Inviting external collaborators
Share a project with a consultant, contractor, or client at another firm: invite a Directory contact, get the share approved, and manage their access.
Share a project with people at another firm — a structural consultant, a GC, an owner's rep — so you work in one project record instead of forwarding files. When you finish this guide, the person you invited can open your project in their own Cogram account, with the role you chose.
When to use this
A consultant needs to follow the project's meetings, chat, and documents as the work happens.
A contractor should post updates in the project chat rather than email them.
A client or owner's rep needs read access to the project record.
For sharing a single asset (one meeting, transmittal, RFI, or submittal) rather than a whole project, see External collaborators.
Prerequisites
You are an owner of the project, or an admin or owner of your organization.
The collaborator is a contact in your Directory, with their work email address. Personal addresses (Gmail, Outlook.com, and similar) are not accepted — sharing is firm-to-firm.
Invite a collaborator
You invite a Directory contact, not a bare email address — the invitation is tied to a person your firm already tracks. Start from whichever surface you are on; all three open the same dialog:
Directory: open Contacts and select Invite to project on the contact's row or on their contact page. Under All Projects, the button reads Invite to project, and the dialog asks which project to share.
Project chat: select Invite a collaborator at the bottom of the channel list.
Project overview: go to Overview → Access, scroll to External collaborators, and select Invite a collaborator.
Then, in the dialog:
Confirm the Contact, or search for one if it isn't filled in already.
Pick a Role:
Member — posts in chat, uploads files, takes part in the project's day-to-day work.
Viewer — read-only. External collaborators can never be project owners.
Select Send invite.
The confirmation tells you what happened: the invite went out at once, it is waiting for an admin's approval, or the person was added directly because their firm already collaborates on this project.
If the contact cannot be invited
The dialog (and the grayed-out button in the Directory) states the reason:
The contact is in your organization, or their email is on your organization's domain
Add them to the project as a member instead — they are not external.
The contact has a personal email address
Ask for their work address and update the contact. Sharing across firms needs a work email.
The contact is already on this project, or already has an invite on it
Nothing to do; check the invite's status under Overview → Access.
The contact is archived
Restore the contact in the Directory first.
Approval
Cross-firm shares are a governance decision, so they need an organization admin or owner to approve them:
If you are an org admin or owner yourself, your invite is approved automatically and the invitation email goes out at once.
If you are a project owner, the share appears under Overview → Access → External collaborators with an Awaiting Approval badge, and your organization's admins and owners are notified. One of them opens the same section and selects Approve.
The collaborator receives their invitation email only after approval.
What the collaborator sees
The invitation email links them into Cogram, where they accept or decline the share. If they do not have a Cogram account yet, signing in with the invited email address sets one up. On accept, your project appears in their project list — the project and everything they add to it stay in your firm's workspace.
Their side of the flow is described in External collaborators.
Managing and revoking access
The External collaborators section under Overview → Access lists every share with its role and status. To end a share, select the remove (trash) icon on its row — access ends immediately, and the person disappears from the project's member list. Project owners and org admins/owners can revoke.
If you invite a second person from a firm that already collaborates on the project, there is nothing new to accept: their firm already agreed, so on approval the person is simply added under the existing share's role.
Expected result
Overview → Access → External collaborators shows the share as Accepted, and the collaborator appears in the project's members.
In project chat, they take part according to their role — see Project chat.
Troubleshooting
The share sits at Awaiting Approval and nothing happens
Likely cause: no organization admin or owner has approved it yet.
Fix: your org's admins and owners were notified when you invited; follow up with one of them, or have them open the project's Overview → Access tab and select Approve under External collaborators.
The contact cannot be invited because their email is a personal address
Likely cause: the contact's email is on a consumer domain (Gmail, Outlook.com, and similar).
Fix: update the contact in the Directory with their work email address. Sharing is firm-to-firm.
The invited person says they never received an email
Likely cause: the share has not been approved yet — the email goes out on approval.
Fix: check the status in the Team tab. If it shows Awaiting Approval, an org admin needs to approve first.
Next steps
Project chat — how guests take part in the conversation
Project roles — what Member and Viewer mean
External collaborators — the collaborator's side of the flow
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