Comments on: In the briefing room: Microsoft Office 2010 Co-Authoring http://www.basexblog.com/2010/02/25/itbr-co-authoring/ Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:54:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Tony Law http://www.basexblog.com/2010/02/25/itbr-co-authoring/comment-page-1/#comment-3192 Tony Law Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:46:19 +0000 http://www.basexblog.com/?p=1310#comment-3192 Cody - you are wrong about Google Docs. The point was always that multiple authors can open the document at the same time, but there is only one version - the one on the web. It isn't new, it isn't a Microsoft idea, and (of course) it doesn't require a SharePoint server. I haven't seen Office 2010, but from your description it sounds less useful than Docs. It's not offering true collaborative authoring which Docs supports: this might mean, for example, a teleconference where several authors put their heads together over a single troublesome section and see each other's suggestions in real time. It's just old-fashioned document management, but at a lower level of granularity so that part rather than the whole of a document is locked out to an individual author. Doesn't sound like co-authoring to me. Not really. Cody – you are wrong about Google Docs. The point was always that multiple authors can open the document at the same time, but there is only one version – the one on the web. It isn’t new, it isn’t a Microsoft idea, and (of course) it doesn’t require a SharePoint server.

I haven’t seen Office 2010, but from your description it sounds less useful than Docs. It’s not offering true collaborative authoring which Docs supports: this might mean, for example, a teleconference where several authors put their heads together over a single troublesome section and see each other’s suggestions in real time. It’s just old-fashioned document management, but at a lower level of granularity so that part rather than the whole of a document is locked out to an individual author.

Doesn’t sound like co-authoring to me. Not really.

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