Sometimes you work alone, sometimes you work together. For those cases, we have several built-in tools and features to ease the process.
As NovaScriber works via file-exchange, and file-synchronization, working together in the same document — “Scene 1” for instance — should be done with care, and by taking turns.
The built-in chat will help you exchange info and update the oter(s) when things require intense interaction.
Setting your project for collaboration
- Click on ‘Project settings’ in thje project tree.
- Scroll to ‘Backups and synchronization’
- Click on ‘Add locations’ if you don’t have those set yet.
- Make sure both: ‘On opening a project: synchronize project’ and: ‘On change, immediately: synchronize document’ are checked.
You can set as many remote locations as you like — allowing you to work with different people, using different services, for instance — although it is recommended to keep things simple and limit the locations.
Add comments to paragraphs
Click on the ‘Comments’ tab in the side-panel. Click on a paragraph, or scroll through your text. State your comment in the ‘New comment’ box. Click ‘Quote paragraph text’ to add a quote of the selected paragraph, for reference.
What needs to happen? Set the comment type
Mouse over the ( i ) icon in front of the date of your comment. Select the type of comment.
Filter all ‘Unresolved’
To help you find unresolved issues, click on ‘Unresolved’ in the sidebar. This will show all comments marked as ‘action needed’
Chat
Click on the blue “Chat” bar to open the chat-area. A white speech-balloon indicates there is a new message. The chat-list is refreshed ever 10 seconds.
Blue dot: document dirty-state
The moment you start editing your document, the document becomes “dirty”. This “dirty state” is indicated by a blue dot in front of the title. Once a document is saved, the dot becomes light grey again.
Dirty documents are saved as soon as you cross a period of 5 seconds of inactivity / non-typing.
<control s> to save content now
Press <control> s to save the document immediately.
Seeing changes: refresh the document
Click on the ‘refresh’ icon on the right hand side of the title bar. All document data will be downloaded from the remote location(s) you set and once that is done, the document itself will be refreshed as well.
Reverting to auto-saves and backups
NovaScriber automatically makes a backup of your work, combining the date (and time) of the backup and your user name. You can revert parts (by copy and paste) and the entire text in case things got lost during your collaboration.
Keep in mind that this mechanism does not cover so-called ‘ race conditions’ where you and your college are editing the same document at the same time, potentially cancelling each others work.
(This is one of the reasons we built in the chat-functionality, so you can communicate.)
Take turns
The best thing to do is to take turns on working in the same document. As soon as one of you is done, the other can take over.
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