Ability for multiple active users in a project
J
John A
A simple solution to this is when changes are done, send that change as a pending change to the server and update the project for anyone who has it open with a 'pending' flag on the changes. New product? Call it "New Product - pending" or something.
R
Ross Gamblen
I'm a designer and I frequently have to check a project back in and work on something else for half an hour while the purchasing dept updates the logistic fields of the products.
As a half way house, would it be possible for users that don't have the project checked out to only update limited data base fields such as price, order status, expected delivery date etc? Two users will never be able to make major changes concurrently with out risk of cancelling each other out but it might be possible to allow the completion of fields not yet defined? Otherwise, is it possible to define data base fields as belonging to an operations, purchasing or designer role or full admin (as it is now) to allow a choice as to which role you are checking the project out as?
A
Andy Hill
Ross Gamblen: I feel what Ross is suggesting is partly the answer moving forward although not neccessarily a complete solution. We run into instances regularly during deliveries and confirming PO Item Receipts. A massively failing is the way serial numbers are entered into DTools. As products come inbound to our warehouse, we need to assign the serial number to the location of the product which isnt possible without checking out the project.
If it were possible to edit certain columns without adding or deleting products or changing wire connections etc. That would be a great step in the right direction.
Jason Wall
As far as I can see, the way SI works wouldn't allow multiple users to work on a project in a google docs type of way without all your projects being in the cloud and every update you make being added and saved to the cloud, then immediately pushed back out to all of the live users. For this functionality, I would think that SI would require a complete overhaul and basically become a completely new program. This may be a feature that could be implemented in the cloud version of SI, but I haven't really explored that too much yet.
Maybe a way this multiple user editing could be done is to give everyone the ability to check out the project, then any edits that have been done get compiled into a list for a project manager to then approve and add to a project. That way there would be no conflicts, but it would require more work for someone to go through everyone's edits and approve rather than each person just taking their turn to edit and then ending up with a complete project at the end. This could be a good thing though if you wanted to be the final person to make sure that every change people have made along the way is working towards the end goal and the project contains everything it needs.
I initially thought I would be against this feature, but after working through that potential solution I think I may upvote this one. It would take a lot of work to implement it though, plus it may throw out some people's workflow within the structure, but it could be a cool addition to allow flexibility in the way people work.
B
BILLY W KILPATRIC
Though I used to agree with this capability, there would be too many instances of one person's saved work overwriting another. This coould work with a "Save As" feature added to the multiple open works and disallow any of the same "named" files. If allowed, then someone would have to compile all the changes. So, I have to vote this one don.