The New World of Co-Authoring

Like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint has made a significant investment in document co-authoring for the Office 2010 release. What is co-authoring? This is the capability for multiple users to open the same presentation file and to simultaneously edit and save changes to that file. Co-authoring solves a lot of problems with the current models of collaboration, where multiple versions of files are stored at multiple locations, not to mention the proliferation of presentations circulating via e-mail amongst multiple contributors. Now, one version of the file can exist in a shared network location, and users can edit, save, print and present from that one location.

The Presentation Lifecycle

We have often observed that the nature of editing conducted over a presentation’s lifecycle will vary. In the beginning, content is typically roughly formed, initially perhaps bulleted plain text or a compendium of objects such as rich media including pictures and video, charts, slides from other presentations, etc. copied from a variety of external sources.

During a presentation’s “middle age”, the scope of the presentation is coming into focus, concepts are more clearly defined and logical groupings of slide & topic flow form. As the presentation delivery milestone approaches, fewer edits are necessary, and those edits tend to be a bit more critical. To accommodate various co-authoring workflows, review of the changes that other co-authors make is optional (though easy to initiate), allowing for flexibility during the different stages of the presentation lifecycle.

Easy to Use

Simplicity is one of the hallmarks of good design and we’ve made co-authoring extremely easy to use. It is integrated into PowerPoint seamlessly – there are no specific modules or add-ins to use or to install. Users continue to edit their presentation content normally, with no extra effort required. Saving locally edited content automatically updates the presentation file on the server which makes that content available to other co-authoring users. Other co-authors can see who is editing the presentation and where in the document they are working. Changes made by other co-authors get merged into your document and you can edit in reaction to those changes.

On Your Server, or In the Cloud

In corporate environments, responsibilities for different sections of a presentation are often assigned to different individuals, who are often located in different parts of the company. Via a shared location on a Microsoft SharePoint server, users can co-author content when and where convenient.

We also recognize that authors of PowerPoint content are often on the go. With the modern workforce, work does not always happen inside the cubicle. Consultants creating content for their customers need to share presentations with their customers, and they may not have access to the customer’s corporate network infrastructure. In addition, small business customers may not have a server infrastructure deployed. Office 2010 has made it easy to support these scenarios by allowing co-authoring to function in the “cloud.”

In future posts, we’ll talk more about more details and the architecture of the co-authoring system. Stay tuned!

-Dave Kesterson

September 10, 2009