Excalidraw drawings

Workspace → Excalidraw is the dashboard's whiteboard. It uses the open-source Excalidraw editor and saves every drawing on this server, so anyone signed in to this dashboard can open it from any browser. Since 0.8, several people can edit the same drawing at once.

Create and open a drawingCopy Anchor Link

1. Open Excalidraw. Each drawing appears as a card whose thumbnail shows the drawing itself. Under the thumbnail you'll see the projects, databases, or server the drawing links to.
2. Select New drawing to start an empty one, or select a card to open an existing drawing. Once you have seven or more drawings, a Find a drawing filter appears above the list.
3. Type a name in the field at the top of the editor. A drawing without a name isn't saved, and the header says Name the drawing to save it.

The editor is Excalidraw's own, with its shapes, text, images, export, find, and help. The main menu adds Save to this server. Excalidraw's GitHub, X, and Discord links are removed. An empty canvas offers Add a project, database or this server and Describe a diagram as shortcuts.

To delete a drawing, use the bin button in the editor header or the card's menu in the list. Deleting removes the drawing and its images and can't be undone.

How saving worksCopy Anchor Link

Changes save automatically shortly after you stop drawing. You can also save right away with Save or Ctrl/Cmd+S. Just opening, panning, zooming, or selecting never counts as a change. The header shows where the drawing stands: Unsaved changes, Saving…, Saved on this server, or Save failed — try again.

If you try to leave with changes that aren't saved, Leave without saving? lets you stay or discard them. The browser also warns you before you reload or close the tab. Moving to another dashboard page through the sidebar or search keeps your unsaved changes in that tab's memory and restores them when you come back. A full reload discards them.

Edit togetherCopy Anchor Link

Everyone who has a drawing open joins its live room. Changes, pointers, selections, and names reach the others as they are made, and the header shows who else is there (for example, Live with Ana and Ion). A room holds up to 32 people. Each editor saves their own changes. When an editor has joined the room, their saves merge with the stored drawing element by element. An element someone deleted stays deleted.

A save can still conflict. This happens when a tab that never joined the room (because its connection was down, or it was opened by an older dashboard) saves over a drawing that someone else changed. The header then shows Changed in another tab — reload to review, autosave stops, and Reload loads the current version. The dashboard never silently overwrites the other change. If someone deletes the drawing while you have it open, the header shows This drawing was deleted — changes can’t be saved.

Link the server's resourcesCopy Anchor Link

Select Add server item to open Add from this server. You can place a card for this server, a deployment project, or a saved database connection. The card reads its resource live each time the drawing is open:

• This server shows its hostname, CPU, memory, and uptime.
• A project shows its state and address.
• A database shows whether it answers and its version.

A card whose resource has been removed shows No longer on this server. To go to the resource's page, click into the card and select Open. Cards only navigate. They never deploy, restart, or change a database. Cards placed before 0.8 are plain shapes with the name and state they had when placed, and they still open their pages.

Besides your own resources, you can embed YouTube, Vimeo, and Figma links. Excalidraw's other embeds, such as tweets, gists, and Reddit, are not supported.

Images, library, and diagramsCopy Anchor Link

• Images are stored on the server separately from the drawing and uploaded once, as soon as you place them. Supported formats are SVG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, ICO, and AVIF, up to 8 MiB each. A drawing holds at most 2000 images or 512 MiB, and its scene without images is limited to 16 MiB.
• The shape library is kept on the server, one per installation, so a pack you add shows up in every drawing. Packs from libraries.excalidraw.com are downloaded by the server. A .excalidrawlib file opened from the library menu works too.
• Describe a diagram turns a short description into a Mermaid diagram that you can preview and insert as shapes. It uses the same AI provider as the SQL editor's assistant, so an administrator must set that provider up first under Databases. Only your description is sent to the provider, never the drawing or any server data.

Who can do whatCopy Anchor Link

A readonly account sees drawings in view mode, without save, open, or reset. Drawings have no owner: anyone with edit rights can change any drawing. See Roles and capabilities.

Storage and backupsCopy Anchor Link

Drawings, their images, and the shape library are stored in the dashboard's SQLite database under JD_DATA_DIR. A backup of the dashboard's data includes them. See Backups. Old /boards addresses redirect to /excalidraw.

StickyboardCopy Anchor Link

Stickyboard, the sticky-note board added in 0.7.2, was removed in 0.8. Excalidraw is now the Workspace's only board. Boards made with Stickyboard in 0.7.2 to 0.7.5 remain in the dashboard's database after the update, but no page in 0.8.4 opens them, and they can't be converted into drawings.