Sharing notes and collections

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.bowerlabs.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Bower has two layers of access control on individual notes and collections:

1. Workspace access — by default, every member of a workspace can see every note and collection.
2. Per-entity access — you can override the default on a single note or collection to share it with only specific people, or keep it strictly private to yourself.

You can also generate a public link to share a note with someone outside the workspace, no Bower account required. All of these controls live in the same Share dialog. For the bigger picture of who can do what across a workspace — owners, admins, members, viewers, guests — see the Workspace permissions overview.

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Open the Share dialog

The dialog shows the entity’s current privacy mode at the top, the access list below, and (for notes) a public-link section at the bottom.

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The three privacy modes

Every note and collection is in one of three modes. You change modes from inside the Share dialog.

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Anyone in this workspace (default)

Every workspace member can see this note or collection at their workspace role — owners, admins, and members can edit, while viewers and guests can only read. This is the default state for everything you create. Use this when the work is part of normal team output and there’s no reason to restrict it.

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Only specific people

Restricted access. Only people on the access list below can see the note or collection, regardless of their workspace role. Workspace admins do not automatically have access; they have to be on the list. Workspace owners always retain access in this mode — they can’t be locked out of their own workspace, and they need oversight of team work. Use this when content needs a smaller audience than the full workspace — a particular project, a draft you’re reviewing with one collaborator, an artefact intended for a specific group.

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Just me (private)

Only you can see the content. Even the workspace owner cannot read it. This is the mode that goes beyond workspace-owner oversight: when you click Just me, the note or collection is truly private. Useful for:

• Personal drafts you’re not ready to share — even with leadership.
• Half-formed ideas you want to develop in your own space.
• Notes specific to you (career planning, observations about colleagues, personal health-related research).

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What workspace owners can still do with your private notes

Workspace owners cannot read content you’ve marked Just me. But they can:

• See metadata in audit logs — that the note exists, when it was created, when it was last edited.
• Delete the note via admin tooling (deferred feature — coming soon). They cannot view the body.
• Transfer ownership of the note to another user (deferred — coming soon).

These are admin-only actions intended for compliance situations (employee leaving, legal hold) and always log an audit entry.

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Sharing a Just-me note moves it out of private

The moment you add anyone to the access list of a Just-me note, the note is no longer private. Bower auto-promotes it to Only specific people and the workspace owner regains access. This matches Notion’s model: privacy is defined by the audience, not by a flag — once you share, it’s shared. You’ll see a banner in the Share dialog when this happens. If you want to truly keep something private, don’t share it. If you need a small private workspace for a couple of people that the org admin can’t see, the right answer is a separate workspace — workspaces are Bower’s unit of organisational visibility. Per-entity privacy is for individuals.

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Going back to private

If you change your mind and want to make a shared note private again, just remove everyone from the access list. The moment the only person left on the list is you (the creator), Bower auto-flips the mode back to Just me.

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”Use parent’s settings”

If a note or collection is inside a parent collection that has its own privacy settings, you can click Use parent’s settings to drop the override and inherit from the parent again. This is different from picking Anyone in this workspace: using parent’s settings means future changes to the parent flow down to this entity automatically. The dialog shows you what parent the entity is inheriting from with a clickable link, so you can navigate up to see how access is set there.

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Per-person access in “Only specific people” mode

Add members one at a time: View lets them read the content. Edit also lets them change the content. Manage lets them change the access list itself (re-share the entity). To remove someone, click the permission dropdown next to their row and pick Remove. Their access is revoked immediately — they’ll lose access on their next request.

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Inherited access

If the displayed access list comes from a parent collection (this entity has no overrides of its own), the dialog shows “Access list inherited from Parent name”. Edit grants on the parent to change who can access the child.

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Special people: creator and workspace owner

Two roles always retain a baseline level of access:

• The entity creator — whoever made the note or collection always retains Full access on it. You can flip your own work to Only specific people without losing access yourself, even if you’re not on the list.
• The workspace owner — they retain access on Workspace and Only specific people modes (admin oversight). They do not retain access on Just me entities.

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Public link (notes only)

For notes, the Share to web section at the bottom of the dialog lets you generate a public URL. Anyone with the URL can read the note — they don’t need a Bower account or workspace membership. To revoke a public link, click the red bin icon next to the Copy button. Revocation takes effect immediately.

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What public-link viewers can see

• The note’s title
• The full content, including text, headings, lists, and tables
• Images attached or embedded
• Image annotations

Public-link viewers cannot see:

• Your workspace name or any workspace details
• Your name or any identifying information about who created the link
• Other notes or collections in your workspace
• Collections, tags, or any organisational structure
• Internal Bower IDs or system metadata

Public links give access to one note only. They are not a way to share your entire workspace.

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What if the workspace doesn’t allow Just me?

In some compliance environments — regulated industries where every artefact must be readable by an admin — the workspace owner can disable Just me mode for the entire workspace. When that’s the case:

• Clicking Just me falls back to Only specific people with you on the list.
• You’ll see a brief message confirming the fallback.

Workspace owners control this from the workspace settings — see Workspace permissions overview for the toggle.

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What’s restrictable in v1

Currently you can restrict notes and collections. Samples always inherit access from their parent collection — there is no Share dialog on a sample directly. We may add per-sample restrictions in a future release if customers ask for it.