dynodoc. Open workspace Help & tutorials
A practical guide to editing, sharing and keeping a clear history of your research.
The Help & tutorials button in the workspace, editor and admin screen replays the guided tour. Use this page whenever you need a longer explanation.
Start in the workspace. Create a document, spreadsheet or questionnaire. Upload Word, Excel, CSV or LaTeX files, or import from a connected research tool. Review the conversion notes before creating the editable copy. Your original upload remains downloadable.
Open the editor. Use the formatting ribbon and document tabs for writing. Use the formula bar and sheet tabs for data. Right-click text, cells or a sheet tab for editing actions. LaTeX equations can be inserted from the equation button and edited by clicking them.
Use Share or Team workspaces. Owners and managers organize access. Editors change content; reviewers comment and suggest; viewers read. Organization and team access flows into their folders. A direct invitation can add stronger access. Removing a direct invitation does not remove an inherited role.
Create a personal draft. A personal draft is your own version of the document. Try a different question or edit a paragraph. Bring in the latest shared changes, compare your work and choose which changes to share. Review competing changes before merging.
Save a named version. Name milestones such as Ethics submission or Fieldwork approved. Open Who changed this? to inspect recorded edits. Restoring an earlier version adds new history; it does not erase the work that came after it.
Publish from the Share panel. Create a read-only public link when the content is ready to leave your team. It shows a saved copy, without comments, original uploads or history. Choose an expiry, or revoke it whenever needed. Later edits require a new public copy.
Open Help & tutorials. Replay this guide from the help button. Documents in Trash can be restored. Use original-file downloads and exports to keep a copy outside Dynodoc. Test complex questionnaires in the collection platform before fieldwork.
Use the ribbon to format selected text. Right-click for comments, clipboard actions and table tools. Add a tab for an appendix or another part of the document. Insert equations with the ∑ button. Click an equation to change its LaTeX source.
Choose a cell, then type or edit its formula in the formula bar. Shift-select to work with a range. Right-click cells for row, column and comment actions; right-click sheet tabs to rename, duplicate or move sheets. A comment is attached to the stable row block.
Choose an answer type, variable name and label. Add choices or create sections and repeats. Location & grouping moves questions into groups. Logic & validation controls expressions. Advanced XLSForm fields keep appearance settings, translations and dataset references.
Review all conversion notes. Word and Excel features have different levels of support. Google Forms and research API imports create snapshots. Overleaf uses .tex and ZIP interchange. Keep the original when formatting or specialized behavior matters.
You can use the workspace without learning Git commands. This mapping explains which ideas inspired the workflow. Dynodoc has a centralized block history; it is not a Git repository or an offline distributed editing system.
| Version-control idea | In Dynodoc |
|---|---|
| Initialize | Create a document |
| Clone | Make a copy |
| Branch | Personal draft |
| Local work | Changes in your current browser or personal draft |
| Remote | The shared document saved on the server |
| Commit | Save a named version |
| Stage | Choose changes to share |
| Push | Share selected draft changes |
| Pull | Bring in shared changes |
| Merge | Combine reviewed changes |
| Conflict | Choose between competing edits |
| Blame | Who changed this? |
| Switch / checkout | Open another draft or view an earlier version |
| Restore | Apply an earlier version as new changes |
| Grep | Search documents or history |
| Ignore | Leave a change out of the selected set; it stays in your draft |
An organization can contain teams; teams can contain folders. Inherited permissions and direct invitations are combined, with the strongest role applying. Only the owner or a workspace manager controls document sharing, publication and Trash. Removing direct access does not cancel an inherited grant.
Trash preserves content, drafts, uploads and history. Restoring a document does not reactivate revoked public links. Administrators can disable accounts and restore them later; old sessions remain invalid. Permanent erasure requires a separately reviewed retention process.
The preview runs a documented subset of survey expressions. It is not an ODK Collect or Kobo runtime. Test repeats, media capture, device metadata, external datasets, translations and advanced logic in the actual destination platform, with the attachments you intend to use.
ODK question types · Google Forms authorization · Overleaf project files