System moves at a crawl

[dwag]

Our company has several writers working on the same large project, and I've noticed lately that it takes many minutes to open and close the project. Later in the day, especially, all activity within the project moves at a literal crawl. What specific things should I do or double-check to ensure optimal performance? It's really becoming a drag, so to speak.

Thanks.

[Richard Ferrell]

Be sure the project is local, and not on a network drive, Also clean your temp directories also.

[LTinker68]

And are you guys using source control? I'm not using it with Flare, but I know in the past that IT has sent emails out that they're going to clean out the source control server. It could be that IT needs to do some maintenance on that server.

[dwag]

We're not using source control, and the project is on a network drive. At this juncture, I don't have the tool to integrate the help file with the software, so the developers like the file where it is. And I don't want to think about what it'll mean to remove it from there; updating the files, though slow, is otherwise convenient and seamless.

(Then again, maybe you don't need to know this stuff, exactly; maybe I'm talking French and you're talking Italian.)

I'll try, as you suggest, cleaning the temp files.

Thanks, again.

[Dave Lee]

Do the developers actually need to edit the topics in the project, or do they just need the output?

If the developers don't need the project source files, then keep that on your local PC and publish the target to the network location where they want it. To do this, set up the network folder as a destination, select that destination in your target, then just publish the help each time you want to update their copy of the help.

[KevinDAmery]

It's not quite that simple: the OP said they have multiple writers working on the project, so keeping the source locally wouldn't be feasible.

(As an aside, this is as situation where I definitely would want some sort of source control. But unless / until they get one....)

What I would do is keep the "master" source files on the network, but then copy the files locally before building output. Then copy the output files to the location where the developers pick them up for inclusion in the product. This allows you to keep a master version of the source files in a common location, but side steps the slowdowns involved in building over a network.

Having said that, there is a danger of "versionitis" with the source files this way, especially if anyone makes changes to the source in their local copies. (Which is why some sort of source control would be preferable.)

[Richard Ferrell]

I would still move the project to a local drive to see if speeds up, Could be a network latency issue. If its works great locally, then you would want your IT dept to check your network