Adding awareness of other editors to work item descriptions

Summary

Concurrent editing of descriptions in work items causes conflicts, with one save inevitably overwriting the other. Indicating when someone else is editing can help avoid downstream conflicts by informing users of the potential conflict. Rather than throwing an alert after the fact, the user understands the implication of their actions from the start.

This work relates to Real-time Editing of Issue Descriptions (REID) (#21473); with real-time collaboration the conflict resolution path is different (you're not overwriting, you're co-writing!) but you'd still need visibility into who else is editing alongside you.

Proposal

Indicate presence at the work item level — which users who can participate in the item are viewing this item.

• Why limit to eligible participants? Since the focus is on collaboration, understanding who can collaborate is most important. These are also the users who would appear as editors.

Indicate awareness at the widget level, with a note that the item is currently being edited.

Automatically overwrite changes. In Issues today conflicts prompt confirmation states. Here, the confirmation is implicit — since you can see edits are happening, you're aware of the impact of editing. All changes are still saved as system notes.

See design manager for screens