoid conflicts, confusion or even data loss, users can only work on partitions that are claimed by them. A partition that was "claimed" by an user is exclusively reserved for this team member and can only edited by him/her.
This has a big impact on the user interface:

Read-only objects

As an effect of the partitions concept described above, most operations will be suppressed on partitions that you haven't claimed. This leads to failing drag & drop operations, text edits or node positioning. So, please make sure to claim a partition before you make changes to them.

Locking-state icons


- The object is a partition and available (read-only for you, but can be claimed).
- The object is a partition and claimed by someone else (read-only for you).
- The object is a partition and claimed by you (can be edited).

- Your local copy of the object is outdated, you don't have the latest changes somebody else has made. Update required!.

- The object is a child of a partition that is available (read-only for you, but can be claimed).
- The object is a child of a partition that is claimed by someone else (read-only for you).
- The object is a child of a partition that is claimed by you (can be edited).

Multi-user-related info in the main-menu


Those elements of the master toolbar are only displayed in multi-user mode:
  • 1 Connection / login info: Displays your current user (and rights level) as well as the server you're connected to.
  • 2 Connectivity status: The signal light indicates the connectivity status. (see below for a "disconnected" example)
  • 3 Recent activity: Informs you about the last claiming/publishing activity of other users.
If you loose connection to the server, the connectivity status 4 will change:

You can still save your changes (locally) and reconnect later to publish your changes to the server, so no data loss will occur. In order to reconnect, you have to close the project and go back to the server page of the welcome screen.