Document revision: things that can go wrong (part 1)

You should always look at the bright side of things, right? Still, sometimes a backup plan can be very useful. So, in order to prepare one, let’s discuss the scenario and all the things that can go wrong with document collaboration.

Nightmare Number One: Security

You sent a document that was not received. Or perhaps you found a portion of your document online somewhere, bootlegged. Maybe one of your document collaboration companions discovered a worm or virus on his computer. You place your document at risk by submitting it via email. With Agilewords, security of your group collaboration is covered. We understand the need for online safety and secure collaboration. No one but the people you select has access to your document … not even us.

Nightmare Number Two: The Feedback Process

Here’s a common story from the document collaboration “trenches”:
The author wrote the document and emailed it to several parties from whom he/she required input. Then, dreaming of a real-time document collaboration, he patiently waited … and waited … for input.

Some of the reviewers responded, and some did not. Some just happened to respond, asking where the collaborative document was, or just to say they could not open it because they had a different version of MS Word, or to indicate that the attachment was scrambled.

The next step of the document workflow: They proceeded to offer input in a separate email, and the author had to combine the comments into the original file.

Then the author had to perform a document comparison, to make sure he didn’t forget any of his document collaboration companions’ comments. Now we have ourselves a typical case of Version Madness.

Definition: Version madness – The mental stress caused by receiving feedback from multiple reviewers at separate times, in different files or formats, making it difficult to keep track of important changes for the final version of the collaborative document.

The author spends an enormous amount of time cutting, pasting, and growing frustrated – time better spent on writing another document.

Other document collaboration feedback issues include:

• Receiving conflicting feedback
• Receiving feedback too late in the document collaboration process