Reply To: Best Practices for InDesign Version control when using InCopy for writers?

Thanks for responding so quickly! Yes i am trying to move away from the assignment file workflow and into the layout workflow. originally we used the assignment workflow due to some of the book team managers insisting on heavy versioning (which shouldn’t be an issue now since OneDrive has a version history feature) and not having a proper server and only the OneDrive folders, which by default are not synced on each individuals machine (though we do have our own personal OneDrive folders synced) due to the the overall folder being massive, so ive recommended syncing the individual folders where the indesign files are to alleviate the issue.

But what i’ve found is that once i package an indd file, while it does move copies of all the media and stories into the package folder, it does not change the link location in the indd file, which seems odd. if its copying all the content to the package, and changing the link destination in the copied indd file in the package, why does the original file retain the original link destinations?

Another big issue is that at this particular company there can be multiple designers working on the same project which consists of multiple books, so if one designer needs to take over for another on a book they might open the file and find a bunch of missing links if it hasn’t been packaged.

The final and i think biggest issue is the workflow this company uses. since the company started as a tech company making apps they use an agile workflow, and this goes for the books as well, which i’ve always seen as a big issue. there is a ton of back and forth from writer, editors, designers, managers, and clients. So a writer makes a draft, which is supposed to be signed off by the client, but that doesn’t prevent big client edits from happening after seeing the book for the first time. Obviously the preferred workflow would be that the layout happens at the very end but that is not even close to the case.