Collaborate in real time

Collaboration follows the same rules as everything else in Bonita Process Designer: you can only join a diagram that belongs to one of your groups, and what you can do depends on your role.

For more on roles and group scoping, see Roles and permissions.

When other people are on the same diagram, Bonita Process Designer shows their presence directly on the canvas:

This makes it easy to coordinate verbally ("I’ll take the approval branch, you take the rejection path") while you work in parallel.

The server holds the single source of truth for the diagram while you collaborate. As you add, move, resize, connect, or delete elements, your changes are sent to the server and broadcast to the other participants almost instantly. The server stores the diagram a few seconds after the last change, so you do not need to save to share your work.

When two people change the same element at nearly the same moment, Bonita Process Designer resolves the conflict with a simple last-writer-wins rule: the most recent change to that element is the one that is kept. Changes to different elements never conflict — they simply merge.

If you edit very fast, some of your changes may not be shared, and the editor tells you: You are editing too fast — some changes were not shared. Please slow down.

Save (or Ctrl+S) and autosave still have a role while you collaborate, but they do not send your copy of the whole diagram, which could overwrite a co-editor’s work. They send the diagram’s preview image for the Home page, and the server then stores the shared diagram immediately rather than a few seconds later. Each time the server stores the diagram, a version can be recorded: see Version your diagrams.

A save is reported as successful only when the server answers it, except when the preview image could not be made: there is then nothing to send, and the save is reported with a warning only. After a network interruption, a save can also be reported as successful even though some of your edits never reached the server: see Known issue: a dropped connection can look connected. For the save button, autosave and their messages, see Save your work.

When another participant is actively editing a specific element, Bonita Process Designer can show an advisory lock on that element, with a label such as <name> is editing this element. This is a courtesy signal, not a hard block: it tells you "someone is working here right now" so you can avoid stepping on each other’s changes. It does not prevent you from editing — collaboration stays fully concurrent.

When someone generates or modifies the diagram with AI, the AI result replaces the diagram: Generate replaces the whole diagram, and Modify works from what is on the diagram when the request starts. So that the result is not mixed with other edits, the diagram is locked for everyone else until the AI request is over:

Wait until the banner disappears, then check the diagram before you carry on: what you see is the AI result.

The person who started the AI request is not locked, but what they change meanwhile is replaced when the result arrives: they are first asked Replace the current diagram?, and if they decline, the result is discarded. Analyzing a diagram with AI does not lock it. See AI diagram generation.

The lock lifts once the AI result has been applied and saved. After a failure, or if the person who started the request declines the result or has closed the editor, it lifts about a minute after the request is over. If the AI service does not answer, the lock lasts until the request times out: about ten minutes by default. Nobody can cancel a running request. The banner names the person who started it: if the lock lasts, ask them first. If the banner is still there after about ten minutes, reload the page: the banner is updated only while live collaboration is connected.

If the person who started the request had closed the editor, the result is applied when they reopen the diagram in the same browser, once they confirm Replace the current diagram?, and it replaces what the others changed in the meantime.

If your network drops briefly, Bonita Process Designer reconnects automatically. On reconnect, your editor receives the current diagram from the server and your canvas is replaced by it, so you immediately see any changes other people made while you were away.

While you are disconnected, the editor still lets you edit, but your changes are not shared with the other participants. Autosave and Save then store your copy of the whole diagram directly, but not in the shared diagram that the server keeps while anyone has the diagram open. As long as someone has the diagram open — a co-editor, a Reader, a second tab of yours, or a stale connection of your own — that shared diagram wins: when you reconnect, your canvas is replaced by it, and the changes you made while disconnected disappear from it. If a save succeeded while you were disconnected, the Versions tab normally holds an Auto version saved by you at that time, with those changes: download it, or restore it as a new diagram (see Restore a version).

If the network is unavailable altogether, saves fail with Failed to save diagram and your changes stay flagged as unsaved.

After repeated failed attempts to reconnect, real-time collaboration stops with the message Live collaboration stopped after repeated connection failures. Reload the page to resume. If your session has expired, the message is Live collaboration stopped: your session has expired. Log in again to resume. In both cases, reload the page, logging in again if asked, to rejoin the diagram.