This document answers the common questions posed by VIOPS community members who would like to get involved with the VI3.Blueprint project.

It is a community project, worked on by volunteers in the community, to collectively work on the guidance on producing a high quality VI3 solution from initiation at the beginning, design and implementation in the middle, and operations at the end.

It is a space in a zone, in this case the Strategy zone, where blogs, discussions, documents and tasks can be contained and worked on by a group. It is like a small fenced area within a large zone.

The most important part of the VI3.Blueprint project is the tasks. The tasks contain the specification of a blueprint document, as well as assigning the work to a VIOPS user and providing a due date. These tasks help collaboration by tracking who is working on what.

• See the VI3.Blueprint task list

It lives in the Strategy zone, and you can find it here:

• Go to the VI3.Blueprint

The most popular work on the VI3.Blueprint project is reviewing the content that has been written. You can do this straight away by having a look at the VI3.Blueprint Project that has a Task Status of "Specification" then you should contact Steve Chambers to get ownership/involvement with that task - Steve can help assign the task to you and help you put the specification together.

Steve Chambers, John Roche and Rodos can all help you - send one of them a private message with your question.

Before any documents are written, there must be a task for that document in the VI3.Blueprint project.

This is important because the task has the document specification. Without the specification it is nigh impossible to collaborate effectively, as everyone has different ideas and ways of working.

If the task for the document has the specification in, then collaboration can start. There should always be a minimum of two people working on a document. The steps to collaborate are:

Creating the initial document

1. Someone creates the initial document and ensures it has the correct format, pasting content in from the task specification.

2. In the Collaboration Options field, all user ids should be entered, with comma separator, into the "Users who may edit" Specific Users field. This means that, before the document is approved for publication, these users can see and work on the document together.

1. If this is not set, then only the original document author (and administrators) will be able to see the document before publication and no collaboration will be possible.

3. Do not change the "Users who must approve for publication" - this will default to the normal settings.

4. Click Save as Draft

5. All authors check to see that they get a notification that they are collaborating on the document.

One editor at a time

At this point, users can take it in turns to edit the document - the system will only let one user work on the document at one time.

Communicating via Comments

The best way for users to communicate, and track that communication, is via the document comments section at the bottom of the document. These comments can be cleaned up before publication.

Manage Versions

After each edit, clicking Save as Draft will save a new version on the server. The Manage Versions action can be used to revert back to previous versions.

Compare Versions

If you want to see the difference between versions, then use the Manage Versions action to list the versions and use the Changes button to see a diff of the versions - very useful You can also compare two specific document versions (e.g 1 and 6).

Adding / removing an author

If someone wants to join in the collaboration, then add them to the Users who may edit field in Collaboration Options. Likewise, remove a user if they no longer want to take part.