Version control of documents can be a major problem for collaborative writing. Although there are plenty of options for accessing shared documents online such as wikis, Google documents and Zoho office, most collaborative writing appears to be still occurring by shuttling documents around by email.
Shuttling documents around the internet often results in problems with version control. People revising, editing, proofing or, worse, publishing document versions that have already been superseded. Document control can be a major problem but can be managed by using a simple but consistently applied document naming convention.
Here is a document naming system that works for professional and business use and is pretty easy to manage.
- Document must have an owner.
- Document name must be meaningful in isolation.
- Version number is managed by the document owner.
- Reviewers append their signature to documents they have reviewed without changing version number.
- Only the document owner changes the version number.
Document must have an owner.
Every document must have an owner. The job of the owner is to manage revisions and keep control of document versions.
Document name must be meaningful in isolation
As the documents shuttle around the internet, their names must be meaningful on their own. Often I see document names, which are totally dependent on the file that contains them to have any meaning. For example: a document called ‘introduction.doc’ has no meaning once it is outside the file called ‘wikis’. Better to call the file: ‘wikis_intro.doc’ so that it makes sense on someone else’s computer in their file called ‘todothisweek’.
You don’t want the document name so long that it disappears off the screen, so abbreviating words is OK, as long as the name still makes sense.
When I name documents or files I tend to use underscores to separate words rather than hyphens or empty spaces. It’s a personal preference.
Version number is managed by document owner
The owner adds a version number to the document name before they send out the document to collaborators. Precede the version number with enough zeros to cover all the versions you are likely to use, e.g. v01. Adding the version number 01 will allow for up to 99 revisions. When the documents are lined up in a file the latest version will appear last. If you just call the first version: ‘v1′ your reviewed documents will line up in a confusing order:
- V1
- V10
- V11
- V12
- V2
- V3
- V4
- V5
- V6
- V7
- V8
- V9
- Etcetera.
So, using the convention I am suggesting, our file when it gets sent out should look like this: ‘wiki_intro_v01.doc’
Reviewers append their signature to the document they have reviewed without changing the version number.
Reviewers and collaborators must leave the version number alone. They simply add their initials to the end of the document name before they send it back: ‘wiki_intro_v01_mw.doc’.
Only the document owner changes the version number.
When the documents owner has accepted and incorporated collaborators comments, he or she can then send it out again as ‘wiki_intro_v02.doc’. And so on..
The advantages of this system of version control for documents are:
- The document names make sense in whichever file they sit.
- The document versions sit in the right order in everyone’s files.
- Everyone knows which is the latest version of the document.
- Collaborators only need to add their signature to the document name before they return it.
- The document owner has a good record of all the comments and suggested changes of all reviewers and collaborators.
Print