What Is Sharing?
Sharing lets you create password-protected, read-only links to your story map. Anyone with the link and password can view the board. No Cartographer account is required.
This is for external stakeholders: customers who want to see their roadmap, executives who need an overview, partners checking an integration timeline, or board members reviewing progress. They get a live view of your map without being added to your workspace.
How Sharing Works
Enabling Sharing
Sharing is off by default. To enable it:
- Open the share dialog from your project.
- Toggle sharing on.
- Set a password for the shared link.
- Copy the generated link and send it to your recipient.
That is it. The recipient opens the link, enters the password, and sees the board. No sign-up flow, no invitation emails, no account management.
What Recipients See
Recipients see a read-only version of your story map. They can browse journeys, expand steps, and read card details, but they cannot edit anything. No cards can be created, moved, updated, or deleted through a shared link.
Shared links are read-only. There is no way for a recipient to change your data through a shared link, no matter what they try. The board reflects the current state of your project, but it is view-only.
View-Scoped Sharing
By default, a shared link shows the full board. You can also scope a shared link to a specific saved view, so recipients see only the filtered version you choose.
This means you can create different links for different audiences:
- A customer roadmap link that shows only cards tagged with that customer, with internal notes hidden.
- A leadership overview link that shows objectives and milestones with detail collapsed.
- A partner integration link that focuses on the journeys relevant to a specific integration.
Each scoped link can have its own password, so you can manage access for each audience separately. See Views for how to set up the filters that power scoped sharing.
Password Protection
Every shared link requires a password. This gives you a simple way to control access:
- Revoke access. Change the password and the old link stops working. Anyone who had the previous password loses access right away.
- Rotate regularly. For sensitive roadmaps, change passwords on a schedule, for example every quarter, to limit exposure.
- Disable entirely. Toggle sharing off to deactivate all shared links at once. You can turn it back on later without losing your configuration.
Passwords are not stored in plain text. Cartographer hashes them before storage, so even if the database were compromised, shared link passwords would not be exposed.
Use Cases
- Customer QBRs. Share a view scoped to a specific customer before a quarterly business review. They see what has been delivered, what is in progress, and what is planned, without seeing other customers’ roadmaps.
- Executive reporting. Give leadership a permanent link to an overview. They can check progress anytime without asking for a status update.
- Partner and board updates. Share a focused view with external partners or board members. They get enough context to stay aligned without seeing internal implementation detail.
- Cross-team alignment. Share a view with another team in your organization that does not use Cartographer. They can see the plan without learning a new tool.
- Sales enablement. Let sales share a customer-specific roadmap view during deal cycles to show product direction and commitment.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of creating views and sharing them externally, see the shared views example.
