Sharing & Permissions Overview

Every project in Obvious has an audience — sometimes it's just you, sometimes it's your whole team, and sometimes it's anyone with the link. Sharing controls who can see your work and what they can do with it. Think of it like a building: the workspace is the building, projects are rooms inside it, and permissions are the keys that decide who gets in and what they're allowed to touch.

How access works

Access in Obvious flows from two directions: the workspace and the project.

Your workspace is the broadest layer. Everyone in your workspace can potentially access projects shared at the workspace level — no individual invite required. This is useful for company-wide resources that everyone should see.

Projects are more specific. Each project has its own access controls, so you can share a project with three people, a whole team, or the entire workspace — and give each a different level of access.

When someone has access from multiple sources (say, a direct invite and a workspace-level grant), Obvious uses the highest permission level. You never get locked out because of overlapping access — the most generous one wins.

Permission levels

Obvious has four permission levels. Each one builds on the level below it.

Viewer

Can see everything in the project — documents, sheets, threads, files — but can't change anything. Viewers can leave comments, which makes this the right level for stakeholders who need to stay informed and give feedback without editing the work directly.

Editor

Everything a Viewer can do, plus the ability to create and edit. Editors can add documents, update sheets, upload files, start threads, and build artifacts. This is the right level for anyone actively contributing to a project.

Admin

Everything an Editor can do, plus project management. Admins can invite and remove members, change permission levels, and adjust project settings. If you need someone to help manage who has access without giving them full ownership, Admin is the level to use.

Owner

Full control. The Owner can do everything an Admin can, plus transfer ownership of the project to someone else and delete the project entirely. Every project has exactly one Owner — the person who created it.

For a detailed breakdown of what each level can and can't do, see Roles & Permissions.

You have three ways to bring people into a project.

Invite by email

The most direct method. Open your project's sharing settings and enter someone's email address. Choose whether they join as a Viewer or Editor, and Obvious sends them an invitation. If they're already in your workspace, they get access immediately. If they're not, they'll get access once they sign up and accept.

If your workspace uses teams, you can share a project with an entire team at once. Everyone on the team gets the same permission level, and new members added to the team later automatically get access too. This keeps you from having to invite people one by one as your team grows.

For broader access, you can generate a share link. Anyone in your workspace who opens the link gets access at the level you set — either Viewer or Editor. This works like a shared link in Google Docs: the link itself grants access, so you don't need to know everyone's email ahead of time.

Share links are scoped to your workspace. Someone outside your workspace can't use the link to get in.

Workspace vs. project access

It's worth understanding the relationship between these two layers.

Workspace access means someone is a member of your Obvious workspace. It doesn't automatically give them access to every project — it just means they can be invited, they can see projects shared at the workspace level, and they can use share links.

Project access is per-project. Someone in your workspace might have Editor access to one project, Viewer access to another, and no access to a third. Each project's sharing settings are independent.

This separation matters because it lets you keep sensitive projects private even in a large workspace. A project stays invisible to workspace members who haven't been specifically granted access — unless it's shared at the workspace level or via a share link.

Next steps

Roles & Permissions — Detailed breakdown of what each permission level can do
Managing Project Members — How to invite, update, and remove project members
Teams — Setting up and using teams for group-based sharing