Google Docs for Office

[TheStu]

At work we have multiple documents on a share drive that everyone on the team needs to have access to. A great many of them are documents that need to be updated daily, but due to constraints only one person can edit them at a time.

I brought this up with my supervisor and she acted like I was the first person to bring it up, which I believe as complacency runs rampant where I work, and proposed we hold a Kaizen event to address this.

Well, I want to cut through all that and bring it back up with my supervisor and the department manager and show them the problem and offer them a solution. I cannot imagine that they would ever approve putting our corporate documents onto google's servers like that, especially not since we contract for the DLA. So I am wondering if there is anything out there made by Microsoft (or some other company) that allows a local network version of that.

Basically, I want subethaedit but for Windows and to have it work with excel files.

Any ideas?

 

[Gooberlx2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor#List_of_current_editors

Looks like maybe MS Workspace, previously known as Groove.

 

[TheStu]

Has anyone used that? Looking at it, it appears that a master document lives on the drive and everyone has a local copy that then pushes edits back to the master. I already get 10-15 conflict emails a day from exchange folders mucking up, I don't want to have to deal with that for files as well.

If it is the only option, so be it, but are there any others?

 

[Venom20]

I have not used it, but it's just for microsoft office, then whynot try the CoOffice add-ons.

 

[lxskllr]

Google search provided this. I have no experience, but it's worth a look...

http://fengoffice.com/web/index.php

 

[KB]

I have found that when something needs to be updated daily it may be time to turn it into something larger like a database/app. What exactly are the updates to the document? Would it be better replaced with an app and a report?

Are these updates related to numeric inputs like price fluctuations, interest rate changes etc. If so then a custom app may be a good solution. Either find one in your industry or build one yourself.

 

[TheStu]

I have found that when something needs to be updated daily it may be time to turn it into something larger like a database/app. What exactly are the updates to the document? Would it be better replaced with an app and a report?

Are these updates related to numeric inputs like price fluctuations, interest rate changes etc. If so then a custom app may be a good solution. Either find one in your industry or build one yourself.

The spreadsheet is just a place to record data for later auditing purposes. The only reason I would want concurrent access is because of how busy we get, if you want access to the document having to wait for the other person to finish what they are doing in it might make it so you never update it because you were taking calls non-stop for the next hour and your brain moved on to other things.

It isn't getting a lot of updates during the day, and the users do not need local copies, the report isn't for them anyway, they just need access to add data to it.