Master Document Version Control: Top 3 Best Practices for Teams (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: When you share documents for review and approval, your versions multiply like bunnies. And without a standardizing process for document version control, you can quickly find yourself with three files like this. The question is, which one is the latest? Which ones are out of date? It's anyone's guess. But by introducing some simple version control best practices, you can wave goodbye to these issues and all the wasted time that comes with it. Document version control Hi everyone, I'm Pete from Filestage and in this video, I'll share the three document version controlling best practices that you can start using straight away. But before we go to that, let's look at what we mean by document version control. Document version control resolves all your trouble with keeping all the files and versions organized. More importantly, an effective version control takes the thought out of naming documents and makes sure everyone knows which one is the final version. Now that that is clear, let's jump to the best practices. Setting up naming convention is the first and most important step for taking control of your document versioning problems. This simply means coming up with a consistent format for naming your files and versions and communicating that format across your company. That's the most important bit. There are three key features of great document naming conventions. First, using the same filename throughout the life of the document. Second, using the same characters to separate words in the filename, usually spaces, dashes, or underscores. Third, using a consistent suffix to indicate the version number of the file, usually V1, V2, and so on. You get it. Something you might not know is that Filestage automatically stacks your versions so everyone knows which one is the latest. You can hop back to previous versions in seconds to check the content and comments. And if anyone opens an old version to give feedback by mistake, a message pops up to let them know. Let's move to the next best practice. If you're creating content for your client, you probably have a fixed number of review rounds in your contract to avoid over-servicing them. But this can be a problem with live and collaborative documents. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid blurred lines between each version of your document. Set a deadline for feedback and let your reviewers know when the feedback window has closed. Save a copy of your document before you make any edits. Filestage lets you set due dates for each document review, triggering automated email and chat reminders as the deadline approaches. You can also switch the review status of your document from In Review to Need Changes at any time, blocking any further feedback until you share the next version. If you really want to take your document version control system up a notch, you need to look at centralizing feedback from your stakeholders. Here's a quick snapshot of what can happen without a centralized feedback process. You email a document to five people asking for feedback. Two reply privately with a bunch of conflicting comments. One makes a new version and shares it on the original email chain. And just like that, the project gets messy. What should you do instead? When you ask reviewers for feedback on your document, make it clear where they should share the feedback. If someone ignores you and send feedback by email or makes a copy, remind them of your original instruction. It may seem harsh, but it'll help to make centralized and collaborative feedback part of your team's culture. Or there's another way. Filestage lets you invite people to add documents and collaborate on your documents all in one place, from one-page Word documents to sprawling white papers PDFs. Your reviewers can add highlights, strikeouts, annotations right on top of your documents. If you share a new version, it'll be shared with your reviewers automatically. And that's a wrap. I hope this video had given you everything you need to take control of your team's versioning chaos. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more cool tips and tricks, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.