Working together
Assigning tasks
Section titled “Assigning tasks”A task on a shared list can be assigned to a member. It then appears in their Assigned smart list, which is how work gets picked up without a conversation about who is doing what.
Assignment is a signal rather than a lock. Anyone on the list can still complete the task.
Comments
Section titled “Comments”Every task has a comment thread, and comments can be liked. Keeping the discussion on the task means the context is still there weeks later, which is the main advantage over discussing it in a messaging app.
Live updates
Section titled “Live updates”Changes made by anyone appear for everyone without a refresh. If two of you are working through the same list, you see each other’s ticks as they happen.
This is what makes a shared grocery list work in a shop, and a shared checklist work during an event.
Who is looking
Section titled “Who is looking”Shared lists show avatars of the people currently viewing, so you can tell whether someone else is in there before you start rearranging things.
When two people change the same thing
Section titled “When two people change the same thing”Changes are applied in the order the server receives them, so where two people edit the same field, the later edit is the one that sticks.
Your own edits are protected while they are in flight. An edit you have just made is not overwritten by an incoming update from someone else until your change has been acknowledged, so the thing you typed does not flicker back to the old value while you are still looking at it.
In practice conflicts are rare, because people work on different tasks. The case to be careful with is two people reordering or bulk-editing the same list at the same time, where it is worth one of you waiting.
Editing offline at the same time
Section titled “Editing offline at the same time”If two of you are offline and both change the same task, neither knows about the other until you reconnect. Changes are then sent in the order each of you made them, and the later arrival wins.
Nothing is duplicated by a flaky connection: a change that has to be retried is applied once, not twice. Anything created offline keeps its identity when it reaches the server, so a task you added on a train is the same task everyone else then sees rather than a duplicate.
If it matters who wins, change history shows what happened and in what order.