TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I missed your original email so I'm answering you according to Lydia's summary:
> Kevin asked for a system of categorizing and accessing emails, memos,
> product notes, etc. that are part of his company's system of providing
> information to the project team and to the writers.
I've worked for companies where we've had the system admins set up project
directories on a shared drive. The latest copy of the project document is there
and this shared drive is backed up daily. Also on the shared drive, in each
project directory, there are subdirectories that hold info like memos, product
notes, meeting minutes, last archived doc, outline, delivery transmittals, etc.
I also try to maintain a high-level "project summary document" that has a
running log of what has happened to the document. (I try to update this
whenever I deliver the document to the customer. It has things like where the
document is stored, what where the major updates, what are the outstanding TBDs,
when it was delivered etc. I like to update it at the end of the project -- a
good way to wrap up loose ends.) If you go the project directory route, some
people could be given read only access, others read/write/execute, and so on
(I'm thinking about access in UNIX terms, not sure if this is possible in the
Windows world.)
In terms of email, I'm not sure, but doesn't Outlook allow shared folders
(directories)? If so, you can probably do something similar -- then when a
person gets a pertinent email they can place it in the folder -- a new writer
can then access it and get up to speed. I also know people who simply keep a
paper copy of all emails and hand it off when necessary.
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.