Sharing & links

Everything you see in the address bar in Openbook is a link you can share. Copy the URL of whatever you are looking at and send it — the recipient lands in the same place.

Links are safe to share

Every identifier that appears in a URL — organizations, spaces, rooms, cards — is an opaque id: a random string, not a sequential number. That has two practical consequences:

• Links are impossible to guess. Nobody can discover your content by incrementing a number in a URL or trying ids at random.
• Links leak nothing. An id reveals nothing about how many organizations, rooms, or cards exist, or when yours was created.

So you can paste an Openbook link into an email, a chat, or a document without worrying that the URL itself exposes anything.

A link being unguessable is not the same as it being public. Recipients still sign in and still need access to the content — the opaque id keeps the URL safe, while access control decides who may open it.

Deep-link to a card

A kanban card's URL includes ?card=…, and opening that URL opens that card directly — not just the board it belongs to.

To point someone at a specific card:

1. Open the card.
2. Copy the URL from the address bar.
3. Paste it wherever you are talking — email, chat, a doc.

The recipient clicks the link and lands on the exact card, after signing in if they are not already, provided they have access. No "it's on the board, third column, near the top" directions needed.

Mentions work the same way: when you are mentioned on a card, the notification deep-links you straight to it — see Notifications.

Links that work without an account

Most of Openbook requires signing in. Six surfaces can be opened deliberately to people who have no account, each with its own switch and its own token:

Surface	What the link gives	Where you turn it on
Published Kanban board	Read-only columns and cards, with descriptions, assignees and dates each off or on separately	The board's Share dialog — see Kanban
Published Docs or Wiki page	The page, read-only, in full	The page's Share dialog — see Docs
Public retro board	Read the board, add cards, vote and comment	The retro board's share settings — see Retro
Feedback portal	Post, vote and comment as a guest; optionally a roadmap and a changelog	The room's Settings — see Feedback
Townhall event	The event page, its talk pages and their chat	Per event — see Town Hall
Townhall speaker page	One speaker's own page, to fill in their details	Per speaker, from the invitation

Three things are true of all of them:

• The token is the credential. There is no sign-in behind these links, so anyone holding one is in. Treat the URL as the secret.
• Rotating the token revokes every copy of the link that has already gone out. That is the only way to un-share one.
• Switching the surface off answers exactly like a wrong token. Nothing in the response confirms that the thing exists, so nobody can probe for it.

Use these deliberately. They are the exception designed for audiences outside your organization; everything else stays behind sign-in.

Everyday sharing patterns

• Hand off a task: paste the card's ?card= link in chat — the assignee opens it in one click.
• Bring someone into a discussion: send the room's URL rather than describing where it is.
• Reference work in a doc or an email: link the exact card or room, so the reference stays one click from the source.
• Invite outsiders to a townhall: switch on guest access and share the event link — no accounts needed.
• Put a board on a wall or a website: publish the board and use the embed snippet from its Share dialog.

Dark mode

The dark mode toggle lives in the top bar. It is an account setting rather than a browser one: choose dark in Openbook and every Bookbag product is dark too, on every machine you sign in from.