Walkthrough
Collaborating With Others
In this guide, you'll learn how to use Simul to collaborate with others on your Microsoft Word documents
Now that you’re familiar with the core of how Simul works, it’s time to invite others to your document and start collaborating with them.
Step 1. Invite other members
To invite other people to collaborate on a document with you, go into the document and select the Members tab from the top right hand side.
Next, select 'Invite New Member' and enter their email address. Finally, select the level of permission you want to give the member.
When inviting someone to work on a document with you, there are 3 different levels of permission you could give them. The best way to think about it is as follows:
- Owner - Giving someone Owner permissions will allow them to edit the document (I.e. Open it in Word, make changes, create new versions, etc) as well as manage the admin rights on the document (I.e. they can add or remove team members, rename the document, etc).
- Contributor - Giving someone Contributor permissions will allow them to edit the document (I.e. Open it in Word, make changes, create new versions, etc) but not perform admin duties on the document (I.e. they cannot add or remove team members, rename the document, etc).
- Viewer - Giving someone Viewer permissions will mean they can only view Published Versions of the document. We’ll discuss Published Versions later in this guide, but essentially Viewer will be able to follow along and see the key milestones of the document but won’t be able to edit it at all.
Once you have entered a person’s email address and selected the appropriate level of permission, simply click the ‘Invite User’ button to add them as a member of your document.
When you invite someone to be a member of a document, the experience they have will depend on whether they are already an existing Simul user or not.
With an existing account
Existing Simul users will immediately have the document available to them in the ‘Documents’ section of Simul, and will be sent an email alerting them of the fact you have invited them to collaborate on a document with you.
Without an existing account
If you invite someone who does not yet have a Simul account, they will receive an email letting them know you have invited them to a document and asking them to create an account.
When they click on the link, they will be directed to the Signup page where they can create an account
Once they’ve created an account, they’ll be taken to the ‘Documents’ screen where the document shared with them will be available.
Step 2. Members make changes
Once a Member has been added to a document, they can make changes to it in the same way you can.
1. Click ‘Open In Word’
Members can simply click the ‘Open In Word’ button and the selected version will open in Word on their computer.
2. Members make changes
Members can make changes to the Word document like they normally would, adding or removing text, changing formatting, etc.
3. Members save their changes and a new version is created
Once a member is finished making changes, they simply close and save the document (not ‘Save As’) and a new version is automatically created in Simul
Step 3. You’ll get notified they’ve made changes
You’ll then receive an email letting you know that the other member has made changes and created a new version.
When you go into the document in Simul, you’ll see their new version there in the Versions sidebar and you’ll see exactly what they changed in the Comparison View, regardless of whether they had Tracked Changes turned on or not.
You can then continue working like this with one or more other people. You simply add them as a member and they open it in Word, make changes and it’s saved as a new version.
Read the next guide
Working Simultaneously
Now that you understand how to collaborate with others, let's look at how multiple people can work simultaneously on documents using Simul
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