Working on a schedule as a team
As soon as more than one person maintains a schedule, a question arises that the file on the network drive leaves unanswered: what happens when two people work at the same time? With a file, whoever saves last wins – the other person's work is gone, usually unnoticed.
The problem of the second version
- Two versions come into being in parallel without anyone noticing.
- The one saved last overwrites the other entirely.
- Copies with name suffixes multiply, and none is the valid one any more.
- Afterwards it can no longer be established which change was lost.
Viewing and editing are two different things
The way out is not to restrict access but to distinguish it. Viewing should stay open to everyone at any time – the plan is a working tool and is only useful when it is available. Editing can sensibly be done by one person at a time, because chains of dates hang together and two parallel interventions cannot be merged.
What matters is that the lock is visible. Anyone who opens the plan and cannot edit it should learn who is working on it and since when – otherwise the lock looks like a fault. And it has to end by itself: leaving a meeting without closing must not block the plan indefinitely.
In Menira
A project being edited switches to read-only for others; who is editing it and since when is shown. The lock expires by itself after a short time once no one is working – a forgotten window therefore does not block the project. Viewing and exporting remain unaffected.