Collaboration

A map is often the thing a group has to agree on, so Sarkoa has four ways to let other people act on one rather than just look at it.

Feature What it does Plan
Comments Threaded notes pinned to the map, saved with it Community and above
Live annotations Drawing on the map together in real time, with everyone's cursor visible Essential and above
Downloads Viewers can download the source files behind your layers Community and above
Contributor uploads Viewers can add their own files to your map Community and above

All four are off until you turn them on, and each is set per map. Turning comments on for one map does not change any other.

Comments

A comment is pinned to a place on the map and stays there. Use them for review that needs a record: marking a boundary that looks wrong, flagging a scene that needs reflying, agreeing a route before anyone drives it.

Comments persist. Reopen the map next week and they are still there, with their replies and votes.

Live annotations

Annotations are the opposite: drawing that exists for the length of a conversation. Sketch an area while you talk about it, and everyone else sees the pen move.

This is the tool for a call. Everyone opens the same map, cursors appear, and you point at things instead of describing coordinates. Nothing is saved when the session ends, which is the point. Use a comment when it needs to outlive the call.

Pro raises the number of people who can be in a live session at once to 25.

Choosing who can join in

Both comments and annotations have their own audience, so you can invite a client to comment without letting them draw, or let your team annotate on a map the public can only read.

Audience Who can take part
Inherit Whoever can open the map. The default
Organization Signed-in members of your organization only
Public Anyone who can open the map, including anonymous visitors
Specific users People you name

Inherit is the sensible default and does the right thing most of the time: a map only your team can open gets comments only your team can write. Set it explicitly when the two should differ, which in practice means a public map you want your own people to annotate privately.

Think before setting a public map's comment audience to public. It is the right call for a consultation or a public feedback exercise, and the wrong one for a map you simply published.

Downloads

Turning downloads on lets viewers take away the source files behind your layers, in the format you uploaded. It is per map, and you can restrict it to specific people.

Worth turning on for a client deliverable, since it saves you emailing files around. Worth leaving off for a public map, unless giving the data away is the point.

Downloads hand over your original upload, not the map copy, so the recipient gets the real file.

Contributor uploads

Contributor uploads let someone add their own file to your map without joining your organization. The layer appears alongside yours.

This is for collecting data from people outside your team: a surveyor adding today's captures, a partner contributing their own coverage.

One thing to know before you turn it on: tiles for a contributed layer count against the contributor's organization, not yours. They keep their file and they carry its traffic. Nothing lands on your bill because someone added a large layer to your map.

Turning it on

In the map builder, open the map's collaboration settings. Each of the four is a toggle with its own audience.

From a map document, it is the collaboration, downloads, and uploads blocks. See Map documents.