Brand New to Robohelp 8

[trev1el2]

Hello,

I am new to Robohelp 8 and we have purchased the software but have yet to get our licenses. So, for now we are working with the trial version.

I have read that to avoid corrupting your work, you should work from your local drive.

For a small Tech Writing shop (1 location with 6 people) what do you all suggest as our best way to implement?
Some background info - we have all been writing manuals with word and that's it. We have a template in word that has been detailed with our style (Normal.dot). Out of those 6 people, 5 will need access to each others material for editing. The 6th person, is a stand alone and will not need access to others work nor will they ever need access to theirs. There would most likely be two sets of finished material, 1 for the 5 people, and 1 for the 6th...am I making any sense at all? I hope so...

And if anyone could tell me how we should back up the work on our local drives, that would be great! I sincerely appreaciate any comments/advice. Thanks!

Sarah

[RoboWizard]

Welcome to our community, Sarah

Before providing any form of coherent answer to your question, you need to be aware that RoboHelp 8 consists of two separate applciations.

* RoboHelp for Word (where Microsoft Word is your authoring editor)
* RoboHelp HTML (where RoboHelp HTML or an editor of your choice is the authoring editor)

Which do you plan on using?

Cheers... Rick

[trev1el2]

HTML. Thanks for taking the time to think about this!

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Sarah.

There are some choices here. If the 5 people need access to the same material, it is best to have some sort of version control implemented. This prevents two people from editing the same documents at the same time. RH HTML has it's own inbuilt application - RoboSource Control - for this that integrates pretty well but there are other alternatives. We use Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe. This is not integrated at all with RH but works like a dream for our requirements.

If this seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach, you can just manually copy your project directory to a network drive each night (or Windows has a utility that does this for you I think). The version control route negates the need to backup as the source is held in a central location and checked out/in as required.

As far as RH itself is concerned, the style sheet contains the styles to be used in your projects and it is worth getting this exactly the way you want first. You can change it later but you'll have to remember to copy it between the projects you have created. There are also templates that can be used to control the general look and feel (e.g. headers, footers, topic layout, etc.).

You will need to consider where the output you will create (e.g. printed document, PDF, compiled HTML help, Webhelp, etc.). There are considerations depending on this answer.

We have a blank project that is all set-up with the default topics, style sheets, templates, etc. that we can get from our version control application whenever we create a new project.