Allowing entire team to edit a document together (Part 4)
In Part 1 , I have attempted to explain the different kinds of sites you can create in WSS 2003. I have also “said” that to allow entire team to edit the same document at the same time, you need document workspaces.
In Part 2 , we have explored what are the steps required to enable collaboration between the team members by allowing team members to work on the same document together.
In Part 3 , we will explore how we can consolidate all the changes made by different parties.
Since Part 2 , the document we have been authoring actually lives on our local hard disk, if you have noticed. So what do we do with it? This is what we will be exploring.
Offline Document Collaborating
The collaboration we have considered in Part 3 is actually close to real-time collaboration. However, because Word saves a local copy, which contains information about the workspace, we can actually do offline collaborations, if I can call it this way.
A really usefully scenario to use offline collaboration is when your team members are mobile, people like agents, or those who travel overseas a lot. The main reason is you are able to edit the document offline, and once you return to office, you can merge the changes into the workspace copy.
So before your team members travel, each individual team member must complete Part 2 , to have a local copy in the hard disk. So while they travel, they can fire up the local copy and start working on it, saving the changes like they would with a normal document.
The only extra step they need to take is, when they have access to the workspace, open up the document. Word will prompt the user if they want to check for any updates from the workspace. After getting the updates, they will be asked to update the workspace copy on the “Shared Workspace” pane. The rest of the steps are similar to Part 3 .
Conclusion
Collaborating using workspace offers advantages over collaboration using file server, or passing the document to each other via email. I hope you can see the advantages when reading this four part series.
Do let me know if you have any comments / suggestions / criticism.