Share references

A share gives named people read access to one or more references in your library, together with their files and notes. The people you invite read them in Pangur, under Shared research, exactly as they stand in your library at the moment they open them. Sharing is separate from project membership: the people you share with can read only the references in the share, cannot change anything, and do not join your project. To work on a whole project with others, see Work in an organisation instead.

What you needCopy Anchor Link

Sharing works only for a project whose library Pangur hosts. If your project's library is hosted elsewhere, the Share action is not shown and Pangur tells you why if you try. You also need the right role: in your own projects you can always share, while in an organisation's project you need to be an editor or an owner. Finally, sharing is done in the web client or the Mac app. Assistants and the command line cannot create or change shares.

Sharing one referenceCopy Anchor Link

1. Open the reference in your library.
2. In the item's header, choose Share this item, then Share this item…. Pangur creates a share named after the reference and confirms it. If you have shared the same reference before, Pangur opens that share again rather than making a second one.
3. Type a colleague's email address in the field (its placeholder shows the form, such as [email protected]) and choose Invite.
4. Repeat for each person. View shares opens your list of shares.

Note that you share the reference itself. Its stored files and notes come with it, and there is no way to share a file or a note on its own.

Sharing several referencesCopy Anchor Link

1. Select the references in the library list.
2. Open More actions in the selection bar and choose Share….
3. Invite people by email in the field that appears.

A share of several references is named after the first one plus the number of others, for example "The Keith letters and 4 more".

What happens when you invite someoneCopy Anchor Link

Pangur sends the invited person an email that links to the share. If they already have a Pangur account with that address and the address is proven, they join the share at once, and it appears in their Shared research. If they have no account yet, or have never signed in with that address, the invitation waits, and turns into access the first time they sign in to Pangur with that email address verified. An invitation that has not been taken up after 14 days stops working; inviting the same address again renews it.

Pangur treats an address as proven only when the person's sign-in shows they control it. A sign-in through Microsoft or GitHub alone does not count, so someone who signs in only that way must open the link in the invitation email, which proves the inbox.

Only the person who created a share can invite people to it. The others who can read it cannot.

Finding what is shared with youCopy Anchor Link

Open Shared research (at /shared). It lists every share you created, marked as shared by you, and every share others have made to you. Choose Open to read one. If nothing has been shared in either direction, the page says so.

Inside a share, each reference shows its details under About this reference, its Notes, and its stored files, which you can read in the page or download. A file that is only a link opens at its address rather than in the page. A reference with a linked facsimile shows one page for each image of the facsimile. References that have a place in the owner's catalogue are arranged under their repository and collection, and the rest are listed under "Shared items".

The owner of a share can invite more people from the share's own page as well as from the library. The same page lists the people who can read the share and the invitations not yet taken up.

A share is read liveCopy Anchor Link

A share does not copy anything. Each time someone opens it, Pangur reads the references, files and notes from the owner's library, so changes the owner makes, such as a corrected title or a new note, appear to everyone in the share. People reading the share never hold a key to the owner's library.

If the owner's library no longer exists, the share says "The library behind this share is gone." Someone who opens a share they have no access to is told that it is not available to their account.

Taking a share backCopy Anchor Link

On the share's own page, the person who created it can:

• remove someone, with the Remove button beside their name, so that they can no longer open the share;
• withdraw an invitation, with the button beside the address, so that it is never taken up;
• choose Stop sharing, which deletes the share. Everyone loses access at once and invitations not yet taken up stop working. The references stay in your library.

Someone you have shared with can choose Leave this share on its page, and it drops out of their Shared research. To read it again they need a new invitation.

Because the share reads your library live, a reference that Pangur can no longer read from your library, such as one deleted for good, is left out of the share when it is next opened.

Sharing compared with other ways to give accessCopy Anchor Link