Collaboration

Collaboration is what OpenTeams is: every channel, message, reaction and presence signal is shared state that several people edit at once. This page explains how it is built, what the live demo shows and what it does not.

How it works

• The shared document is a Yjs CRDT. Channels live in one Y.Map, messages in one Y.Map per channel and reactions in a flat map keyed by message, emoji and user, so concurrent edits and reactions merge instead of overwriting each other. The logic lives in ooxml-core/teams, built on the format-neutral ooxml-core/collab area.
• Presence is Yjs awareness: who is online, who is typing and an availability you set (available, busy, away). It is advisory and unauthenticated, like any Yjs awareness.
• Calls are WebRTC. Signaling travels through your server (or BroadcastChannel in local mode); media goes peer to peer in a full mesh, so calls suit a handful of people.
• The transport is pluggable. Two modes exist: server (your server speaks the y-websocket sync protocol, relays call signaling and optionally stores files) and local (tabs of one browser share everything over BroadcastChannel).

Live demo: two people, one room, any framework

The two panes below are two separate demo apps in one local room. Ada runs the vanilla <teams-app> and Bob runs the React binding, yet they share one workspace: a room is just a name (?room=), and every binding speaks the same core protocol. They run in local mode, so they talk to each other through your browser only. Type a message as Ada and watch it appear for Bob.

On the home page live demo each pane has its own framework picker, so you can pair any two of Vanilla, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte and Solid.

The same works across real tabs, in any pairing: open the vanilla demo as Ada and, for example, the Vue demo as Bob. Every demo takes the same name and room parameters; only frames and tabs of the same browser can meet in local mode, so for people on different machines you point every binding at your own server instead (see below).

What is and is not supported

Supported	Not supported
Concurrent chat, replies and reactions merged by a Yjs CRDT	End-to-end encryption: your server can read and store everything
Presence and typing indicators	Authenticated identity: names are claims, and the reference server has no accounts
Same-browser collaboration with no server (local mode, as above)	Collaboration between different machines without a server you run
Cross-machine collaboration through your own sync server	A hosted service: none is provided, and the Pages demos have no server behind them
Calls with audio, video, screen share and raise hand (mesh, ~12)	Webinar-size calls, recording, notifications

Across machines

Run the reference server (npx openteams-server) or any server that honours the three contracts (sync, signaling, optional files) and set config.mode to 'server'. See Bring your own server and Deploying. Co-editing Office files is not part of OpenTeams: files are shared as links, and a host can open them in the Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Visio viewer, each with its own collaboration story.