Multi-user collaborative software applications may synchronize data between multiple users or multiple devices. There are multiple existing ways to synchronize data. Some of these synchronization methods, such as file locking, are easy to implement but have performance or functionality drawbacks. Operational transformation (OT) is a high performance synchronization method, but difficult and time-consuming to implement in many cases, and cannot be partially implemented throughout a system. Methods and systems provide for blending operational transformation with other synchronization methods in the same collaborative software application, allowing operational transformation to be used in situations where it cannot be implemented throughout a system.