Collaboration, Comments, Sharing, and Governance

This guide teaches how a deck becomes a shared, governed source of truth: several people building it at once, discussing slides in place, and an administrator controlling exactly who can do what. After it you will be able to co-build a deck live, comment and assign a fix, restore an earlier version, and share with the right level of access, then remove it when the work is done. It also answers the questions a security, compliance, or procurement reviewer asks: how access is enforced, how fast revocation takes effect, and what identity, audit, and export controls ride along.

Real-Time Co-Editing

After this section you will build the same deck as your teammates without stepping on each other. Everyone opens one live copy of the deck. Changes stream between collaborators as compact updates, apply in order, and appear for everyone within moments, so the deck stays consistent no matter how many people are building it. There is no file to email around, no version to reconcile, and no per-collaborator seat charge to co-edit. This is what ends the trail of attachments named for the final version that was not final: there is one deck, and it is always the current one.

  • Automatic merge: two people editing different slides never collide, and the deck you see is the deck everyone sees.
  • Presence: you can see who else is in the deck.
  • Cross-device: the same live deck is available wherever you sign in, on a laptop, a Chromebook, or a tablet, and edits sync between devices.
  • Offline continuity: the editor keeps a local copy of your work, so if the connection drops it reloads what you had and replays your edits when it reconnects.
Two people, Maya editing slide 3 and Ravi editing slide 7, both connected to one shared deck. Each person's edits stream as ordered updates into the deck and merge, and a presence indicator on the deck shows both collaborators, producing the same deck for everyone with no overwrites.
Several people build one live deck at once. Each change streams as an ordered update and merges automatically, so two people working different slides never overwrite each other and everyone sees the same deck.

Comments and Assigning a Fix

After this section you will run a clean review cycle without an emailed file loop. Anchor a comment to a slide or an element and a thread opens. Add a comment to raise a question or flag a change, reply to continue the discussion, and resolve the thread when it is settled, so the conversation stays attached to the exact slide it is about. When a comment needs a specific person to act, assign it to an organization member from the assignee picker, so a review turns into clear, owned tasks rather than a vague thread. For an agency or a brand team, this is the client-and-stakeholder review loop done in one place, with a link, instead of a chain of file attachments and permission requests.

The comment lifecycle in three steps. Step one, Comment: a comment bubble is anchored to a slide. Step two, Assign: the comment becomes an assignee chip that assigns it to a teammate named Dana. Step three, Resolve: the thread is marked with a green check and clears from the slide.
A comment anchors to the slide it is about, gets assigned to the person who should act, and clears when resolved. The whole review stays on the deck, with a link, instead of a chain of emailed files.

Version History

After this section a revision round will never destroy an approved deck. A deck keeps a version history you can review and restore, so a round of edits never overwrites the version a client or an executive signed off on. If a change went the wrong way, you roll back to an earlier point. Together with continuous autosave, this means your work is both saved as you go and recoverable to a known-good state.

Sharing and Access Levels

After this section you will give exactly the right people exactly the right access. A deck is shared through the same access model as the rest of your workspace:

  • Access levels: Viewer can read the deck and is the default; Commenter can read and comment; Suggester can read, comment, and suggest edits; Editor can edit the deck.
  • Who you share with: a person, picked by name from your organization's members; a group, entered by its ID; or everyone in your organization. Through the REST API a deck can also be shared with a role, a department, or a project.
  • Who can share: the deck's creator, or an owner or admin of your organization. You cannot grant a level above your own access, and your organization's sharing policy can cap the highest level a deck may be shared at.
  • Shares you remove: People with access lists every current share with its level, and Remove ends a share at once. Shares do not expire on their own, so remove one when it is no longer needed.

For the full model, including how sharing spans organizations, see the platform's Roles and Permissions.

