# Collaboration

At Zed, we believe that great things are built by great people working together.
We have designed Zed to help individuals work faster and help teams of people work together more effectively.

In Zed, all collaboration happens in the collaboration panel, which can be opened via {#kb collab_panel::ToggleFocus} or `collab panel: toggle focus` from the command palette.

You will need to [sign in](../authentication.md#signing-in) in order to access features within the collaboration panel.

## Collaboration panel

The collaboration panel is broken down into two sections:

1. [Channels](./channels.md): Ongoing project rooms where team members can share projects, collaborate on code, and maintain ambient awareness of what everyone is working on.
1. [Contacts and Private Calls](./contacts-and-private-calls.md): Your contacts list for ad-hoc private collaboration.

---

> Note: Only collaborate with people that you trust.
> Since sharing a project gives them access to your local file system, you should not share projects with people you do not trust; they could potentially do some nasty things.
>
> In the future, we will do more to prevent this type of access beyond the shared project and add more control over what collaborators can do, but for now, only collaborate with people you trust.

See our [Data and Privacy FAQs](https://zed.dev/faq#data-and-privacy) for collaboration.
