Originally posted on the Coda blog by Shishir Mehrotra
Back in February, we launched Coda 1.0 with mobile. We said that makers now had all the basic building blocks needed to create docs as powerful as apps.
Since then, we’ve been watching tens of thousands of makers build unique, surprising docs. Team leaders from Square to the New York Times made docs to scale their operations. The Figma Product Team envisioned and executed designs in Coda. Zapier built docs to create a more inclusive, interactive meeting culture. And people whose perspectives I’ve long admired, like Measure What Matters author John Doerr and Intercom co-founder Des Traynor, adapted their career insights and personal philosophies into docs.
At the same time, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback, gleaned over thousands of community posts, meet-ups, doc builds, support chats, and dinner conversations. From this we converged on a clear answer for where we should focus next: “teams.” A small word, containing a universe of complexity.
We call these “galaxy charts”ーsnapshots of a week-in-the-life of a team and their docs. It’s not surprising that teams use docs in ways that are as wide-ranging and diverse as the teams themselves; collaboration in Coda takes many forms. For example, a fully distributed tech team that runs meetings in Coda is a much different constellation than a teacher distributing lecture materials.
Today, I’m excited to introduce Coda 2.0, a simpler, cleaner, and faster doc for teams. It comprises new paid plans and a set of building blocks that address all the different galaxies of team collaboration.
Coda 1.0 was for makers. Coda 2.0 is for the whole team.
Introducing Coda 2.0
A simpler, cleaner, faster experience for everyone.
You may love how powerful building in Coda is, but your teammates just want to work and jump in and out of docs. We simplified their most common interactions into easy filters and conditional formats. No formulas required.
Even better, we turned our favorite building block compositions into drag-and-drop templates, and made them available right inside your doc. Now a teammate can add a topic voting table faster than you can say “show of hands.”
We wanted to make Coda a more inviting and beautiful place to work. The visual refresh technically started back in July when we released a fresh new canvasーwith fewer shadows and more space to think and plan. And it continues today with centering for readability and section headers to frame information.
The surface is also faster and more responsive, thanks to a ton of performance improvements. You’ll notice scrolling, calculations, searching, and section-switching are all smoother and faster.
Giving teams the space they need.
We saw a lot of makers and teams quickly outgrow their doc lists. With dozens of docs, shared among different teams, it became hard to organize all their Coda docs in a simple list. Today we’re launching workspaces and folders so you can now create the right space for all your team’s docs.
You can think of folders like shared doc lists. So when someone joins the team, rather than add them to every doc one by one, just add them to the team folder and they’ll get access to all the docs automatically. You’ll also see a “My Docs” folder, which is your private sandbox or working area. When you’re ready to deploy a doc to your team, simply drop it into the team folder.
Building blocks for serious teams. (Cross-doc is here.)
Now for your most requested features.
Coda 2.0 also includes Locking at the doc and section level, so teams can ensure important information stays put. On top of that, we’re adding Permissions (coming soon) so makers can ensure people are only interacting with the information they should be editing. So you’ll never have to worry about accidentally deleting your company OKR table.
And by popular demand, we have Cross-doc. We built Packs to integrate Coda with the other apps your team uses. And the number one Packs request wasn’t for another service, it was for another Coda doc! Cross-doc lets you pull data from one doc into another, so you can retain that ever-elusive single source of truth.
Cross-doc is no simple thing, and consider this a first iteration. We expect this building block in particular will likely reshape how you organize information in Coda. Instead of one megadoc with views for every team, you could now have one Coda doc for the master data set, feeding into separate team docs.
And speaking of things cross-wise… we also have good news for your teammates who don’t use Chrome: Coda 2.0 includes cross-browser support. We now work on Chromium, Safari, with Firefox in beta.
Pricing for teams of all sizes.
First of all, you’ll always be able to make docs as powerful as apps for freeーwhether that’s a to-do list, a meeting doc, or a wiki. As your docs evolve into bona-fide team tools, you’ll want to level up to a Pro, Team, or Enterprise plan.
We’ve taken an unconventional approach to pricing, which we expect you’ll find fairer and cheaper than traditional models. Most of our competitors charge for everyone using a doc, even those who only touch it lightly. We only charge you for the people who make the docs. We call it Maker Billing. Learn more here.
With Coda 2.0, we’re as convinced as ever that the maker generation is going to shape how work is done, and redefine what enterprise software looks like. Regardless of job titles — product managers, teachers, and event planners — there will always be a person who steps up to make the tool for their team. But to paraphrase John Donne, no maker is an island. With 2.0, our goal is to convert more contributors into makers, and empower the whole team to join in the making.
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