Multiple Authors on a Presentation

Jun 14, 2012

Brent Berheim
By Brent Berheim

Good afternoon - my team is running into a very frustrating situation, and I am hoping that someone out there might have already been through this and might be able to shed some light (and hopefully a solution) to our problems.

There are a team of us working on a number of modules.  We all have Articulate '09 loaded to each of our machines, and two of the three are on PPT 2007 and one is on PPT 2010.

We are saving our materials to a server (which I do know can cause problems, but it is our practice, and overall we only have the rare glitch).

The issue we are running into is that if one person has created the PPTX and done all animation, audio etc, and someone else goes in to modify the PPTX file, the audio gets dropped.  A "-old.PPTA" file gets created, however, the issue we have run into is that changes have been made to the PPTX file that no longer allow the "-old" file to be re-attached.

Any thoughts?

2 Replies
Niels Peter Johansson
almost 12 years ago06/15/12 at 1:56 am (UTC)

Hi,

We are also working in a team with 3 people working in Studio '09.

We have two persons in charge of each of their modules (meaning that he/she owns that powerpoint file).

The others can then help out by creating the engage/quizmaker files and save them in the correct folder.

Just a thought:

When we need the other to work on the project (corrections/proofreading/adjusting graphics etc) we use the Send to > Articulate package. This creates a zip file with all files needed in.

We put on the server, where the next person in line unzips it, and works with it. When done, they will 'send to > articulate package', and just replace the one already on the drive.

See if this can help you.

Peter Anderson
almost 12 years ago06/15/12 at 1:00 pm (UTC)

Hi Brent!

I'd recommend taking a look at this article to try and recover your audio. 
Also, as you noted, be sure that your presentation is located on your local hard drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB (external) drive can cause erratic behavior, including loss of resources.

In the future, when working on an Articulate Presenter presentation in a collaborative environment with other developers, I recommend that you use the following workflow:

1. Use the Send to Articulate Presenter Package feature to make an exact copy of the project and the included Engage interactions and Quizmaker quizzes per the method in the article below:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/?p=457

2. Copy the resulting zip file to your network drive for storage and sharing.

3. When you need to edit or publish the presentation, copy the zip file to your local hard drive and extract it.

4. Edit and / or publish the presentation.

5. Then repeat steps 1-4 as necessary.

By working with the project files on your local hard drive, you'll prevent any corruption or erratic behavior of the files that might have occurred by working on a network drive. Also, this method ensures that all your Engage interactions and Quizmaker quizzes stay properly linked together.

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