So you’ve built a Pack - congratulations! If you want to share your Pack with others, you have several options. This article will explain how to share your Pack with specific people or workspaces, as well as how to publish your Pack to the world.
 

Within this article, you’ll find...

• Pack sharing basics

• Invite collaborators

• Publish your Pack

• FAQs

Pack sharing basics

When you share a Pack, you decide who can install or edit the Pack. Once a Pack is installed in a doc, however, you cannot control who uses the Pack within that doc. Anyone with access to the doc can use the Pack (barring any authentication requirements). Read on to learn about the various options for sharing - and unsharing -your Pack.

Invite collaborators

Until you have shared your Pack with other makers or published it to the Gallery, you are the only person who can edit or use your Pack. But if you’re ready to collaborate, you can start by inviting specific people or Coda workspaces to your Pack. When you do so, you can also choose their permission level.

Collaborator permissions

When you share your Pack with individuals or with a workspace, you have two different permission levels to choose from:

• Can install: This permission means that people will be able to add your Pack to any of their Coda docs but won’t be able to make any changes to the Pack.

• Can test: An in-between permission, “Can test” allows people to install the Pack and view the Pack logs. It does not, however, grant the ability to edit the Pack in any way. This permission is useful if you want someone to test your Pack to confirm whether it’s working correctly.

• Pack admin: When you invite someone to collaborate as a Pack maker, you are granting them full access to your Pack. This include the ability to share or unshare, publishing or unpublish, rename, change the source code, build and release new Pack versions, and even delete the Pack. We suggest you give this permission to only your most trusted collaborators.

Invite specific individuals

Until you have shared your Pack with other makers or published it to the Gallery, you are the only person who can edit or use your Pack. But if you’re ready to collaborate, you can start by inviting specific people to your Pack. When you do so, you can choose their level of permissions.

To invite people to collaborate, follow these steps:

1. Open your Pack in the Pack Studio

2. Click Share in the upper-right corner

3. In the Invite field, type the email address of the person you’d like to share your Pack with

4. Click into the dropdown on the right to choose their permission level: Can install, Can test, or Pack admin. See the section above on collaborator permissions for more info on these options.

5. Finally, click the Share button to officially invite this person to your Pack.

Share with a workspace

You can also share your Pack - to install or edit - to an entire Coda workspace. Just like sharing a doc with your workspace, you can share your Pack with your entire team with a few clicks. Just follow these steps:

1. Open your Pack within the Pack Studio

2. Click the Share option in the upper-right corner

3. Under the Broader access section, you should see your Coda workspace. Click on the dropdown to the right of this workspace, and choose either No access, Can install, or Pack maker. See the section above on collaborator permissions for more info on these options.
    

Unshare your Pack

Unsharing a Pack with individuals or workspaces will immediately disable the Pack in all the docs in which those users have installed it, potentially breaking any workflows or formulas immediately. The affected users will receive an error indicating that the Pack is no longer available.

Afterward, any data that has been previously pulled into the doc will remain (e.g. data in sync tables refreshed prior to the Pack being disabled). However, any refreshes of the data, new formula executions, and button executions will no longer work for all of the doc’s users.

If you unshare a Pack from a workspace, the makers of the workspace will be unable to add your Pack to their docs, and docs that already have the Pack installed will break as described above.

Please note: All users will receive email notifications if you unshare, unpublish, or delete a Pack that they have installed in a doc.

To unshare a Pack, follow these steps:

1. Open your Pack in the Pack Studio

2. Click Share in the upper-right corner

3. Remove any individuals by clicking in the Shared with section

4. Remove workspace access by clicking into the dropdown and changing the workspace permission to No access
    

Publish your Pack

You can publish your Pack to the Coda Gallery, just like you would a doc, to allow any user to add your Pack to their doc. Before you can do so, there are a few things you’ll need to do first.

Prepare your Pack for publishing

In order to publish, you will need to complete your Pack listing page. Our team has put together best practices to help you complete this page and launch your Pack.

Additionally, you will need to release at least one version of your Pack. If you’ve already released at least one version, you can skip to the Publish section below. Otherwise, just follow these steps:

1. Open your Pack within the Pack Studio

2. Click into the Code tab

3. If you haven’t yet, use the Build button to make your first build

   1. For more info on building and releasing versions, check out this resource.

4. Then click Release to start your first release.

5. You will then be asked to add release notes that tell your users what changed or improved in this new version. Once completed, click the Release version button.

   1. 💡 Tip: You can also view a ledger of all Pack versions and releases by clicking History in the left-side navigation.

That's it - your Pack is now ready to be published!

Publish your Pack to the Gallery

Now that your Pack is ready to publish, you’re only a few clicks away:

1. While on your Pack page in the Pack Studio, click Share in the upper-right corner

2. Click into the Publish tab

3. If you’d like to see a preview of your Pack in the Gallery, click the See full listing button

4. Once ready, click the Publish button

Congratulations! You have just published your Pack to the Gallery. You can share your hard work with others by sharing your Pack listing page URL, which is auto-generated for you on the confirmation screen.

Unpublish your Pack

If you unpublish a Pack, this Pack will be immediately disabled in all the docs it’s been installed in. Note that any docs owned by people with whom you’ve directly shared the Pack will continue to function, as these users will still have access to the Pack.

To unpublish a Pack, follow these steps:

1. Navigate back to the Pack Studio

2. Click Share in the top right corner. The share dialog box will once again appear.

3. Click into the Published tab. A preview of your Pack’s card preview will appear.

4. In the bottom right corner, click the Unpublish button, then confirm by clicking Unpublish on the confirmation notice.

You have successfully unpublished your Pack. It can no longer be found in the Gallery.

FAQs

How do I delete a Pack that I built?

You can delete a Pack by going into the Pack editor, navigating to the Settings tab, and clicking the Delete Pack button.

 

This action is irreversible and immediate. Similar to unsharing and unpublishing, it will immediately disable the Pack in all the docs it’s been installed in, and those docs may no longer function correctly.

For Packs that are shared with others (either directly or through publishing), we strongly recommend not deleting your Pack, as it will immediately cause issues in the docs where this Pack was previously installed. Additionally, there is no way to recover your source code once a Pack is deleted. Instead, we recommend posting in the Coda Community to see if you can hand off your Pack to someone else.

Someone has shared their Pack with me. How do I find and accept the invitation to get access to the Pack?

If a Pack maker has directly shared their Pack with you, you should receive an email from Coda inviting you to access the Pack. You can also find this invitation in Coda by following these steps:

1. Navigate to your workspace home (coda.io/docs)
2. Click the three-dot menu next to your workspace name in the left panel, then select Packs
3. Select the Invitations tab
4. Here you should see the invitation from the Pack maker. You can either Accept the invitation to gain immediate access to the Pack, or Decline.

 

Related resources

• Sell your Packs on Coda

• Coda Pack SDK

• Overview: Use Packs in Coda