The Share dialog open over a Backbuild Slides deck, outlined as callout 1. Under Add people, a Share with selector is set to A person, a search box finds people by name or email, and the chosen person appears below it. An Access level selector is set to Viewer, Can read the document, and a Grant access button confirms the share. A People with access list shows the deck owner by name at Editor, with a Remove control. A note reads that read-only Viewer is the default and that only the document owner or an organization admin can change who has access, which the server enforces.
File, Share opens the Share dialog: pick who receives the deck, choose an access level, and grant it. People with access lists every current share, each with Remove. Viewer is the default, and the server enforces every change.

How Access Is Enforced

After this section a security reviewer will trust that access holds. Access is deny-by-default and checked on the server, on every live connection, not just when a deck opens. A person reaches a deck only when their membership, an explicit grant, and organization policy all allow it; if any one of those does not permit access, the deck does not open. A viewer without write access cannot change the deck, and there is no client-side path around the checks, because they live on the server rather than in the browser.

Revocation reaches an open session. The server re-checks access on every live connection every 60 seconds, so when you remove or downgrade someone's access, the change reaches their running editor or live presenter session within about a minute: a revoked deck closes the session rather than leaving it open until the next reload. For a reviewer asking whether revoking a departed employee actually stops them mid session, the answer is yes, on the live connection.

A permission funnel for opening a deck. Three gates in series must all pass: membership in the workspace, then an explicit grant, then organization policy. If all pass, the deck opens; if any gate fails, access is denied. A note says the checks re-run on every live connection, so revoking access closes a live session within a minute.
Opening a deck is deny by default. Membership, an explicit grant, and organization policy must all pass, and the checks re-run on every live connection, so revoking someone closes their open session within about a minute rather than at the next refresh.

Identity, Audit, and Administration

After this section an administrator will know the enterprise controls are in place, on every plan. Governance is not an add-on:

  • Single sign-on: the workspace supports SSO for sign-in, so access follows your identity system. Provisioning from your directory (SCIM) is coming soon; until then, members are invited and removed in the organization, and a removed member loses access.
  • Role-based access control: permissions are governed by roles, scoped to the organization, so people hold only the access their role grants.
  • Audit logging: activity is recorded, giving an organization an accountable trail of who did what on a deck, which is what a board-facing or regulated deck needs.
  • No lock-in: a deck exports cleanly to PowerPoint, OpenDocument, PDF, and image formats at any time, so the data is portable on demand (see Importing and Exporting).
  • Your content is yours: customer content is not used to train AI models. When AI assists, it runs on your own provider keys or on usage credits under your control (see AI Assistance, the API, and Agents).

For the full picture of the platform's governance and compliance posture, see Security and Compliance.

Can someone without an account open a deck I share? No. Everyone who opens a deck signs in with a Backbuild account, which is what lets the deck attribute their comments and changes to them. There is no public link that opens a deck without signing in.

Can I remove a share after the deal closes or if I shared with the wrong person? Yes. Remove the share from People with access; it ends at once, and an open session loses access at its next check, within about a minute. Shares do not expire on their own, so remove one when it is no longer needed.

Does revoking access actually end a live or presenter session? Yes. The live connection re-checks access every 60 seconds and closes once the access is gone, so a running editor or presenter session ends within about a minute rather than when the person reloads.

Can reviewers comment and assign a fix to a specific person? Yes. A comment anchors to a slide or element, and you can assign it to an organization member, so a review becomes owned tasks rather than a loose thread.

Do you support SSO, SCIM provisioning, RBAC, and audit logging? Single sign-on, role-based access, and audit logging, yes, on every plan, not sold as an enterprise upgrade: sign-in follows your identity system, permissions are governed by organization-scoped roles, and activity is recorded for an accountable audit trail. SCIM provisioning from your directory is coming soon; until then, members are invited and removed in the organization.

Is our content used to train AI models? No. Customer content is not used to train models, and AI assistance runs on your own provider keys or usage credits under your control.

Does it work across devices and through a brief disconnect? Yes. The deck is available across your devices and syncs between them, and offline continuity keeps a local copy so a dropped connection reloads your work and replays your edits on reconnect.

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