One of the best parts of the new project management in Entourage 2004 is that you can share your projects with colleagues who are also using Entourage 2004. To do this, you place the project file on a shared network volume, then invite other people to join the project. Entourage then automatically synchronizes changes made to the project file by members of the group. Everyone in the group has equal access to the information in the project, so anyone can add, edit, or delete project items. The person who created the project has no special or administrative privileges over the project once it has been shared, and that person’s name isn’t listed in the project file.
You can share most kinds of Entourage information in a shared project, with four exceptions: you can’t share email, clips from the Office Scrapbook, notes that contain multimedia elements such as sounds or movies, or Address Book groups. You can share contacts, calendar events, tasks, text-only notes, and files.
Documents in shared projects work in a different fashion than files in unshared projects. Shared documents are moved to the file server, and no longer reside on the group’s local machines. To access the shared files, you must have access to the server (i.e., the server must be mounted on your Desktop).
Items are not shared by default; you must always choose to share information. For example, a project can have calendar events that are shared, and events that show only to a particular participant.
Note
In order to share a project, all users of the project must have access to the shared network volume, and must have sufficient permissions to read and write to the volume. To learn more about file sharing, I suggest that you read Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther, by Glenn Fleishman.
To share a project, you need a file server on which to place the project file. You can use an iDisk, a Mac OS X Server machine, an AppleShare IP server, or you can even use a shared folder on your machine (if you have Personal File Sharing turned on in the Sharing pane of System Preferences). Any file server volume that all project participants can mount on their Desktops will work.
To begin sharing a project, follow these steps:
Mount the file server that will be the destination of the project file on your Desktop.
Determine and note the folder on the server where the project file will reside.
If the folder does not already exist, you should create it.
In Entourage’s Project Center, select the project in the Project List, then click the Share button at the bottom of the window to pop up a menu; choose Start Sharing Project.
In the resulting Project Sharing Assistant, read the Overview screen, then click the right arrow button to continue.
On the Choose a Project screen, pick the project that you want to share from the pop-up menu, then click the right arrow button to continue.
On the Choose a Location on a File Server screen, click the Choose button, which brings up a standard Open dialog. Navigate to the location that you noted in Step 2, or drag the shared folder into the dialog from the Finder. Click Choose.
The Volume and Path information for the shared document appears on the Choose a Location on a File Server screen.
Click the right arrow button to continue.
On the Share Current Project Items screen, click No to avoid sharing items that are already in the project, or Yes to share all current items. Then click the right arrow button to continue.
On the Share Items When I Add Them Later? screen, choose No to not share new project items by default, and Yes to always share new items.
You can always choose to share or not share any individual items later, so this option doesn’t lock you into anything.
Click the right arrow button to continue. Entourage copies the project file to the file server and presents you with the Done! screen confirming the location of the shared project file. Click the Close button to dismiss the Project Sharing Assistant.
Note
The shared project file is an Entourage archive file (see Archiving Entourage Data, much later in this ebook) that contains all the shared items in the project. The file that you’ll be sharing is in a folder with the same name as the project, and the file itself will be named
Archive.rge.
Now that you’ve successfully shared the project, you can send an email message inviting your colleagues to join the project.
Note
If the project file is on a shared folder on your machine (for instance, you are using Personal File Sharing), rather than on a file server, subscribers must subscribe to the project manually, rather than using the email method. See the next section, Subscribing to a Project Manually.
Follow these steps to invite project subscribers:
With the project selected in the Project List and the Overview tab displayed, choose Invite People to Join Project from the Share button at the bottom of the window.
Entourage puts up a dialog confirming that you want to send an invitation. Click the Create Email Invitation button. A new email message appears, with the body already filled in. The Info Bar at the top of the message contains a link that enables your recipients to join the project (Figure 9). Naturally, they must be using Entourage 2004 to see the link or join the project.
Address and send the message as usual.
When the recipients get the message and click the link, Entourage starts a Wizard that steps them through the subscription process.
Note
Entourage synchronizes each subscriber’s machine to the shared project file every 5 minutes, more or less. In order to keep the frequency of synchronization down, when you make a change to an item in a shared project, Entourage sets a 2-minute timer. If, after that time is up, you make no more changes to the project, Entourage waits another 5 minutes, then synchronizes. If you aren’t making any changes to the project, Entourage synchronizes every 5 minutes, to gather any changes from your colleagues.
You can subscribe to a shared project manually even if you don’t receive an email invitation. Follow these steps:
Mount the file server that contains the shared project.
In Entourage, choose File > Subscribe to a Project. In the resulting Subscribe to a Project Open dialog, navigate to and select the project file on the file server. It will be in a folder with the same name as the project, and the file will be named
Archive.rge.Click the Choose button.
The Subscribe to a Shared Project Wizard appears. This Wizard resembles the New Project Wizard (see Using the New Project Wizard, earlier), except that some items in it can’t be changed by the subscriber (but these items still provide information, such as the project’s due date).
Click through the tabs of the Wizard, modifying settings to suit you.
Click the Subscribe button.
Shared project items appear in the Project Center with a yellow diamond symbol next to them, as shown in Figure 10.
If you didn’t set the New Project Wizard to share all project items automatically, you can share individual items manually. Follow these steps:
In the Project Center, select the item that you want to share. It can be anything except for an email, a Clipping, or a Note that contains multimedia.
From the Share button at the bottom of the Project Center window, choose Share item type, where item type changes depending on what kind of item you selected. For example, if you select a contact, the menu reads Share Contact.
Entourage marks the item with the Sharing icon, and will share it at the next synchronization.
You can stop sharing a project at any time. This stops your sharing of the project; it doesn’t stop anyone else from sharing it.
Note
Once you create a project and start sharing it, you have no special or administrative privileges over the project. You can’t control other participants’ access, except if you are the administrator of the file server, and you lock out others using the server’s access privileges.
When you stop sharing a project, associated files and folders that you created that were moved to the file server will not automatically return to your machine. You must copy them back to your computer manually, before you stop sharing. Other data, such as calendar items, tasks, and contacts, that were shared with you will remain on your computer.
To stop sharing a project, follow these steps: