PDFTron offers two solutions for document collaboration.

• Pre-built solution (recommended)
• Build it yourself

Pre-built solution

WebViewer Collaboration is a set of NPM modules that allow you to rapidly implement a real-time collaboration system into any application.

This is the recommended approach to adding real-time collaboration to your application.

The WebViewer Collaboration modules support the following features:

• Real-time annotation syncing
• User authentication and permissions
• Email and browser notifications
• Scroll synchronization
• Built-in testing suite for testing your implementation
• Much more!

WebViewer Collaboration is free to use with a WebViewer license. Claim your Collaboration license here.

Build it yourself

WebViewer's JavaScript document collaboration library contains APIs that allow you to export/import annotations from/to a document. Using those APIs and a server, you can set up realtime collaboration easily. This guide provides a simple example that covers:

• Authenticating users
• Exporting/Importing annotation data to/from server
• Setting the user permissions of each annotation on both server and client side

You can find the full version of the sample in your download package, WebViewer/samples/annotation/realtime-collaboration/.

Get started

Setup WebViewer for collaboration
To setup WebViewer to manage a server and client realtime collaboration.

Realtime collaboration server
To setup a database server to trigger events for create/modify/delete operations.

Realtime collaboration client
To setup a client application to listen or trigger events for create/modify/delete operations.