Editing Your Team's Shared Items, and Locking Them With Read-only – Sapience Cloud

Overview

When you share a note, folder, database or file with your whole organisation, everyone in your organisation can now edit it, not just view it. A team handbook, a shared plan or a working file becomes a real team document: colleagues fix a typo, add a section or rename the file without asking you to share it with them one by one.

In a project shared with your organisation, the notes, folders, databases and files inside it follow the same rule, item by item. The project's own name and settings are still changed by its owner and its project admins.

When something should stay exactly as you wrote it (a signed-off policy, a final report, a template), turn on its Read-only switch. Your colleagues can still open and read it, but only you can change it.

Who Can Edit What

The item is…	Your colleagues in the same organisation	You (the owner)
Shared with the organisation, Read-only off	Can view and edit it	Can edit it
Shared with the organisation, Read-only on	Can view it only	Can edit it
Private to you (not shared with the organisation)	Cannot edit it, even if it sits inside a shared folder or project	Can edit it

A few things stay exactly as they were:

Only the owner deletes. A colleague who can edit your note, folder, project or file still cannot delete it. Tasks and database rows are the exception: a colleague with edit rights may delete those, just as someone you shared them with can.

Only the owner flips the switches. Only you can turn Read-only on or off, or change whether an item is shared with the organisation.

Your own organisation only. People in a different organisation, or in a child organisation of yours, can at most view your shared items. They can never edit them.

Something inside a shared folder is decided by its own setting. A private note or file inside a shared folder stays private to its owner for editing, even though colleagues can see the folder.

Turning Read-only On or Off

Open the item you own (a note, folder, project, database or file).

Find its Read-only switch (see Where to Find the Switch below).

Turn it on. You'll see: "This is now read-only. Only you can edit it."

To let colleagues edit again, turn it off: "People with access can edit this again."

Where to Find the Switch

Note: next to the badge at the top of the note that shows who it is shared with.

Project: in the project's actions menu.

Database: in the database's header.

File: right-click it in your file list, or select just that file and open the actions menu. The file's info card shows the switch too.

Folder: select just that folder in your file list and open the actions menu.

Colleagues who open a read-only item see a Read-only badge. Hovering over it explains: "The owner made this read-only. You can view it but not edit it." If someone who is not the owner tries to change the switch, they are told: "Only the owner can change Read-only."

What Happens Behind the Scenes

Every edit — saving a note, renaming or moving a file, uploading a new version, adding a tag — is checked by Sapience's single permission check before anything is saved.

That check asks three things about the item itself: is it shared with the organisation, is Read-only off, and is the person editing in the same organisation as the item?

If all three are true, the edit goes through. If Read-only is on, only the owner's edit goes through.

If someone also has their own share on the item, the higher of the two permissions applies: a "view only" share never takes away an edit right they already have through the organisation.

Summary

Items you share with your organisation are now true team documents that everyone in your organisation can edit. Turn on Read-only for anything that must not change. Your colleagues can still read it, and only you can edit or delete it.