Does anyone use X-Edit as part of workflow/review process?

[joy]

I love the idea of X-Edit as a review tool, but it still seems somewhat unreliable. I wonder if the lack of activity in this part of the forum means that people are not using this feature?

Currently I am exporting files as Word topics (with varying degrees of success) so reviewers can edit them, and then manually integrating changes back into Flare. This is clumsy and time-consuming, and I don't like having to rely on Word.

We also don't use Exchange so I can't e-mail files but I can save a package so the files are stand-alone (a much-needed improvement in Flare 6). I've done a few trials and it seems almost there but we've experienced some annoying glitches. For example when trying to open an .fltrev file, you can't "double-click" as the instructions say, or you'll get an error saying the software isn't installed. You have to launch X-Edit and then open the .fltrev file. Reincorporating changes is also a bit of a challenge and I've seen that mentioned elsewhere.

Is anyone out there using this tool as part of a larger workflow process (so reviewers can edit and return topics)? If so, care to share experiences?

[lacastle]

I thought about using X-edit for reviews, but when i downloaded x-edit to try it myself, it was very confusing and definitely not intuitive.i could figure it out because i know flare, but some of my reviewers barely know Word and don't have time to learn more software. so, for now i'm still creating a word target for reviews and manually incorporating the changes.

[joy]

Thanks, Laura, for the feedback. I'd love to get away from Word (mainly because my projects are too big for Flare to comfortably output to Word), but it seems like X-Edit is not there yet. Too bad.

[wclass]

We tried it within the team, but never found it totally successful. Initially we didn't like the single topic at a time setup, but this was fixed in a later version.

We tried it again and found problems with seeing what was changed - we don't want to incorporate updates without knowing what they are. Our team (of 4) could use it but our external reviewers are not interested in learning a new tool, and at the moment Word reviews provide more features such as Track Changes. When we do team edits, for styles etc, it is much easier to just check out the full project than try and use XEdit. Also, most external reviewers don't know and don't want to know about how we break topics into snippets, separate topics and so on - reviewing a document that more resembles the final one rather than the source is much better for them.

We will probably try it again when it has proper change management, but to be honest, using Word for external revioewers works pretty well for us.

[ronenfield]

I was spoiled by using Adobe Acrobat and MOSS review server capabilities, which allow extensive reviewer comments and concurrent reviews online. I tried installing Xedit review, but it won't even save the reviewed topics, giving me some obscure error message that I really don't feel like researching for the limited benefit that this capability yields.

However, it is still possible to print a topic to PDF (e.g. PrimoPDF or other open source tool) and then circulate copies for comments with free Adobe Reader X software. Granted, reviewers must learn to use the two commenting features of Reader X, but that's easy since they already probably know how to use Adobe Reader, versus the totally new format of the X-Edit window.

Bottom line, I don't see X-Edit as a useful review tool.

[Vibha]

I have been using Flare 4.2 and X-edit for quite some time but that majorly pertains to manual changes.

But what i see as an alternative approach to more strategic usage of X-edit would be as below:

1) create fltrev files reflecting the areas where changes have been done and is mailed for review.
2) the reviewer enters his annotations; here the reviewer's discretion is required to carefully mark the areas that are being changed
3) Now the writer opens the commented file in Flare and accepts the topic instead of accept annotations (the accept annotations gives errors and i actually dont see the usage of this thing if i have to ultimately accept the topic and then manually accept or deny the changes)
4) this replaces your actual file with annotations marked and the writer can delete annotations and accept or discard the corresponding text accordingly. To discard you actuaally need to delete the content manually which is a bit irritating.

No doubts, the tool is quite confusing but still I prefer this thing because the changes can be directly imported to the actual file....without the hassle of manually copying the changes from a PDF or a word file.

Also, I believe with flare 6 many things have changed for the review functionality..... you can now send multiple topics at a time for review...that's something interesting....

[joy]

Thanks Vibha for your response.

I have tried the improved feature in Flare 6.1 (sending multiple topics for review) and although it's much better than it used to be, it still needs work before it becomes a better alternative than Word for reviewing and incorporating changes. X-Edit also needs to be disengaged from the e-mail client. We don't use Exchange, so this option is still too front-and-center. Reviewers have the option to "return to sender" which means nothing to them if I did not e-mail the file, since it won't launch the e-mail client.

I also can't trust that reviewers will ever carefully mark changes so the tracked changes function in Word is best.

I think the tool is okay when sharing a few topics, but what I'd like to do is provide reviewers with fltrev exclusively (and these files would live in our database).

I really hope they spend time time and attention on this -- it has great potential and who wouldn't want to cut ties with Word if they have the option to do so?