27 September: Real-time collaboration and reviews

We’ve made collaboration better than ever with real-time editing and reviews for change requests

✨ New

With this release, we’ve got a couple of updates that aim to help you improve collaboration among your team.

First, you may have noticed other people’s avatars popping up in the top corner of the your spaces. That’s because we now have real-time collaboration in GitBook!

If someone else is view the same page as you, you’ll see their avatar in the corner, and a colored cursor will appear on the page where they’re working. You’ll be able to see any changes they make in real-time, making collaboration easier than ever.

Real-time collaboration is only available in unpublished spaces. It doesn’t work in spaces that are set to public, or in spaces where Git Sync is enabled.

If other people are working in the same space as you, you’ll see their avatars in the header bar. And if they’re on the same page, you’ll see their cursors showing precisely where they’re working

We’ve also added a new way to get reviews before you merge change requests. Just like code reviews, content reviews are a really useful part of the content development cycle. So the new flow lets you choose Request a review from the button in the header bar, then tag specific people in your request to notify them.

You can now request a review in your change requests. When you’re done reviewing someone’s work you can approve it or request changes.

➕ Improved

• We’ve added a progress dialogue for Git Sync progress, to make it clearer that the sync is progressing.

• Improved the look and feel of the formatting menu with a dark mode theme, as well as new icons and interactions.

• If you’re using Git Sync with GitLab, authentication errors will now give you more information.

• We’ve added a Configure button in each space’s header bar to make it easier to set up Git Sync.

🔧 Fixed

• Fixed an issue that was causing occasional timeouts during Git Sync.

• Fixed a bug in the Import content modal when you tried to import content in a new space.

• Fixed a bug that made the emoji picker flash after typing a comma, and unified it’s UX with the @ mention picker.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when you opened page options and merged a change request.

• Fixed a crash when opening the search box when the URL contains an organization ID for an org that the current user isn’t a member of.

• Fixed a bug that could slow things down when you tried to duplicate a space.

• Fixed an issue that was causing anchor links in the TOC being exported as absolute links.

• Fixed a bug that allowed people to change their email when they’re part of an SSO-enforced organization.

• Fixed an issue where GitBook sometimes didn’t create a user profile when signing up with GitHub or Google.

• Fixed an issue that caused Brave’s default adblocker to block the emoji, @ mention and # tag palette menus.

We’re constantly working on improving the way you and your team work in GitBook, and value your input on features, bugs, and more. Make sure you head to our official GitBook Community to join the discussion.