Who is using X-edit? and other questions

[hjohnson]

Hi Folks,

We are experimenting with using Xedit in our review process and are encouraged, though not sold on it yet. I would like to pose a few questions and see if the forum has some experiences/insight/wisdom to share.

• Who in your company is using Xedit? Are they reviewers, content SMEs or other tech writers?
  Do all of your Xedit users also have Flare?
  Are all of your Xedit users in the same building/department, or in other locations?
  Do you have any Xedit users who had never used any Madcap products before, and what was the learning curve like?
  If you get the same topic back from two people with two different sets of changes, how do you reconcile those differences? Is there a way to do a "document compare" like in Word?

Other questions:

• Does anyone have reviewers who review content ONLY in Word?
  If so, what is your process flow like from sending the doc out from Flare, converting to Word, receiving edited content, and adapting the changes back into Flare?
  (Last one) If a reviewer sends a document back to you with changes AND change tracking turned on, can Flare convert those changes to annotations? I have not seen evidence of this yet.

Thanks in advance,

[Robotman]

We are experimenting with using Xedit in our review process and are encouraged, though not sold on it yet.

Us too. We would like to use it heavily but are waiting for v2 to be released (whenever that will be).

Who in your company is using Xedit? Are they reviewers, content SMEs or other tech writers?

Support staff initially. Possibly developers in the future.

Do all of your Xedit users also have Flare?

No

Are all of your Xedit users in the same building/department, or in other locations?

No. We have a staff member in Sydney who is supplying information. We use HelpSTAR to send topics to people, attach the X-Edit file, and the staff send it back via HelpSTAR and then I re-attach the topic to Flare.

Do you have any Xedit users who had never used any Madcap products before, and what was the learning curve like?

Yes. Learning curve for basic functions is not too steep (support staff are just supplying me with text).

If you get the same topic back from two people with two different sets of changes, how do you reconcile those differences? Is there a way to do a "document compare" like in Word?

I'm specifically not sending out single topics to multiple staff. I'm also not sending out topics with any content in them (topics are pre-configured with a title only). This is our way of controlling information as we're not 100% sold on the reviewing/amendment process yet. For us, baby steps to see how it goes and then another full review of X-Edit when v2 arrives.

[siskamoens]

Hi Folks,

We are experimenting with using Xedit in our review process and are encouraged, though not sold on it yet. I would like to pose a few questions and see if the forum has some experiences/insight/wisdom to share.

• Who in your company is using Xedit? Are they reviewers, content SMEs or other tech writers?
  Do all of your Xedit users also have Flare?
  Are all of your Xedit users in the same building/department, or in other locations?
  Do you have any Xedit users who had never used any Madcap products before, and what was the learning curve like?
  If you get the same topic back from two people with two different sets of changes, how do you reconcile those differences? Is there a way to do a "document compare" like in Word?

In our company, I am the only one using Flare (as tech writer), and X-Edit is used by the developers who review the topics I write. They don't have Flare installed, they just use X-Edit to annotate. They're smart guys so they figured out how to use X-Edit themselves. I'm not sure if that would be the case for anyone, because it certainly took me a while to get used to the Flare interface.
There is no way to compare documents, except if you're using source control (we're using MS Team System). But it's a valid question, and one of the features I would like to see in the next version of X-Edit: some tracking information on a topic, listing when it was sent for review to whom, when it was returned, etc...

Kind regards,
Siska