Design Notes are a little known feature in DW, but they can be very useful if we know how to use them. In this example we ar going to create a mini Control Versioning System, where we will have access documents' statuses (draft, revision1, needs attention...) directly from the Files Panel. even more, all the team members will have access to that info in real time.
The original Files panel looks like this:
Our first step will be opening the File View Columns in the Site Definition window:
Let's add another column. Click the (+) button and using the textboxes and lists below asign it a name and associate it with the "Status" design note. remember to check the "Show" option:
the final touch for this step is activating the "Enable Column Sharing" and "Share with all users of this site". This way, al the team members will be able to see the column you have just created.
when you activate them, it's very likely that DW will warn you that to use this feature you must activate the options "Maintain Design Notes" and "Upload Design Notes for sharing". Just click "OK" and DW will do it for you. If you are interested in where those options are, just select the "Design notes" tab in the Site Definition dialog window:
IMPORTANT: Against some users' opinions, it's safe to upload Design notes t the server. By using an underscore for the folder name "_notes", DW makes sure that the folder remains invisible for browsers (All the folders in a server starting with an underscore are not visible in a server). In any case, you can delete it from the server when the site is finished (files created by DW don't need them to work).
When we have finished, our files panel will look like this. Other team members will be see the new column in their site definition and add it if they want to:
Now, if we select a file and open design notes (right click on Windows)...
... And we change its status...
...We'll see the our column showing our document's current status:
You can click on the column name to group files by their status:
The great advantage of this method is that ALL the team members working on the site will have access to the same info in real time. And we can go even further: By enabling check in and check out we can also see who's working in that document (very useful for the "Needs attention" status):
Cuando comencemos a utilizarlo, todos los miembros del grupo tendrán una vista como esta en el panel de archivos.
TIP: the "needs attention" status has a very useful feature: it reverts to draft once it has been checked out. this way, the user doesn't have to change the status when it has finished working on it.
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