Two new ways to keep your work together
Two new ways to keep your work together
When you make Easy Read, the work is never one picture. It is a leaflet, a care plan, a day out. Ten pictures, a Pack, and a colleague who needs to add the one you forgot.
Until now the Library gave you one place to put all of it: Favourites. One long list, growing since the day you joined, with no way to say "these twelve are for Mrs Shah's appointment next month". And when you shared something with your team, you shared it with everyone on the licence, whether it was for them or not.
Two new things fix that.
Projects
Keep one piece of work together: the pictures, the Packs and the talk about them, in one folder.
Groups
Share with the people the work is actually for, not everyone on your licence.
Projects: one folder for one job
A project is a folder you name after the work, not after the folder. "Mrs Shah's hospital appointment". "Fire safety leaflet". "Welcome letters". Add a line saying what belongs in it, and your team knows what to put there.
Every picture and every Pack now has a folder button. Press it, tick the project, and it is filed. You can tick more than one project, and you can make a new project without leaving the page you are on.
Open the project and everything for that job is on one screen: the pictures, the Packs, who added what, and a place to talk about it. Comments sit beside the work instead of in somebody's email. Beside them is a plain record of what has happened, so you can pick up where a colleague left off without asking.
The bits people ask about
- Filing a picture favourites it too. So it stays in your Favourites as well. Taking it out of a project leaves your Favourite alone.
- Nothing is copied. The same picture can sit in two projects. It is one picture, filed in two places.
- Deleting a project does not delete anything in it. The folder goes. Your pictures, your Packs and your Favourites stay exactly where they were.
- People only see what they could already open. If a Pack in a shared project is not shared with somebody, they do not see it. The project tells them how many things are hidden, not what they are.
- You can have up to 50 projects, with as many pictures and Packs in them as you like.
Groups: share with the people it is for
On a team of four, sharing with everyone is fine. On a team of forty, it is noise. A group is a set of people you name once and use again: an office, a service, a project team.
Wherever you share something, you now get one choice: Only me, Everyone on your team, or Only certain people. Pick the third and you can tick groups, named people, or both.
The useful part is what happens later. Change who is in a group and everything shared with that group follows. When somebody new starts, add them to the Day service team group and they can see everything that group already has. You do not go back through each Pack. When somebody leaves your licence, they lose access straight away.
The two together
Here is the shape of a normal week. You are writing a leaflet about Mrs Shah's hospital appointment. You make a project called Mrs Shah's hospital appointment and share it with your Day service team group. You file the ward, the nurse and the appointment letter into it. Your colleague adds the bus, and leaves a comment saying the hospital entrance is still missing. The Pack you build goes in the same folder.
Everyone who needs it can see it. Nobody else is bothered by it. In a month, when the appointment comes round again, it is all still in one place.
What it costs
Projects
Come with every Photo Library licence. There is nothing to switch on and nothing extra to pay.
Groups
Come with a team licence of 3 or more people, once your account holder has switched on Allow Team Media.
Sharing a project with certain people uses Groups, so it needs a team licence. Sharing with your whole team, or keeping a project to yourself, does not.
Where to find them
Projects are in the Photo Library, under Projects. Groups is a button at the top of the Library, and Manage groups is there wherever you share something.
Find out more
If you try them and something does not work the way you expected, tell us. Email ask@photosymbols.com and a person will read it.