Hello!  
I was hoping to get an idea of how others keep track of versions of a project that may be worked on by multiple team members.  My team has been growing from just me to now two other people that are slowly learning to use Smartbuilder and have been creating projects and then having me go through and check them out.  At the moment, we are using Google Drive to share files but at times, it gets a bit messy.  Any good systems you all use to share files and keep them up-to-date?  
Scott

Hi Scott,

We have started using Google Drive to store our source files (we also use a file server and FTP software to upload/download source files for some projects).
We listed a few features we needed:

1. A shared place where authors can obtain the latest version of sb4 files
2. A way to indicate that someone is editing the latest version so others don’t edit it at the same time, leading to version conflicts
3. A way to edit notes about what has changed (occasionally)
4. A way to roll back to previous versions (occasionally)

 
Here’s what we’re currently trying out to meet the above needs:
 

1. We create shared folders in Google Drive for each project. When uploading a new version of the lesson, we use the Manage Version menu and UPLOAD NEW VERSION feature.
2. Each author adds a prefix of their initials to the file name when they are working on the lesson, then removes the prefix when they have uploaded a new version and are no longer working on it. For example:  “Introduction to Project Management.sb4” becomes “(RP) Introduction to Project Management.sb4”. The prefix means – don’t download/edit this file until Robert Penn has checked it back in.
3. For version notes, we don’t bother to create these in most cases. We’re not aware of a way to add version comments in Drive, but will add comments in a text box off stage on page one, if we think they’ll be helpful.
4. We rarely need to roll back to a previous version, but Drive allows you to download old versions, if needed.

Of course, specialist document management software like box and dropbox can do the above a bit more seamlessly, but is overkill for what we need.
You may already be using these features, so I’d be curious to know if you have other ideas. Also, when you say “it gets a bit messy”, what problems are you running into?

Thanks,

Rob

This is a great flow, Rob. Thanks for getting back to me.  Your first three needs are quite similar to ours.  

When I said that "Things can get a bit messy" I was referring more to the multipler versions that end up on my computer as I download from the drive.  Are you deleting the saved .sb4 from your machine once you've added it to the drive?  

No problem Scott. Regarding the multiple versions that end up on our local computers, we increment a version number in the sb4 file name (e.g. sample_v4.sb4) after we download from drive. We currently don't have a hard rule about deleting old local copies, but probably should delete these to avoid confusion.
There is a Google Drive desktop app that lets you sync local files to the cloud Drive. But, this will automatically update the cloud version each time someone makes a local change, which would short circuit the process mentioned in step 2. However, this could be useful for projects that you work on by yourself (without collaboration).