Simultaneous Multi-Authoring - Risks?

Andrew Hale

• November 02, 2022 19:00

Hello Folks-

 

Several authors at my company were trained to use WorkLink Create by Luke Gustafson.  We asked him "what happens if separate authors try to edit the same scenario at the same time?"  He told us that it's not recommended and advised us to communicate with each other before opening a scenario we've shared with teammates, to ensure we aren't opening one that's already open by someone else.

Our team of authors is very much a team, we share work and co-author frequently.  It's a bit of a hassle to contact each other when we want to work on projects.  And sometimes we forget to call our peer, open the project, then panic because we don't know if our peers had it open and wonder if it broke our project!

Could you confirm that advice we got from Luke a long time ago is still correct?  We'd love to hear that he was wrong, or that an improvement was made after that training.

If his advice is still correct, could you let us know what kinds of problems could be encountered if we accidentally co-author?

If it's risky to multi-author, we will likely make a feature request to block multi-authoring or make it obvious from the Projects list that a scenario is open for editing and who has it open.

 

Thanks for the latest advice,

Andy

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  Precious

  • November 03, 2022 22:49

  

  Hi Andy,
  Thank you for your post.
  Indeed, there was a time when this was an issue but not anymore with the introduction of the "Version history".
  The version history functionality helps you identify the most recent save by any author, making it the first available version on the list. This means that while 2 authors can work on the same project, the most recent save by either will be the first on the list and you can also decide to open other previously saved versions as well.
  Please let me know if you have any questions.

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  Andrew Hale

  • November 03, 2022 23:30

  Hi Precious-

  That's great, I did not know about the Version History function available by right clicking a project name in the Project List.  I just checked it out, and it is quite helpful.  Thank you!

  I'm excited about the capability to open previously saved versions!  We've been making project backups by duplicating projects.  With the Version History function, we can simply refer to an older version instead of making duplicates.

  I'll share and discuss Version History with my teammates, and get back to you if we have any questions.

  Thanks again,

  Andy

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  Precious

  • November 03, 2022 23:47

  

  You are welcome, Andy. Happy to help. Please feel free to add more comments/questions anytime.

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