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Workflow: about the project lifecycle

work flow sequence life cycle lifecycle
A project progresses through various stages. This is the workflow or project lifecycle.
Everyone will have different workflows depending on project requirements. There is, though, a basic model which Ensembling offers.

Not an editor

Ensembling isn't an editing tool. You continue to use whichever are the most appropriate tools for the job, tools you already own. Colleagues may use different tools: one might use Microsoft Word and another OpenOffice to open the same document.

Source materials

There's loosely four kinds of material: The distinctions are a bit gray, however. Sometimes you'd work on a Word document until ready and then produce a PDF as the finished piece.

A typical workflow

  • Someone writes a first draft and uploads it to a new document or one of the placeholder documents prepared earlier, and invites comments.
  • Colleagues mark up the draft with their comments.
  • Pictures and diagrams to go into the final piece are also collected (as documents). At this stage they may not be embedded in the text, especially as the text and pictures may go forward to be combined using a page layout program.
  • A sub-editor (possibly the same person as the contributor) reviews the comments and decides which to accept and which to reject. Because comments can be marked with various such statuses, just as the editor can review the comments in a logical order, so the author can incorporate the accepted changes by scanning through the comments.
  • The author (or someone else) then uses to retrieve the first draft and incorporates the accepted comments into it. They then upload the second draft using .
  • Comments are invited on this next draft, and so on until whoever's job it is to decide is happy with the result.
  • That may be the final publications, but in the case of a book or magazine it is more likely that these materials will then be incorporated into a page layout or web site. The composited document would then be presented for review and comment in the same way, and drafts produced until satisfactory.
  • Completion can be indicated approving the final piece.
  • If the piece needs to be printed, the file can be published for collection.