Sharing Reports

Share Reports With Anyone

Reports can go to two kinds of recipients: existing project team members who already have access (they see new reports automatically once issued), and external recipients you add directly in the report builder. This article covers how to add and manage external recipients in Step 5 (Share & Send), how to control which roles can see the report, and how to copy the invitation link to share manually.

The Two Sharing Modes

When you add a recipient in Step 5, you choose between two modes:

Mode	What the recipient gets	Best for
Report Only	A public link to view the static web report (and the PDF). No login required when the report's access level is set to Public; for Private (invited) reports, each recipient gets a personal one-click link (/rv/<token>) — possession of that emailed link is the verification, so there is no separate email-verification or magic-link step just to view.	Clients, subbies, certifiers, or anyone who only needs to read this one report and doesn't have a Doclio account.
Full Share	A real share record on the project. The recipient signs in to Doclio and lands on this report, with ongoing access to the drawings and annotations they've been granted. Future revisions, new annotations, and reports flow to them automatically.	External team members who'll be working with you for the duration of the project — design consultants, project managers, ongoing reviewers.

Bulk-Adding Multiple Recipients

The email field on the Add Recipient card accepts multiple addresses at once — paste a list separated by commas, semicolons, newlines, spaces, or any combination. Useful when you have a list from a spreadsheet, address book, or chat thread that you'd otherwise have to split manually:

designer@firm.com, client@company.com
contractor@build.co; certifier@reg.gov
inspector@local.gov

A live count below the field shows how many valid addresses are ready to be added (and warns about any invalid ones, which are skipped). One click of ADD creates all of them at once, applying the same form settings (capability, role, expiry, can re-share, notify) to every recipient. If any addresses are already in the list, they're silently skipped. A summary toast at the end reports the totals: "5 added · 5 emails sent · 1 already in list".

Adding a Report Only Recipient

1. Open the report builder (or edit an existing report) and go to Step 5: Share & Send.
2. In the Add Recipient card, type one email or paste several (see Bulk-Adding above).
3. Leave the mode set to Report Only.
4. The card shows a Public report link preview directly below the form. Click COPY to put the URL on your clipboard — you can paste it into any email, Slack, Teams, or text message yourself.
5. Optional: tick Notify recipient by email on Add to have Doclio email the link with a friendly "sharerName has shared a report with you" message and a VIEW REPORT button. (You can leave this unchecked if you'd rather send a personal note.)
6. Click ADD. The recipient(s) appear in the list below with a REPORT ONLY badge.

The public report link is the same for every Report Only recipient — the link is created when the report is first saved and is the same for everyone. Anyone who has that link can view the report (subject to the access level). Treat it like a shared document URL — you don't need to add each recipient through the form to give them access; the form is there mainly so you have a tracked list of who you've sent it to and so the email can go out automatically.

Adding a Full Share Recipient

1. In the Add Recipient card, switch the mode to Full Share.
2. The form expands to show:
   • Permission — View / Comment / Contribute / Edit. Defaults to View. See Roles and Capabilities for what each level can do.
   • Project Role — pulled from your project's share roles (Designer, Client, Consultant, Contractor, etc.). The role drives visibility filtering on annotations AND on reports — see "Role-Based Visibility" below.
   • Expires — Never / 7 days / 30 days / 90 days. Useful for temporary external reviewers.
   • Allow this recipient to re-share with others — tick if they should be able to invite further collaborators themselves.
3. Type one email or paste several at once (see Bulk-Adding above).
4. Choose whether to tick Notify recipient by email on Add:
   • If checked: each recipient gets the standard Doclio invitation email with a magic link. Clicking the link signs them in automatically and lands them on this specific report.
   • If unchecked: no email is sent. Either use the COPY LINK button on each recipient row to grab their invitation URL, or use the new Single shared link (see below) to send one URL to all recipients.
5. Click ADD. Doclio creates the share record on your project right away (you don't need to issue or save the report first), so the link buttons work immediately.

