N
Ned
Greetings.
I work for a large firm with numerous publications and
very few standards as regards Word documents and their
editing, storage, versions, archiving, etc.
Recently we've been having more and more trouble finding
the latest "authorized" version of any given document.
This becomes a real hassle when, for instance, we want to
take a printed document and put it on the Internet. Any
given document may go through a dozen different hands, in
no particular order, before it gets to the printing
stage. Months later, when we come to put it on the Web,
it's anybody's guess which is the final version and where
to find it.
I keep pretty good archives of everything that crosses my
own desk, but I have no control over how other people go
about saving and retrieving such things. Some of my
colleagues delete everything after a certain time, or if
they do save stuff they have no systematic way of finding
it. So anything that I did not personally work on may be
difficult or impossible to locate. And even if I do have
a copy that I worked on, it may have gone through several
other pairs of hands before it sees the light of day. For
instance, back and forth from a product manager to our
legal department, or to and from the original author for
further revisions, etc., etc.
In short, things are chaotic, and it's gotten to the
point where too much time is being wasted trying to
untangle the electronic knots.
My thoughts on how to fix this consist in a two-pronged
attack:
1) Set up shared network folders with specific user
access permissions for each individual project, and
2) Require that those working on any given document learn
to use MS Word's "versions" feature, so people can work
vertically on a single document rather than horizontally
or linearly passing things back and forth amongst
themselves. This would prevent the repeated bifurcation
of the document trail that makes it so hard to decide
which is the most up-to-date version. Right now it can
happen, for instance, that an author will send a document
to three different people at once, making it nearly
impossible to harmonize and incorporate all the
appropriate edits.
I've run this by my colleagues in the legal department,
who are behind the effort 100%. This is important because
if I, as the humble managing editor of my group, try to
implement such a plan, my chaotic colleagues will likely
just nod their heads and say "nice idea" - and promptly
forget the whole thing. If the legal department requires
them to do it, they'll have to sit up and take notice.
Our idea is to try out whatever system we concoct on a
single product at first, learning as we go and eventually
applying it to the entire group and then the whole
company.
What I'd like to know from you is, have you any
experience with this type of problem yourself, or do you
know of any resources that could help me structure the
system in the best way possible? Is there add-on software
to help with this stuff? And so on. I'm sure I'm not the
first to tread this path, and it would be nice not to
have to reinvent the wheel.
Any help you can provide would be most welcome.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ned Humphrey
Managing Editor
Taipan & 247profits.com
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.taipanonline.com
http://www.247profits.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I work for a large firm with numerous publications and
very few standards as regards Word documents and their
editing, storage, versions, archiving, etc.
Recently we've been having more and more trouble finding
the latest "authorized" version of any given document.
This becomes a real hassle when, for instance, we want to
take a printed document and put it on the Internet. Any
given document may go through a dozen different hands, in
no particular order, before it gets to the printing
stage. Months later, when we come to put it on the Web,
it's anybody's guess which is the final version and where
to find it.
I keep pretty good archives of everything that crosses my
own desk, but I have no control over how other people go
about saving and retrieving such things. Some of my
colleagues delete everything after a certain time, or if
they do save stuff they have no systematic way of finding
it. So anything that I did not personally work on may be
difficult or impossible to locate. And even if I do have
a copy that I worked on, it may have gone through several
other pairs of hands before it sees the light of day. For
instance, back and forth from a product manager to our
legal department, or to and from the original author for
further revisions, etc., etc.
In short, things are chaotic, and it's gotten to the
point where too much time is being wasted trying to
untangle the electronic knots.
My thoughts on how to fix this consist in a two-pronged
attack:
1) Set up shared network folders with specific user
access permissions for each individual project, and
2) Require that those working on any given document learn
to use MS Word's "versions" feature, so people can work
vertically on a single document rather than horizontally
or linearly passing things back and forth amongst
themselves. This would prevent the repeated bifurcation
of the document trail that makes it so hard to decide
which is the most up-to-date version. Right now it can
happen, for instance, that an author will send a document
to three different people at once, making it nearly
impossible to harmonize and incorporate all the
appropriate edits.
I've run this by my colleagues in the legal department,
who are behind the effort 100%. This is important because
if I, as the humble managing editor of my group, try to
implement such a plan, my chaotic colleagues will likely
just nod their heads and say "nice idea" - and promptly
forget the whole thing. If the legal department requires
them to do it, they'll have to sit up and take notice.
Our idea is to try out whatever system we concoct on a
single product at first, learning as we go and eventually
applying it to the entire group and then the whole
company.
What I'd like to know from you is, have you any
experience with this type of problem yourself, or do you
know of any resources that could help me structure the
system in the best way possible? Is there add-on software
to help with this stuff? And so on. I'm sure I'm not the
first to tread this path, and it would be nice not to
have to reinvent the wheel.
Any help you can provide would be most welcome.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ned Humphrey
Managing Editor
Taipan & 247profits.com
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.taipanonline.com
http://www.247profits.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~