The demands of modern-day business environments often require managers to reject traditional methods of managing teams and projects. Since we started developing project management software nine years ago, we’ve seen a significant change in the conventional team where members were usually in the same location and working the same hours. Now, companies have their workforce in any number of countries around the world, working across multiple time zones on multidimensional projects.
With Teamwork Projects, our goal is to streamline processes and connect people. By doing this, it means we make teams more efficient and we help them collaborate from one central hub. Last month, we brought you news of 12 great updates that we added to Teamwork Projects. These updates focused on helping you move quicker through your Teamwork Projects site and greatly improving the overall user experience.
In keeping with these exciting new additions, today we would like to unveil our latest feature: the Teamwork Projects Document Editor. So, what does this mean for you and your team? Well, file management in Teamwork Projects is one of the most popular features among our users – it saves a lot of time sifting through attachments and it’s convenient to be able to add files to one place and access them when you need to. Previously, however, you couldn’t edit an already uploaded file – you had to download the original document, edit it, save the new version, and re-upload it. Not anymore! The Teamwork Projects Document Editor saves a lot of time compared with earlier file handling and, therefore, gives you time to focus on more important things.
So how does the Teamwork Projects Document Editor work?
First, the site administrator enables the Document Editor in your site. If you’re unsure how to do this just follow the steps in our ‘Enabling the Teamwork Document Editor on your site‘ Help Doc.
Next, select the file you want to change (remember you must have the correct permissions to edit any file type), click Edit, if you clicked Edit for the first time a window will appear asking you to download the Document Editor. Once downloaded, make whatever change you need to, click save, et voilá – you have now saved and uploaded a brand new version of the file.
What file types does the Teamwork Projects Document Editor support?
The Teamwork Projects Document Editor supports all editable files – if you can open it, you can edit it. For example, if you want to edit a Microsoft Word document you need to have Microsoft Word or a similar application like Pages, OpenOffice, or TextEdit. Likewise, if you want to edit a .psd file you need to have Photoshop installed and set as the default application to edit .psd files. The Teamwork Projects Document Editor then opens your file for editing in the appropriate application/program.
Lock and Unlock
Multiple people will not be able to edit a document at the same time. Once you start editing a file, it will become locked and cannot be edited by others until it’s unlocked. Administrators can, however, unlock a document at any time should they need to. You’ll know that the document is locked when the Edit button turns blue with a white key.
You can also lock an original file for editing with the addition of the lock/unlock feature. For example, if you upload a file to Teamwork Projects you can then lock that file so nobody can make any changes to that version. You will see the lock button between the like and preview button. This feature is released external to the Teamwork Projects Document editor and is available on free plans and up.
Some useful points to note:
The Teamwork Projects Document Editor is available on the most recent version of Teamwork Projects, code named TKO. (If you haven’t already tried it, you should – it’s pretty cool).
The Teamwork Projects Document Editor is available on Small Office, Professional, Business, and Enterprise paid plans only, although users on all plans can now lock and unlock files in TKO. Find out more about upgrading your plan.
If you’re worried you’ll lose the original file then don’t be. Every time a user saves an edited file it will be uploaded as a new version so you’ll never lose the original.
Since we released the latest version of Teamwork Projects back in June, we’ve been adding sleek updates and releasing fantastic new features, as is the case with the Teamwork Projects Document Editor. All of these are helping you and your team work smarter and we know that, when given the right tools, a good team can do great things. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll be happy to know we’ve a lot more in the pipeline and we’re excited to develop this even further. Have you tried the new Teamwork Projects Document Editor? We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.