Versioning

Key Concepts

• Author-it's version control feature is useful when older versions are archived (no longer maintained).
• Versions can have one of the following states:
  • Active
  • Inactive
  • Redundant
• New versions are inactive until they are made active.
• When a new version is made active, the previous version is made redundant, and the new version is substituted for the old in any active books.
• Only one version can be active at a time.

Author-it's version control feature is useful when content is transitioned completely to a new version and older versions are archived (no longer maintained). Using the version control feature, you can create multiple versions of an object (except for styles or object templates).

Note: If you need to maintain multiple versions of content on an ongoing basis, you should use other methods to manage content versions, as described in .

Versions can have one of the following states:

• Active. There can only be one active object. When you create a brand new object, it is always created as Active.
• Inactive. There can be many inactive versions of an object. When you create a new version of an object, it is always created as an Inactive object until you explicitly mark it as Active. You can make changes as needed for an Inactive object.
• Redundant. An old version of an object. When you make an object Active, the previously Active version becomes Redundant. Redundant objects are read-only (locked against further changes).

A typical application of versions is for a new release of a book. You want to be able to publish Version 1 as it is, but you want to create a new Version 2. Additionally, you want to create new versions of some topics within the book.

To implement this example, create new versions as follows (in the order shown here):

1. Select the book in the main window.
2. Select the Manage tab, then click on the Create a new version of the selected object(s) button in the Versioning group. Click on Yes when asked whether you want to create a new version.

   The new version is created and marked as Inactive.

3. Select the new version of the book, then click on the Make the selected object(s) the active version button in the Versioning group.

   The Version 2 book is now the Active version. Version 1 is marked as Redundant and is locked.

4. Select a topic from the book in the main window (you can use the right-click Locate command to find the location of a topic from your book contents).
5. Click on the Create a new version of the selected object(s) button in the Versioning group on the Manage tab. Click on Yes when asked whether you want to create a new version.

   The new version is created and marked as Inactive.

6. Select the new Version 2 topic, then click on the Make the selected object(s) the active version button in the Versioning group.

   The Version 2 topic is now the Active version. Version 1 is marked as Redundant and is locked.

   The new version of the topic is now used in all books where it appears, except for books that are already marked as Redundant. The Version 1 book still has Version 1 of the topic (now read-only), while the Version 2 book and any other books that include the topic include the Version 2 topic.

Note: For books that should retain an old version of a topic, it is important to change the versions of the books before changing the version of the topic. Otherwise, the new version of the topic will be used in the books when you create the new version of the topic and make it active.

Version control in Author-it is a little tricky. We recommend that you try it out on test files before using it for your production files.

Other Author-it Options for Version Control

Key Concepts

• Author-it's version control feature is useful for linear versioning (only one version maintained at a time).
• Author-it provides different techniques for maintaining multiples versions at a time.
• Before settling on methods for versioning, define your requirements.

Author-it's version control feature is only one of several methods you can use to do version control with Author-it. The version control feature is mostly useful when you have a strict transition between an old version and a new version, where the old version gets locked down once the new version is designated as "active."

Some of the other techniques you can use to implement version control with Author-it include:

• Using different book structures for different versions
• Using different folders (perhaps with permissions restrictions) to store version-specific and shared content
• Using release states to mark version-specific content
• Revision history
• Archiving old versions as XML (also useful for getting a complete duplicate of a book as a basis for creating a new version that will be maintained separately)
• Providing "author's comments" within topics to document revision history (use styles that are not output to any published media)
• Storing published documents (Word, PDF, zip) in archive directories or in a separate document management application
• Using Show Relationships to track use of content across different documents
• Using the Localization Manager to create a new version (target library) that can be used to manage updates from the source library
• Use publishing profiles to customize how a book is published (for example, to exclude content that has a "Draft" release state).

When trying to determine the best approach for your organization, the key question is, "What do you mean by version control"? What are you trying to accomplish?