Proofing Best Practices - Word, Excel - Accepting/Rejecting changes

[jessiv20825291]

We have been using Workfront for about 8 months now. A lot of people are having issues with the Proofing. I am reaching out to the community to see if anyone has suggestions or ideas that have been working for you. The first issue is with Excel and Word Docs. The track changes within these programs are much more ideal than using the proofing tool. We still would like to send the doc from within the Workfront project though. I know the proofer can download the doc, but I don't see a way they can upload it (our reviewers do not have project access). I am trying to come up with a solution for these so the proofer can get the notification, download the doc, track changes, and somehow get that back onto the project. Issue two: When the reviewers submit their comments, they can be a mess. One, they aren't always using the lines and boxes to point to where the comment attaches. This is a training point, although I wish there were a way to force it or make it easier. However, if we have multiple reviewers on a proof, and get back a load of comments, we need to read through, interpret, and give direction to our designers from them. Here are the issues. If we delete comments, that makes people unhappy. BUT we don't want the designers to have to weed through 25 different comments. We want the project owners to read through and give clear direction to the designer. Some project owners are uploading a new proof and transferring the comments they want the designers to make onto that one. Any thoughts or ideas on a better process on this? Thanks all! Jessi Volaric

[fayeho]

As far as sifting through comments so that the designers know what to do, you can set actions e.g "To amend" or "No change needed" which can then be filtered in the proof so the designer would only see what they need to see. When they've made the change, they can resolve the comment. This means that you they'd be able to filter unresolved vs resolved comments and also amends vs no amends. Saying that though, we don't use it like that at the moment. We've had the system for ages now so marking up changes on a clean copy has become engrained. Hope it helps, Faye

[JillAc]

Hi We have similar issues, mostly with training, especially about using the box or T tool to point to the comment. What I did was every time it happened I addressed the offender directly and showed them why it confused people. It seems to have diminished but it's still an issue. I've also asked the PMs to be diligent about training the people doing things incorrectly and not to let it slide so that they learn good habits. It's working a little, not totally, to be honest. Some people still aren't using the tool and emailing PDFs, it's frustrating. To address the comments thing, we made a rule that the last comment on any string is the "decision" for that thread, which means the proof owner has to make decisions, or notes about what to do and what to ignore, which they always had to do with Acrobat, but now they aren't allowed to delete comments because there is no history to go back to if they delete something and then need it back, where the original PDF with comments always existed somewhere to refer to. Sometimes the last comment is "ignore this comment" instead of deleting comments, which I try to firmly tell them not to do (they do it anyways). We tried using a flag of "ignore" but it didn't work, they ignored the flag plus flags were being used inconsistently. Looking forward to other ideas! Jill Ackerman | Director, Product Marketing Lindblad Expeditions 96 Morton Street | New York, NY 10014 Ph. 212.261.9080 | Fax. 212.265-3770 jilla@expeditions.com | "http://www.expeditions.com/"> www.expeditions.com

[KimberlyNi]

We also have the problem with people not being clear with their feedback. I try to talk to them about what that means for us and how it affects their timeline because there are additional conversations that have to happen to understand what they want to do. This usually works for our reviewers. I also train new reviewers as part of their onboarding and I stress the importance of how to use the proofing tool to provide clear feedback. Regarding multiple changes, we deal with that a lot and it gets tricky when we have 50-100+ projects in our pipeline at once. We like to use the action buttons to either make the change or ignore when there are a ton of changes. Then my designer marks the changes as resolved when they are made in the original files. This helps her track changes that have been made and easily see what changes are still outstanding. Kimberly Nixon Heifer International

[KIMBERLYREA]

How do you set the actions to be " To amend" or "No change needed". I believe this solution would work for us to flag what needs to be done on these as the confusion is when several requesters are commenting back and forth our designer/writer doesn't know what's accepted for changes vs what has been denied. This may be helpful. Kimberly Rea Schneider Digital Solutions Manager