Disclosed embodiments provide for collaborative access to a distributed data structure. Operations such as inserting, deleting, and annotating are performed by various clients participating in the collaboration. A serialization service enforcing a single order of these operations and ensures the operations and order are communicated to all of the clients participating in the collaboration. Once all clients have acknowledged particular operations, this information is also communicated to all of the clients, such that the clients may perform maintenance activities on the collaboration data structures. The result is a rolling collaboration window shared by all of the clients of the collaboration, with a bottom of the collaboration window defined by a lowest ordered operation not yet acknowledged by all clients of the collaboration, and a highest ordered operation as assigned by the serialization service.