can many people work on the same project at once?

[Davilam]

Hi!

I am wondering if it is possible to have serveral people working on the same robohelp project at once. If so how do you do it? I will be working on a robohelp project "in the office" and have a contractor that will be doing some development offsight. What is the best way to bring my work and the contractor's work together into one project?

Sorry if this is a basic question but I'm brand new to the robohelp world :)

[RoboColum_n_]

If you are taking about the same set of RH project files then whilst it is possible to have two or more authors working on it I would not recommend it for your sanity. If you do go down this line you'd have to be very sure that you would not be overwriting what the other is doing. Technically all you'd have to do is copy the source files onto the two PCs and then import the HTM files once they have finished working on them. You'd have to have one of you controlling the TOC, Index, etc. though.

A better way of working is to have you both working on separate RH projects that you can later merge together into another RH project. For example, you work on project B, the contractor works on project C and you merge project B and C into project A. There is quite a good explanation of merged help files in the RH help.

The final way of doing this is by using some sort of source control application. This would have both you and the contractor checking out the files you need to work on. Whilst you have them checked out, no one else can work on them.

[Davilam]

Thank you so much for your response. We are actually using MS Visual Source Safe to check the files in/out. Does that make things eaiser? The only thing that i don't understand is when I work on the project i've been told to check out the xpj file which then launches robohelp and i work on the project. If i have the XPJ file checked out to work on it, my understanding is that someone else cannot check out the xpj file so im not sure how they would get into robohelp... am i making sense? :)

Any idea how to accomplish having multiple authors/developers using visual source safe?

[Guest]

Hi Davilam,
With Robohelp I would suggest using a main "master" project for your work and then having your contractors work as a slave project which you link into the "master" as a merged project. If you do it this way each component is modular and can be worked on independently. As Far as I know you can't have more than one person working on a single project at once, only on a series of slave projects which are then added to a master.
Hope that helps. Look in the help under merged projects for more details.

[Davilam]

Greatly appreciate your responses. Can you point me in the direction for support on figuring out how to set up the master/slave projects and then how to later merge the 2? i cannot find it...

[Guest]

Both the "master" and "slave" project files would be separate xpjs. so you should be able to have separate people working on each of the xpjs you've checked out.

[Guest]

Open a Robohelp project. Once open click on help to display the help files. Then in the help window, search for "merged projects". This assumes of course you have the help files available...

[Peter Grainge]

What is the output, webhelp or chm?

[Davilam]

Im not sure if this answers your quesiton or not... the primary layout is HTML. Does that answer your question? the file i access in Visual Source Safe to launch the project has a file extension of .xpj. Let me know if this answers your question...

[Peter Grainge]

Yes. It was just that had you been working with webhelp, I could have pointed you to an article on my site.

[Davilam]

ahhh gottcha... so nothing on HTML then?

[RoboColum_n_]

Try this link for starters if you haven't got the bit in the RH help. In the RH Help, go into the index and type in Merging Project : HTML Help.

[Davilam]

This is great! i appreciate the info everyone. what i am still unclear on is how to designate a project as a master and how to designate a project as a slave. Any suggestions?

[MergeThis]

For HTML Help (.chm files), open the master and click the weird euro-looking icon next to the page and book icons, then follow the wizard to add one or more slave/child projects. Of course, all .chm files will have to be copied to the same directory for the "merge" to show up for users.


Good luck,
Leon