Map Sharing and Visibility
With the recent release of Account Folders, we felt this was a good opportunity to emphasize another aspect of map organization: map sharing, or to put it another way, “who can see my map?”
CalTopo map sharing supports four levels of visibility: Public, URL, Secret, and Private. After looking at these, we’ll also cover shareable links, which allow you to give additional permissions for specific maps.
A note for CalTopo Teams users: this post applies to access to team maps for people outside of your team. Sharing within your team is determined by team membership and subteam permissions. To limit which data is shared with which team members, consider using sub-teams and collaboration on workspaces. For an in-depth discussion of these topics see our video series about using your team account.
Map Sharing: Visibility
You save a map in CalTopo. Can other people view that map? It depends on that map’s sharing level. There are four options: Public, URL, Secret, and Private. The default setting is URL.
Public:
Public maps are not only visible to anyone on the web, they will show up in search engine results. Public maps are also incorporated into our own Shared Maps Layer, which lets users explore maps that other people have made. Use this setting to share your maps with the world. Avoid this setting if you want more control over who will view your map.
URL:
The URL permission setting makes it easy to share a map for others to view, without having this map included in web searches or the CalTopo Shared Maps layer. An example URL looks like this: https://caltopo.com/m/RP0V0. Use the URL setting to keep things simple. It’s easy to share URL maps for other people to view. However, a 5-digit code does not provide much security; if you don’t want just anyone stumbling across your map, consider moving it to secret.
Secret:
Secret maps require a special code, which we call a shareable link, for anyone besides the map owner to view the map. That link will look like this: https://caltopo.com/m/Q2F0K/14N6CNM9L5B1MS80, which is much longer and harder to share than the URL alone. Use secret when you have sensitive data on the map, or you want a higher level of control over who can access the map. Avoid using secret when you need to more easily and broadly share the map.
Private:
Private maps can only be viewed by the map owner, no exceptions. If you previously shared a map but then changed the sharing to private, anyone with previous access to that map will lose access. Only use private when you do not need to share the map, ever. You may also want to use it if you have very sensitive data, or if you need to unshare a previously shared map. When you change a map to private, even those who have it bookmarked will no longer be able to access it.
How to Share Maps:
To let someone view your map, Public and URL maps can be shared using the map url such as caltopo.com/m/RP0V0. For secret maps, you will need to create a shareable link. Shareable links can also be used to give other people additional editing access to a map.
CalTopo has three permission levels describing what someone else who is viewing your map can do to that map: Read, Update, and Write. Typically, someone viewing your map will have Read permissions, meaning they can view the map objects and interact with the map, but they cannot add or edit anything on that map.
With a shareable link, you could give out Update or Write permissions. A person with Update access can add objects to the map, but cannot edit any objects that someone else added to the same map. Write access then gives full edit permissions to that map.
Bookmarks:
When you access a map that another user owns, you have the opportunity to bookmark that map in your account. When you open a link to an outside map on your mobile device, or use a shareable link, a bookmark is created automatically.
When you bookmark a map, you will see in your account list what level of edit permissions you have to that map (read, update, write). If the owner of the map deletes the map or changes the sharing to Private, you will lose access to the map
CalTopo is designed for sharing. We make it easy to share between users, whether that be for your ski tour or to bring multiple agencies together for a missing person search. Having a good understanding of the sharing access levels and edit permissions enables you to get the full power of CalTopo. You are in control of who can access or edit your maps.
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