The Single Shared Link (Full Share)

Once you've added one or more Full Share recipients, the recipients list shows a "Single shared link · works for any recipient above" card at the top with one URL — the report's public URL — that any of the recipients you've added can use:

• Recipient logs in to Doclio with their own email (magic link, social, etc.) — they don't need to click a personalised invite link.
• On their first authenticated session after being added, Doclio automatically accepts any pending invitations matching their email — they immediately have access to the project and this report.
• The same single URL works for everyone you've added. Paste it once into a chat thread, group email, or notice board.

Per-recipient COPY LINK buttons stay available on each row for cases where you want to send a specific person their own personalised link (one-click sign-in for them). The single shared link is just a convenience for bulk-sending.

Why does this work? Adding a recipient is the invitation. Once they're on the list, signing in to Doclio with that email is enough — the personalised link just saves them a step.

The Recipients List

Once added, each recipient row shows:

• The email address
• A FULL SHARE or REPORT ONLY badge
• For Full Share: the capability (view / comment / contribute / edit), the role, and a can re-share badge if enabled
• A no email badge if you unchecked Notify, or a green sent badge after a successful email send
• A COPY LINK button — copies the full invitation URL to your clipboard
• A × button — removes the recipient. For Full Share recipients, this also revokes the underlying share record so the link stops working immediately.

What the Invitation Link Does

The link copied by the COPY LINK button is recipient-specific for Full Share, and the same public URL for Report Only:

• Full Share link: signs the recipient in (first-time users go through the standard sign-up flow), accepts the share, and lands them directly on the report.
• Report Only link: opens the report. No login required when the report's access level is Public. For Private (invited) reports, the recipient's personal /rv/<token> link opens the report in one click — no email-verification step.

Existing Project Users

Below the recipients list, the EXISTING PROJECT USERS section shows everyone who already has access to the project — internal team members, plus anyone you've previously invited via the Drawing Gallery / Settings sharing dialog. They'll see the report as soon as it's issued.

Each row shows the user's project role (with the role's colour) alongside their capability and pending/accepted status. If the report has restricted visibility (see Role-Based Visibility below), users whose role isn't in the allowed set are dimmed (line-through email) with a role blocked badge — these people will not see the report even though they have access to the project. Hover the badge for a tooltip explaining why.

Editing a User's Permission and Role In Place

The project owner can change an existing user's permission and role without leaving the report builder. Click any row in the EXISTING PROJECT USERS list to expand an inline edit panel with three controls:

• Permission — change between View / Comment / Contribute / Edit. Useful when, for example, you initially shared with someone as a Comment-only reviewer and now want to upgrade them to Contribute.
• Role — switch the user's project role (Designer / Client / Consultant / Contractor / etc.) or set them to No role (unrestricted). Updates immediately; the dimmed/role-blocked badges in the list refresh as you change roles.
• Can Re-share — toggle on to allow this user to invite further collaborators themselves. Off by default for external recipients.

Changes apply immediately. The chevron only shows for project owners — other users see a read-only row.

To revoke a user's access entirely (remove them from the project), use the dedicated sharing dialog at Settings → Sharing. The report builder intentionally only surfaces in-place edits, not destructive actions.

Role-Based Visibility

The Visible to Project Roles card at the top of Step 5 lets you restrict the report to specific share roles. Two options:

• Visible to all (default) — Every shared user with project access sees the report. The most common case.
• Visible only to selected roles — Only users whose project role matches one of the ticked roles can see the report. Useful when you want to send a Defect report to the Client and Contractor but keep the Internal team out, or vice versa.

Project owners, organisation members, and shared users with no role assigned always see all reports — restrictions only filter users who carry a specific share role.

External recipients (added in Step 5) and public-link viewers are not affected by this setting — restrictions apply only to users who access the report through their project share.

Tip: If your project has no share roles defined yet, the Visible to Project Roles card shows a hint pointing at Settings → Project Configuration → Share Roles. Create roles like Designer, Client, Consultant, Contractor first, then come back to apply them to reports (and to the annotation types — see Roles and Capabilities).

