[Originally appeared 2000.]
The Word of Law Column in the last issue began to answer the questions about collaboration begun in Word of Law No. 29. In answering, “What activities must be supported when drafting documents collaboratively,” we covered the first four of a list that included, “share, compare, track, review, comment, find, model, and reuse.” This week’s column picks up from there.
COMMENT
Drafting or review of documents may be accompanied by a simple or complex conversation among collaborators. They may cite references, share their analysis, explain their changes, even criticize or disagree with the author. Microsoft Word supports these kinds of functions in its comments function, but as convenient as that format may seem, we may not want to put comments in the body of documents where they could be preserved accidentally for unauthorized view. Comments may be found in transmittal letters, cover memos or e-mail transmittals. Their disconnection from the text may limit their value in the drafting process. The newest electronic or even web-based collaboration systems support discussion threads that may be associated with document drafts.
FIND
There can be no collaboration over a document, nor can any of its inherent activities be facilitated, if the document over which collaboration is required can’t be found! Thus, to support fully document collaboration in a cooperative setting, the collaborators must share methods of access and nomenclature, be able to view the history of the document, the ownership of the document, and, most importantly, the availability of the document. Sometimes this activity requires standardization of document locale. A document can be shared effectively when stored on a Web server and access is protected, perhaps on a document management system. The altogether too common attempts to administer and maintain collaboration of documents attached to e-mail messages are likely to cause difficulties.
MODEL
In many organizations, standards should play a significant role in our document drafting. The standards include both document formatting and content. Collaboration, especially in a cooperative environment, benefits significantly from preparing and using document standards. In this column, we have emphasized repeatedly the value of a common set of document styles, stored and applied through a set of Microsoft Word templates. The identification of standard text, or text components, enables collaboration to focus on the special elements, those for which our drafting effort has the highest value.
REUSE
This function is one which can simultaneously leverage the productivity of document collaboration, and which, if performed without skill, forethought, and best practices, can unravel and defeat the productivity we seek to gain. The reuse of document content has been a prevalent practice in our industry since the advent of computer-generated paper documents, yet some of these same unsuspecting practices exercised on an electronically collaborated document may actually harm our ability to reuse existing electronic content at all. Do we have readily available content to support our current drafting requirement? If so, is it accessible from a currently supported file format or does it require conversion? If the content does not require conversion, does the formatting associated to it require touch-up, or realignment to our current model? Do we have proper tools for conversion? Are we employing proper approaches for copying, cutting and pasting content between documents? Are we skillfully inputting our content such that it can be reused in a manner that survives beyond this document’s moment? Do we make proper document construction choices: when should we use a table vs. tabs?Are we using styles to impose our general format choices, and then using manually-applied formats only for occasional format situations? Each of these speaks to the reusability of our content – and to the productivity we can gain or lose by collaboration.
How should these activities be different when the collaboration context is cooperative, and when it is reviewed by the opposing side?
While we may wish to strengthen the collaborative environment in a cooperative context, we need to be careful about the information that we expose about the drafting of documents when the document is shared with or published to others who are do not work with us. When the opposing side only received paper copy, this barrier was easy to maintain. As we pursue the practice and tools of electronic collaboration, the easiest guideline should be that those outside our organization see only the finished draft or document that we intend for them to see, and do not have access to the other information, drafts or comments that we include in our systems for collaboration. Please note that those “inside” our organization for document drafting may include persons employed by others such as attorney and client.
This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.