- Earlier in this course
I talked about some tools
that let you live coedit documents,
like Google Docs and Office 365.
It's pretty cool to be working on a presentation
and see that one of your team members
is working on it at the same time,
and see what changes they're making live while it happens.
But, although many collaboration tools
allow live coediting, there might be times
when that's not a good idea.
Your workflow may require a more formal process.
But how would you decide?
I'll be honest, this can be difficult to define
in general terms.
My feeling is that this is very situational.
It's going to change from organization to organization,
from project to project,
and maybe even from file to file.
But let's try and set some general guidelines, okay?
I think one place where coediting
is extremely useful is in allowing a team
to keep a log or status document up to date.
If everyone has an assigned area of the file to work in,
it's a lot more convenient if people
can be working on their bits at the same time.
Another place where I've used live coediting
to good effect is when working directly with someone
in another location on something like a presentation
or a draft of a publication.
I've had some great calls where I'm talking
to one or more people
and everyone is able to dive right into the file in question
and move stuff around while we're speaking.
However, there have definitely been some places
where coediting has caused difficulties.
I think the biggest problems
have been caused by people working on files offline
where they've downloaded them to make their changes,
then loaded their version back up
while someone else is working on the file.
I've seen this cause issues with syncing
or even locking or corrupting files.
I think the way around this is to have
a very strong understanding among the people
working on the file that they will only work on it online.
Some collaboration tools like SharePoint
actually allow the administrator to prohibit downloads.
You may want to think about that.
If your process has stringent governance requirements,
or if there's a workflow involved
that requires work to be done
in a specific sequence,
I think you need to go with checking the document out
before doing any work.
This will typically prevent anyone else
from editing the document
until you check it back in.
They'll still be able to see the last saved version
but your changes don't become visible
until you're done working.
There are some problems inherent with this too,
the biggest one being the person who forgets
to check the document back in.
Luckily, almost every tool
has a way for the administrator to override a checkout,
but it can be a real pain in the neck.
The other problem is also behavioral.
Someone can't check the document out
because it's already checked out,
so they download a copy and work on that,
and all of a sudden you have two unreconciled documents.
People, don't do this.
So, bottom line, you'll need to understand your work,
your team, your needs,
and make decisions accordingly.
I like coediting but I know it's not always right.
One more tip.
Don't try and manage this at the file level.
Group like documents together
and manage it at the highest level possible.
For instance, in SharePoint
I would keep coedit files and checkout files
in two separate libraries.
This is going to make managing permissions
and everything else much more workable.