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> Hello everyone, Doughty here.
>
> We have recently started putting review copies on a SharePoint page and
> telling reviewers to get their review copies (PDFs) there. In
> particular, we want them to:
>
> 1. Check out the copy.
> 2. Make edits to it. (Commenting has been enabled in the PDF.)
> 3. Check in the copy.
<snip>
>
> Do other people successfully use SharePoint in this way to manage
> reviews? or in some similar way?
In the past, we've posted comment-enabled PDFs to a Sharepoint site, but haven't used check-out/check-in. Instead, reviewers were told to save the PDF locally, add comments/markup, and email it back to the tech writer. Obviously, this eliminates both the advantages and disadvantages of letting each reviewer see other reviewers' comments.
We're starting to roll out a new workflow supported by FM 10/Acrobat X Pro (the capability is older than that, but without the full FM integration and maybe with fewer features; I'm not sure). Of course, you can set up the same review process for PDFs made from other authoring tools by doing so in Acrobat (for MS Office products, you may be able to do it in the Acrobat add-in).
I haven't played with this process yet, but a colleague recently did a nice presentation and demo, and it looked pretty slick. Here's my colleague's bullet-list summary of the workflow:
*The writer posts a PDF on a network server (Sharepoint in our case) directly from FrameMaker 10.
*Users access the PDF via Sharepoint or an emailed link to Sharepoint.
*Users review the PDF in-place on Sharepoint and push their PDF comments to the server.
*Users can view other reviewer comments and use Adobe's commenting tools to answer questions about comments or ask their own questions.
*Writer tracks and closes out comments as they are addressed, using the Adobe review tracking tool.
Note that this workflow can be used with any network file share, not just Sharepoint. And it doesn't use Sharepoint's version control / CMS features (thus no check-in/check-out). It's all managed by the Adobe tool, using version tracking metadata that it puts into a special folder on the server or into the Sharepoint library. Multiple reviewers can work on the PDF simultaneously.
Search for "shared reviews" at Adobe.com for more info.
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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