We often say that design can’t happen in a vacuum. But that doesn’t mean everyone needs to have access to all your design documents, all of the time.
Maybe you’re just sketching out some early ideas for a new project, or perhaps you’re working on something under an NDA and need to keep things private. Whatever your situation, your Sketch Workspace has the tools to control who can access what.
It starts with My Drafts — your private space for any documents that aren’t ready for the rest of your Workspace to see. And when it’s time to turn your ideas into something bigger? You can create a new project and invite just the people you want, without making it public to the rest of your Workspace.
In other words, you have all the tools you need to take a project from ideation to completion with only the right people involved. Let’s see how it works.
When to use My Drafts
We created My Drafts to give you a place to keep ideas that aren’t ready for anyone else yet — whether it’s a quick wireframe of a product idea, or even a Library that you’re working on that just isn’t ready for publication yet. With My Drafts, those documents remain completely private, and nobody else in your Workspace can access them.
Working on some rough sketches that you need to refer back to, but don’t want to share with anyone else? Ideating for a new project? My Drafts is the place to put it.
Invite people to individual documents
Need to bring in some backup on a specific document? Or collaborate with others in real-time to turn your initial sketches into something that’s ready to share with a stakeholder? No problem. You can invite anyone to your document with document-level permissions. So you can get some design help from an Editor, or just some quick feedback from a Viewer or Guest.
Restrict access to projects
If your work starts to grow beyond a single document, it might make sense to create a project in your Workspace. But don’t worry — you choose whether a project is visible to your whole Workspace, or just the members you invite to it.
Whenever you create a project — or view an existing one — you’ll be able to adjust its share settings, set Workspace-level access and invite individual people to it.
How to restrict access to projects
If you set Workspace-level sharing to No Access for a project, only you, your Workspace’s Admins and any members you invite will be able to see that project. It’s ideal for those NDA’d projects we mentioned — or when you just want to keep noise around new ideas to a minimum.
Got some drafts you want to bring into your project? You can easily move the documents you need into your new project from My Drafts and start inviting people. Anyone you shared that document with in My Drafts will still have access to it, even if they’re not a part of the project.
If you want to invite someone else to view a specific document without them seeing everything in that project, you can. Individual document permissions override project permissions, so that specific document will still appear in the person’s Shared With Me tab in the sidebar.
When to restrict access to projects
Projects like these are the perfect place to work on early brainstorming sessions with a small team — as everyone can jump into the same document and collaborate in real-time, wherever they are. They’re also great for when you’re working on secret internal projects — such as plans for a company meet-up — and don’t want the rest of your team getting wind of your plans.
And of course, if you’re working under an NDA — or you just want to silo your projects to keep your team focused and free from distractions — project permissions can help.