Permission to View & Copy

You'll need to do three things to accomplish this:

1. Publish your document.

2. Remove the '/0' from the end of the document url.

3. Change the "edit" in the URL to "editNew".

Change this:
https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/edit/xxxxxxx

To this:
https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/editNew/xxxxxxx

I'd like to be able to give people permission to view a diagram and create a copy that they can edit to their heart's content...without mucking with my source diagram. I didn't see any permission that did that.

Gotcha! So you can share a view-only version of your document. Users can then go to File>Save as to create a copy and edit without editing your original document.

Sorry - I don't know what is meant by "Publish and embed".

I created a document converted to a template and now I'd like to share a link to the resource.

When I generate a link it does not follow the convention outlined above so I'm unclear on how to edit it.

@chelsea c Thanks for continuing this thread and apologies for the confusion. There are several ways to accomplish what you're hoping to do. For clarity I'll share a bit more about the process Keyvan describes in his response above first. 

To publish a document means to share your Lucidchart document in a view-only experience either as a unique Lucidchart URL (what Keyvan describes above) or as a permanent PDF link. Unlike static exported versions of documents published documents are fully interactive so you can add links to external sites or pages that viewers can click on all without requiring your collaborators to have Lucid accounts. For this particular use case publishing your document allows you to obtain that unique URL. By editing it to replace "edit" with "editNew" accessing that URL containing "editNew" will automatically create a new editable copy of your original that the viewer can edit themselves. You can find more information about the publishing feature detailed fully in the Publish your Lucidchart document article from the Lucidchart Help Center. 

However what I recommend for you is a straightforward approach that you've already begun - converting your document to a template then sharing that template with others using the normal sharing mechanism. After converting your document to a template simply share the document with your viewers either directly to their email or using a shareable link as described in this portion of our Work with templates article. If you'd like your collaborators to be able to edit the template themselves make sure you share with "Edit" permission. If you'd simply like them to view the original template then make a copy of their own which they can edit share with "View only" permission. From there your collaborators can find the template in their "Shared with Me" folder. 

Then to create a new document based on the template they can simply hover over it and select New

or choose New from Template in the "More" menu. 

I hope this helps to clarify! Please let me know if you have additional questions. 

Hi Micah thank you for getting back to me!

Am I understanding correctly that the primary difference between the methods is that Publishing a Template allows non-users to access it and sharing a View link from a Template can only be accessed by Lucid users?

@chelsea c Hi Chelsea yes that's correct. The intent of publishing is that anyone regardless of whether or not they have a Lucid account can view the document via that unique Lucidchart URL or permanent PDF link. A view-only link generated directly from the template requires the Lucidchart editor both to view the template and to create an editable copy. 

Please note however that editing the published document's URL (changing "edit" to "editNew") does still require a Lucid account as it is generating a new copy of that document for editing. 

Is the above possible for Lucid Spark as well?

Hey Michael

Thank you for replying to this post! Yes the same is true for Lucidspark as well unless you have access to our Guest Collaborators feature available on our Team and Enterprise accounts 😎

Hope this helps -- please let us know if you have any other questions! 

Thanks I can see that the publish option is greyed out on our enterprise account.  We have the shared feature. Is there a way to create links for internal user that will create a new document from a template directly? 

Hey Michael

Thanks for the reply! So a couple of things here: First you will want an administrator of your account to check on the Admin Panel and make sure the ability to create sharable links is turned on. This can be found in the Collaboration section of the Admin Panel. This should allow you to create published links. 

Second you can convert any document to a template that can be shared with your entire team to use. Check out our Corporate Templates Help Center article for more details on this functionality. 

Hope this helps -- please let me know if you have any other questions! Cheers 🍻