Real-Time Collaboration and Presence

Edit together, live

StretchSheets is built for teams. Multiple people in your organization can open the same workbook and edit it at the same time. A real-time service keeps everyone's changes in sync and shows presence — who else is in the workbook and where they're working.

What real-time collaboration gives you

• Presence — see when teammates are viewing or editing the same workbook.
• Live cursors — presence overlays show collaborators' positions in the grid, so you can tell who's working where and avoid stepping on each other.
• Automatic syncing — edits flow between collaborators through the real-time service; you don't have to refresh to see someone else's changes.
• Shared charts and formatting — because content is saved to the workbook, charts, styles, and formulas are visible to everyone with access.

How it works

1. Open a workbook in the Editor.
2. StretchSheets securely establishes a real-time session for that specific workbook (it mints a scoped, single-workbook access token behind the scenes).
3. As teammates open the same workbook, presence appears and their cursors show on the grid.
4. Edits are exchanged live and persisted, and each save also captures a version snapshot (see Version History and Snapshots).

Presence is enabled for workbooks by default, and the collaboration state for a workbook reports whether presence is active and how many version snapshots it has.

Security and scoping

Collaboration is governed the same way as the rest of StretchSheets:

• The real-time session is scoped to a single workbook — a session token only authorizes the exact workbook it was issued for, and only within your organization.
• Only members of your organization who can open the workbook can join its session.
• Because sessions are org-scoped, collaborators from other organizations can never join, and a token for one workbook can't be used on another.

A realistic example

Your finance team is finalizing next quarter's budget together. Three people open the same Q3 Budget workbook. As one person updates the Media line, the others see the change appear without refreshing, and their presence cursors show who's editing which section — so the person working on Payroll knows not to touch Media. When they save, a snapshot is captured, giving the team a restore point for that agreed-upon version. The budget is completed in one live session instead of a chain of emailed copies.

Tips

• Agree on who owns which section during a live session and watch the presence cursors to stay out of each other's way.
• Save at natural checkpoints so the whole team shares a common, snapshotted version to return to.
• Collaboration and version history work together: presence keeps everyone in sync now, snapshots preserve the states you agreed on.

Troubleshooting

• I don't see my teammate's cursor. Confirm you're both in the exact same workbook and the same organization, and that presence is enabled for that workbook. Reopen the workbook to re-establish the session.
• "Unable to mint realtime room token" / collaboration won't start. This usually means the session couldn't be authorized — confirm you have access to the Sheets app and to that workbook, then reopen it. If it persists, contact StretchSupport.
• My changes aren't syncing. Check your connection and reopen the workbook; the real-time session re-establishes on load. Your saved content is preserved regardless.

FAQ

How many people can edit at once?
Any members of your organization with access to the workbook can be present and edit together.

Can someone outside my organization join?
No. Sessions are strictly organization-scoped and tied to a single workbook.

Do live edits get saved?
Yes — collaborative edits are persisted to the workbook, and saves capture version snapshots.