Sharing library across organizations

Hi Victor, at this moment it’s not possible to share Libraries outside of Organizations.

Organizations are enclosed workspaces so you would only be able to use the Libraries within the Organization and you’re unable to share Libraries within this Organization to be used within other Organizations or the External Spaces workspace. You can check out this article for more information if you’re interested: Share libraries in an organization.

@Victor_Lupan1 have you found a solution to this problem? We have this problem too. We are an agency working for a bank. And the bank has hired several agencies, including us. They have created a library and want that library to be the single source of truth to avoid misalignments and inconsistencies between the different parties. However, if each of us has to create an instance of this library because the parent organization cannot share it with other organizations, that means potential inconsistencies in the future. Please, Figma team, put this into action 🙏

@Gayani_S has your team come up with a solution for sharing libraries outside the organization? We too are running into this. We are a software company and we work with outside agencies. We need the ability to share our product design libraries with these agencies and keep them all in sync so they are all working from the latest files.

The studio-client relationship is not uncommon across all industries, so I’m sure there are many people who would benefit from this feature. We’re also dealing with proprietary information and designs so publishing to a public community is not a viable option.

@Collier_Vinson Stepping in for Gayani – I wish I had an ideal update for you, but at the moment, it’s still not possible for the design library to be used in files that are stored outside your org.

One option you have is to export the file, and let this person import and then publish the library. However, at this point it becomes a unique file with no connection to your original file, so it may not be ideal.

My agency just started work for a client who has their own library, which we will be unable to use. Even if shared with us any updates on their side would result in considerable logistical difficulties on our end. I really wish this was something that could be done. I see versions of this same thread going back at least 3 years which does not bode well for any sort of solve.

so it may not be ideal.

Understatement of the century. Yes it’s not ideal because then it’s not a shared library!

We work on a design system for an organization. We were using Sketch and Invision and have put a lot of effort into migrating to Figma and, while we love using it and amazing things like properties, solid autolayout etc. etc., this is the issue that is close to pushing us away.

The reason being is the organization (funnily enough) needs an organization plan to structure teams and projects for their business units.

But for this use case it’s absolutely essential that the core design system components can be still shared with outside agencies in a straightforward way where they can be kept updated, because the organization doesn’t have in-house designers.

Their projects can run long term and agencies (we know from experience) can’t be trusted to pull in a new unlinked file, identify the components that have changed and swap in the latest versions. And they shouldn’t have to because we know it’s possible!

That ability was an "accidental feature that was disabled – Global live library sharing - #13 by Antoine – but why couldn’t it be re-enabled for an organization who is paying more for their plan?

I wish you could be more transparent about it. If it’s a technical issue fine, it must be a complex beast under the hood. If it’s a business decision to sell editor seats or whatever, then ok that’s your call but then at least we know what the deal is.

But radio silence (or unfit for purpose workarounds) leave us annoyed / confused / disillusioned / angry / wondering what we did in a previous life to deserve this / etc.

✌️

I’m stuck in the same situation. I have an external agency producing some sections of our site and I want then to use my library.

Would a work around be for me to create files that live within our organisation. If I then share the files with them for them to collaborate on would that work?
Or for them to be able to edit would they need an editor license within our organisation?

Same issue here,

We are working for public services where we value the concept of “re-using” between differents services.
Even if I would LOVE that we have only one Figma for all organisations, that is clearly unrealistic right now, so we wanted to share the Design System. But it’s way too complex right now…

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out! I completely understand where you’re coming from.
You may already be aware, but there are similar ideas shared by other community members here: Global live library sharing
Please take a look and feel free to vote and leave a comment there!

Thank you!

Same here, we want to share our cooperate design system with several agencies globally. The enterprise license is so expansive that we can’t invite all of them to our workspace and the management would be too complicated.
The current model that Figma provides does not scale for us.

It’s 2024, and surprising that we don’t have this perk of sharing libraries privately. Some other platforms, such as Adobe XD, had that perk and was easy to share privately between agencies.

I would understand if the designer is using Figma for free but using enterprise license, which is quite expensive, don’t have this feature.

This should be a feature, surprised it is not. I hate how product company focussed Figma is, it’s not built well for agencies.

Having the same problem currently. I could understand if this was not available in the basic licenses, but at least with the organization account I feel like it should be an option to share certain files (libraries) with other organizations (agencies).
As a client I would want to have the library in my own Figma account and maybe have it maintained by external agencies. Many use cases which would justify such an option imho.

Example use case…

Organisation creates an Org wide Design System. None of their Agency partners can access or utilise any of their clients Digital Assets.

Copying files and components out has issues because you can’t duplicate teams, and a move loses all references.

Course an Organisation can invite all it’s agency partners into its own Figma Org at the cost of more seats - with Designers essentially being Billed multiple times for the same person.

+1
When I switched to Figma one huge reason was that it allowed more collaboration.
This limitation seems to fly in the face of that. Totally understand if it was difficult and therefore not free, but at least there should be a way to make this happen 😦

I can’t stress how crucial it would be to repair this process - when working with external contractors it should be possible to share a library without inconveniencing both the contractor and the org!

Despite years of feedback this still looks to not be a focus for Figma (it’s not on the roadmap).

If you care about this please vote for it to be added: Global live library sharing

It’s one of the best ways to communicate your desire for change.

This is a huge blocker in the collaboration... Do you have any recommendations what to do or experience with workarounds for this issue since it looks like it's not a priority for Figma to fix this any time soon?