We continue to follow our pursuit to enable overall project and team collaboration, and so beginning with version 7.0 simultaneous editing has been also added to TeamLab Office Apps!
How it can speed up your work
The benefits of collaborative file processing in the cloud are evident:
- time saving for business and decision making processes across teams of any sizes;
- no more need in endless correspondence with bulky attachments;
- an opportunity for distributed teams to discuss and process a document from any part of the world
What options exactly it provides
- simultaneous multi-user access to the edited document;
- visual indication of passages that are being edited by other users;
- synchronization of changes with one button click;
- chat to share ideas concerning particular document parts;
- comments containing the description of a task or problem that should be solved
In other words you can now work with one text document at the same time with your colleagues without any difficulty or fear of collision due to the technology chosen. The paragraph, that you’re editing, is locked from other teammates and it’s clearly indicated who is editing what at a certain moment. The real-time collaboration is reinforced by the embedded chat and commenting option.
Not only TeamLab Office registered members will be able to benefit from collaborative editing. It means you can attract colleagues outside the corporate portal by submitting a link and granting access permissions.
At the moment collaborative editing is available for text files, but in the next releases you’ll be able to benefit from it also in spreadsheets.
We have started to test and use the collaborative editing. Actually, we are not very excited about it yet. TeamLab states: “…without any difficulty or fear of collision due to the technology chosen. The paragraph, that you’re editing, is locked from other teammates and it’s clearly indicated who is editing what at a certain moment.”
Not really true, unfortunately. What happened with us: Colleague A and B were working in a large document at the same time, without knowing they both were. B opened the document before A did, but she saved it later than A. This resulted in two versions of the document: One with all changes made by A (but without those by B) and one document with all changes made by B (but without those by A). Edits are not synchronized.
It is inconvenient that you can’t see WHAT someone is typing, only WHERE. You still have to wait for them to save the document (which should be automated?) before you can see their actual changes.
Looking forward to and hoping for improvements of the editor!
Hi, Jacqueline!
Thank you very much for your feedback.
The situation that you’ve described sounds a little bit strange, because users are supposed to see each other in the document if both are editing it in real time. Besides, whenever one user saves changes, the other can not close the file without refreshing and seeing the changes made by the other person.
We’ve tested all the possible scenarios and couldn’t get the same result as you’ve described. It sounds like probably your colleagues were editing two different docs with the same name.
Could you please describe with a little bit more details the 2 final versions that you got? Is it possible to make a screenshot?
We would really appreciate that willing to figure out what’s the problem.
Best regards,
Nina
Do you have any video of that? I’d want to find out some additional information.
Please, feel free to ask here, or in our Facebook community.
The video is in the process of preparing, but we’ll be glad to help you.