[Framers] version numbering and document control

[creamertraininglists at gmail.com]

I would endorse Mike's suggestion, however, I would go further based on a
couple of factors...
--Your email mentioned "more than one update...with a month", so could there
be more than one released update per month?
--Are updating the entire book version, chapter versions, or only affected
pages?

If the date of the update is important, you might want to switch to the
international date code: 20210213 or 2021.02.13. (Presumedly, you will not
have more than one release per day!)
--If book version, you could use a global variable in the header or footer.
--If chapter versions, you could create a variable per chapter.
--If affected pages, you could add an separate flow to your master pages and
enter in the date code in the new flow. Set the style to start on the next
page so you can return through the pages quickly. Unfortunately, you (most
likely) would need to mark pages that simply had text-flow changes.

In addition to the above, you use change bars to indicate edited or added
text. Just clear them out at a given point in time, such as every month.
That would help the readers focus on the actual changes.

Adding a date code could start immediately--I don't think too many readers
would get confused by a date of release in the footer. Initially, I would
add the date code to every page with a note that pages without a date code
should be considered "out of date".

David Creamer
IDEAS Training
__________________________________________
Message: 5
Subject: Re: [Framers] version numbering and document control

It seems like the easy solution would be simply to replace month and 
year with year and an incremented number: 2021-1, 2021-2, 2021-3 ... 
2022-1, etc. If you're worried about confusion with the old system, 
maybe wait to the beginning of the next year to start the change.

Mike Wickham

On 2/12/2021 11:08 AM, Lise Bible wrote:
> Hello, Framers,
> Historically (I inherited this system) the manuals for my company have
> listed the month and year as the revision. And that has worked ok, except
> when more than one update needed to happen within a month. And my boss
> wants me to switch to a numbered revision system.
>
> But what has me stymied is, what number do I start with? It doesn't really
> make sense to me to start at 1 because some of these manuals are now 10
> years old and have had multiple revisions/updates.
>
> Any advice?
>
> (My boss also wants me to implement some kind of document control system,
a
> la what we do with engineering drawings in Autodesk Vault but that's a
> secondary step and one I have not figured out yet. He has said he wants to
> put manuals in Vault like the drawings are, and I'm still not sure how
well
> that would work. I could see maybe uploading pdfs, but I'm thinking doing
> this with the frame files would get messy.)
>
> Thanks,
> Lise