Hi Author-it, I hope you can help me with this... I'm looking just at topic updating here...
For Reviewing our Author's original source content, Author-it Reviewer functions just brilliantly, but we'd like to reduce the time we take to review his updated content. I've tried to explain this below. Our current procedure is:
1) There is a requirement to update information in a topic.
2) Our Author updates just three lines of technical information in the topic. 3) He submits the topic to two Developers for Review.
4) When the Developers look at the topic in Author-it Reviewer, they have no means of seeing what
he has changed, so it is necessary for them to review all of the content in the topic. In a single
topic this is not much of a loss in productivity, but when they are reviewing books with hundreds of topics, it adds up to a lot of unnecessary effort.
Is there a way that the Developers can identify the updated content so that they can focus just on that content?
If we start from this, my Reviewers have to look at everything in the topic:
I'd really like to start from this, so that my Reviewers deal with just the updated (highlighted) content, and don't waste any time!
Would this classify as a Feature Request? If so, what is the procedure? Thanks, Tina.
Author-it answer:
Hi Tina, we have discussed your problem and recommend making some changes in your workflow to solve the issue you are having. You don't need to log a Feature Request.
The default Reviewer workflow for updating a topic assumes that your Author has already changed
To meet your requirement you need to tweak this workflow so that your Author does not update in Author-it Editor / Author-it Live, but instead makes proposed / indicated updates in Author-it
Reviewer. In other words, your Author starts by placing the original content into a Review with
himself as the Reviewer. He then uses the normal Author-it Reviewer utilities to propose how he will change the original content.
When he does this, his proposed / indicated changes are
highlighted in the Author-it Reviewer interface in the normal way,
listed in the Discussion Pane as suggestions, and
accessible for further suggestions, comments, and discussion within the interface by Reviewers. As a second stage of the Review, the assigned Reviewers (Developers in your example) then review your Author's proposals. In other words, they conduct a Review of a Review.Using Author-it Reviewer's social-media-style-tools, all participants liaise and brainstorm to agree a final version of the content before your Author then Accepts changes, and Edits / Saves in Author-it Live.
At every point your human resources are focused only on content updates, so no time is wasted!
How your Author can do this in Author-it Reviewer:
1) The Author asks an Administrator to edit the Reviewer’s Notification Settings in Author-it Service Manager to Start Automatically, with a minimal Poll Time. (See Installing and Configuring Service Manager for Reviewer (on page 123))
> This is to enable notifications as close to real-time as possible, to facilitate interactivity between Author and Reviewers.
2) The Author puts just the topic for update into the defined release state for reviewing (for example, a release state called Author Review).
> This will enable access to the topic within the Review, and leave all other topics inaccessible (grayed out).
3) The Author himself initiates/creates a Review Form. As Initiator of the Review, he is automatically also an Editor, which is required so that he can mark topics as Complete without necessarily Accepting/Rejecting comments.
In the Review Form he
adds the book that contains the updated topic,
defines the release state for the Review to match that assigned to the topic,
ensures that the "Move topic to editorial when minimum mandatory reviewers have completed their reviews" check box is un-checked (de-selected), so that he can mark the topic as Complete without dis-engaging it from the Review, and
assigns himself as a Mandatory Reviewer.
4) The Author logs in to the Review and proposes / indicates the updates to the content using the Author-it Reviewer’s normal Replace/Delete/Insert/Comment tools.
> This effectively highlights just his proposed changes, and logs each change in the discussion pane.
[Optional]: Assign Reviewers within this initial stage of the Review if you want them to simultaneously participate in the proposed updates.
5) When he has completed this proposal stage, the Author edits the Review Form to assign the Reviewers as either Optional or Mandatory Reviewers.
6) The Author contacts the Reviewers (by Email, Skype or other means) with instructions for the Review, being sure to inform them:
Dear Reviewer,
The notification period has been set low so that you receive email notifications and News feed notifications as close to real-time as possible - please monitor these during the Review.
Please use the concurrent time period for the Reviewing effort so that we all work on this simultaneously, and can discuss it without time delays.
Please monitor and use the Author-it Reviewer Discussion Pane as a quasi-social media platform to discuss issues.
[For multiple topics] Only my updated topics are accessible for reviewing. Please ignore the inaccessible topics.
Please focus your attention only on highlighted content and its associated Comments/Suggestions in the discussion pane. Ignore all other content!
7) All Reviewers then log in to the second stage of the Review and participate in suggesting and commenting on the Author’s proposed updates (in other words, they Review his Review). 8) When the Review ends, the Author follows the normal procedure to Accept and Reject changes,