Question

ProofHQ Best Practices

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
January 31, 2018
15 replies
2587 views

Hi We are new users and are struggling a bit with how to best use ProofHQ in the real world. We often have long brochures and catalogs with many people who are reviewers all over the world. The way we work is the designer uploads the proof but is not responsible for trafficking it around to all the people that have to approve it and make comments. The ProofHQ Workflows just don't work for us since the designer has no idea who needs to be reviewing it. Therefore, the Marketing Manager is designated as the Owner of the proof because it seems they get the most flexibility to manipulate the proof. (It's unclear the difference between Moderator and Owner). The designer sends the proof to the marketing manager. The marketing manager then sends it to all the people that need to review it. Problem #1: the designer sets up the designations for notifications and those can't be changed once they are done (I can't see how to do change them) even by the Owner/Marketing Manager. After all the comments have been made, it's up to the marketing manager to review everything and make decisions. These decisions need to be very clear to the designer, who shouldn't be spending time reading through dozens of comments and discussions. The way we decided to do it was that the very last comment in any discussion would be the final decision and the thread would be marked "resolved." Then, the designer can use the checkmark "done" to indicate they made the change or "needs follow up" if something isn't clear. I'm interested to know how other people resolve complex proofs that have many pages, many comments, and not too many options to indicate which comment is the one for the designer to look at. Any tips and tricks would be most appreciated! Jill Ackerman Lindblad Expeditions

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SkyeHa

hi Jill, we're in the same boat, and I'm glad to see that there are other users in the same scenario. Workfront and ProofHQ's assumption has always been that the user who generates the proof is the same as the person who manages proof approval, and this is not the case in our use case. For us, the Designer generates a proof because sometimes proof generation is an area of inefficiency (we have to wait for something to generate), so getting that out of the way ASAP is a good time saver. Because of this workflow (marketing manager needs to manage proofs), and because the process of automated workflows is so time consuming we have not been able to use the new features that have been implemented in the past 18 months. For us the review process remains a manual workflow where the marketing manager will manually add the reviewers as they need to be added and evaluate after each review whether the Designer has rework or whether more reviewers can be involved. To address your other concern about the designer knowing what comments to address, I can point you to the direction of "actions" (you can see a flag icon on the bottom left corner of each comment in the current release, and in the new release this changes to the word Action in the bottom right corner). My suggestion is that your manager evaluate the comments and flag them either as "disregard" or as an action item for the designer. I could not easily find information on actions/flags in the support website, but I'm happy to share screens with you if you need a visual. Your Designer then can filter for action items only. -skye

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JillAcAuthor

Hi Thanks for responding. We are trying to use the flags but they flag the entire comment thread, not the comment within the thread that contains the approved decision. If you have a discussion thread 10 comments long, how does the designer know which of the comments is the final decision without having to read through all the boring and perhaps confusing cross talk? Also I'm afraid to delete even irrelevant comments in case we need to refer back to them. thanks jill Jill Ackerman

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SkyeHa

hi Jill, in your original post you mentioned that the last comment in the discussion contains the final decision--this is what we would expect for our team as well. The only thing the "actions" do is, if any discussion thread is completely irrelevant, you can flag those as such. I suppose if many of your comments end up being long discussions, then it's up to your marketing manager to mark the entire thread as irrelevant (or close it off in some way) and re-do the edit as a single comment. At this time, there's no way to highlight a specific comment in a string in a way that allows for them to be easily filtered--you could submit an idea to the Idea Exchange and see if it captures any inspiration though. Good luck! -skye

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

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SkyeHa

thanks Doug. I'm not sure I follow though. Can you clarify how this shows up in Proof? Or is it specifically for reports? While we'd be interested in seeing a Proof that shows highlighted comments, If it makes sense, I think that ultimately our use case would benefit more from being able to show/hide comments in a discussion thread so that we can "show" them in an audit but "hide" them for Design use. -skye

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

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SkyeHa

No problem. I didn't recall seeing that your work affects Proof in any way, but if you do delve into that arena, please let me know. I'm pretty sure you won't since I think(?) your work connects more to API-related material and I don't see that the Proof integration is able to be changed in this way, but it doesn't hurt to make sure. :) -skye

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JillAcAuthor

I like this idea of creating a flag status that says "ignore this comment thread" but it sort of doesn't work in the scenario I'm trying to lay out whereby we have one button that the designer/author uses (the status flag where they can mark a comment as "done" or "need more info"), and a separate button for the Owner/Moderator (the resolution check mark). Is there a way to customize the Check Mark Resolution button? I can't find it, but that's the one I'd like to be able to add more options to. Thanks! Jill Ackerman

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SkyeHa

there's not a way to customize the checkmark button right now, but if you want to lay out your use case in the Idea Exchange, then you might be able to get it voted up. I'm a little baffled as to why anyone would need multiple options--if it's resolved, then it's resolved--so I definitely would like to see what the user story is. -skye

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TheresaRo

The way that we've been handling it is to have the designer/copywriter (whoever is creating the proof) email the proof to the person who is responsible for tracking/managing the proof (most often this is me). I then route the proof in ProofHQ and assign the correct workflow. I hope that hopes somewhat! Theresa Rotondo Atlantis Healthcare Usa, Inc.

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