By Dani Beaumont
In an earlier release of Adobe XD we delivered password protection for prototypes, allowing you to securely share your content with stakeholders online. We've recently added this feature to Design Specs. This is a really powerful capability with a few nuances that are worth taking a look at. Let me step you through the process.
I'm here in Adobe XD and a project I've been working on is now ready to be handed off to my development team for production. Because the topic is rather sensitive to our client, I want to protect the content when I publish the specification online. I'm here in a prototype mode and if I select all of the artboards, you can see that I've wired together each of the artboards into a particular flow that I want to indicate to my client. One point worth making when you're publishing to Design Specs if you have no wires on any of your artboards, all of the artboards in the project will be uploaded to Design Specs. If not, if you've wired at least two artboards together, it's only the wired artboards that will get uploaded to Design Specs. Well, I'm ready to go ahead and take this design live. So the first thing I'll do is come to the upper right hand corner to the Share menu and click it, and select Publish Design Specs.
I've not published a spec before so I'll come in and assign a name. We'll call it CeeYa_Mock_01. And I'll give it a version 0.1. I want to require the password so I'll click that checkbox. And then I need to meet the requirements of the password, so we'll try XDRocks01. And when I meet that password requirement, the Create Public Link becomes active. I'll go ahead and click it and now that the specs have been taken live, I can go and take a look at them. To do so, I can come here and click on Open Link. This is going to open up a web browser and direct me to that specification. Now, because I've assigned a password here, I'm going to need to enter it to get any details about the spec. Notice that I don't even see the name of the specification until I enter the right details. So we'll try XDRocks. Let's say, I forget to add the 01 to the end. When I click on View it will let me know that the password is incorrect. I can try again XDRocks01 and I'll click on the View button. From here, I can use Design Specs the way I ordinarily would.
Let's go back to the application. I just want to point out a few other details. Let's say I want to create a second version of this mock-up. There's different ways you can publish that aren't necessarily apparent. One is, if I want to simply change the name but I want the URL that I've generated to stay the same, I can just come in and update that name. So maybe I'll call it CeeYa_Mock_02, to reflect the changes that I've made. The URL stays the same, the password would stay the same unless I changed it, but the name would be different. I also have the ability to easily version my mock-ups. So let's say I am looking to create a second instance but I want to make sure that I retain the first instance because this is called CeeYa_Mock_02 - it's currently going to update that existing URL unless I change the name.
Let's change the password. So we'll call that one XDRocks02, and I'll click New Link. This will publish a second instance of the mock-up, keeping my first instance there for archiving purposes. To manage any of the specs or prototypes that I've published in the past, I'll come to that Share drop-down menu and this time I'll select Manage Publish Links. This takes me to my Creative Cloud assets directory. You'll notice on the left hand side I have a category for prototypes and specs. And here, within that view, I can see the mock-up that I've uploaded, both version 1 and version 2. I'm free to come to any of the older versions that I no longer want and simply delete the shared link, so that it's no longer live on the web. I encourage you to give this feature a try.
Protecting your Adobe XD designs with a password is simple in Share mode. Whether you are publishing Design Specs or sharing a presentation deck, each share link in Adobe XD can be password protected to keep it from prying eyes. When viewers navigate or attempt to access the share link URL they will be prompted to enter the password. As changes are made in the design, simply update the link and those with access will be able to see the recent changes.
