Public sharing - new features, security, and flexibility

Once we heard Des Traynor giving a talk on product management. He spoke about the app lifecycle and a necessity to re-examine and re-think its core idea every 7 years. Without that, the software will inevitably become useless in the new changed environment.

This year Checkvist turned 10, so re-thinking might be long overdue :)

This release is the result of re-examining one of the core Checkvist features - public list sharing. We wanted to make it more secure and easier to use, especially when you collaborate with non-Checkvist users.

Important changes

• There are just 2 types of sharing: private, via email, and public, via a hyperlink. Old ‘public’ sharing is deprecated.
• Public lists links are unguessable for more security.
• You can share a public list with the 'read-only’ and 'write’ permissions.
• 'Read-only’ sharing becomes free.
• You can protect a public list with a password or set expiry time (these are PRO features).
• People don’t need to create a Checkvist account to read the lists you share publicly, only to edit or comment on them.
• Any person with the 'writer’s’ permissions on the list can share it publicly, not just the list owner. Checkvist includes such list status changes in the change email notifications.

How it works

1. When you enable public sharing, the list becomes visible to anyone on the web, who has that list’s public link. At the same time, it’s unguessable and not indexable by crawlers.
2. Every time you change public view settings, it immidiately affects the 'live’ public view. E.g. after you’ve changed permissions from 'read-only’ to 'write’, every visitor can start editing your list.
3. You can combine private and public sharing. E.g. invite the 'writers’ product team by email, and post the 'readers’ public link for your customers on social media channels.
4. Share a filtered or 'focused’ view with the 'Keep filter/focus’ option. People will still be able to un-focus or un-filter the list later, but you will draw their attention to the exact place in the list.

And of course, no release goes without a boyscout’s list of fixes. Many thanks to everyone who helped us make Checkvist better :)

Onwards!

• checkvist
• sharing
• collaboration
• public lists