Public vs Private Access Level

The Report Access card at the top of Step 5 controls who can open the public report URL:

• Public — anyone with the link — No login required. Anyone with the report URL or QR code can view the report. Commenting, markup, and attachments require signing in, being linked to the project, and a Live report — anonymous viewers are read-only. Good for sharing with external parties who don't have a Doclio account.
• Private — invited users only — Each recipient gets a personal one-click link (/rv/<token>); only the email address it was issued to can open it. No password or verification code is needed just to view. To comment or respond, the recipient creates a free account (see Commenting & responding on a shared report).

QR Codes

The PDF export includes a QR code on page 1 that links back to the online report — print the PDF and the link travels with it. Useful for printed report sets, the site office wall, and induction packs. See Sharing Reports with QR Codes.

Download PDF

Click Download PDF on the report detail page to generate a PDF version for offline distribution or archiving. The PDF includes a populated outline (each drawing as a bookmark) and a clickable document register that jumps to the corresponding drawing's page. See Report PDF Export.

FAQs

I unchecked Notify by email — what happens?

The recipient is added to the list (Full Share creates a real project share; Report Only just records them on the report) but no email goes out. You're expected to copy the invitation link from the recipient row and share it manually via your own channel — Slack, Teams, personal email, etc.

The recipient said they didn't get the email.

Check the recipient row — if the green sent badge isn't there, the email failed to send (a delivery outage, bounced address, or the recipient's email server rejected it). Use COPY LINK and send it manually. The "sent" badge means the email was successfully handed off to our email provider; it doesn't guarantee the inbox received it (spam folders happen).

Can I send the same report to 50 people without adding them all individually?

For Report Only: the public URL is the same for every recipient. Copy it once from the inline preview in the form and paste into a bulk email. The form is for tracking who you've sent it to (and triggering the automatic email send); the URL itself is shareable however you like.

For Full Share: use the bulk-paste textarea to add all 50 emails at once (comma / semicolon / newline separated), then copy the Single shared link from the top of the recipients list — the same URL works for everyone you've added. They each log in with their own email; their pending shares auto-accept on first sign-in.

If I add 20 recipients in bulk and tick "Notify recipient by email on Add", will 20 emails go out?

Yes, one per recipient. Each email is sent independently via our email provider. The summary toast at the end reports the totals: "20 added · 20 emails sent" on full success, or with caveats like "20 added · 18 emails sent · 2 failed" if any individual delivery failed (which you can then resend by clicking the per-recipient COPY LINK and pasting the URL into a manual email).

Can a Report Only recipient comment on the report?

Yes — by creating a free account. Anonymous viewers are read-only, but the viewer offers an inline Create a free account to comment box (email + password, no magic link). A recipient the report was shared to can sign up and immediately comment/attach on a Live report; project members can too. Public-report viewers with no invite are pointed at Request Access instead. See Commenting & responding on a shared report.

What if I revoke a Full Share recipient — does their old email link still work?

No. Removing a Full Share recipient (× button) revokes the underlying share record, which invalidates the invite token. If they click the link after revocation, they'll get an "invitation expired or already accepted" message.

I added a recipient as Report Only but I want to upgrade them to Full Share — how?

Remove them from the recipients list, then re-add them with Full Share selected. Their public URL stops working (it always worked, but they're no longer formally tracked) and they get a fresh invite via the standard share flow.

The interactive report viewer

Reports sent from the Mailbox composer give each recipient a personal interactive link of the form https://doclio.app/r/<token>. This is separate from the public /report/<accessToken> link described above. The recipient opens the report, reads the action cards and drawings, and can reply to the thread — with what they can do controlled per-recipient by the sender. See The Interactive Report Viewer.

Commenting, responding & finding your reports

Recipients can do more than read. With a free account they can comment and attach photos, and — when you enable it per recipient — submit a formal response or approval. Recipients who sign up also get a Shared with me home listing every report shared to their email. See:

• Commenting & responding on a shared report
• Shared with me — finding reports shared to you