Veeva Basics offers two different document authoring processes: collaborative authoring and standard authoring.
With Collaborative Authoring, multiple users can edit documents at the same time, whereas standard authoring allows a single user to check out a document, edit it, and check it back into Vault.
Using Collaborative Authoring
Collaborative authoring connects Veeva Basics to Microsoft 365 to allow multiple users to edit a document at the same time. Microsoft 365 can be employed as desktop software, a mobile app, or in your browser. Collaborative authoring can be used with Microsoft Word (*.docx), Excel (*.xlsx), and PowerPoint (*.pptx) documents.
If you don’t have Microsoft 365 installed on your computer, you can edit a document with Microsoft 365 in your web browser by clicking the question mark (?) icon in the Collaborative Authoring banner, then clicking open in browser in the pop-up.
In the Opening in Browser dialog, click Continue. Vault opens the document in Microsoft 365 in your browser and sets the browser as your default document editing method.
For instructions on how to start a Collaborative Authoring session, click here.
@Mentioning in a Collaborative Authoring Document
Vault automatically adds workflow participants as editors on collaborative authoring documents, which allows them to be @mentioned in a collaborative authoring session. You can @mention any workflow participant, even if they have not yet opened the collaborative authoring document.
Check the document timeline view to see who was added to the workflow.
Saving and Checking In a Collaborative Authoring Document
When you manually start a collaborative authoring session to edit a Vault document, the file is stored in a Microsoft 365 shared drive. Changes you make, or changes made by any other user who joins the session, are saved to the Microsoft 365 file and are only shown in Vault when you perform the Save to Vault or Check In actions. Both options create a new minor version of the document in Vault. Save to Vault uploads your changes to Vault and allows the collaborative authoring session to continue, whereas Check In ends the session and allows the document to progress in its lifecycle.
When multiple users are editing a document, only the user who started the collaborative authoring session or the document owner can use Check In, but any user can use the Save to Vault action.
When you Check In the document, the collaboration session ends for everyone, so ensure that you check whether other users have finished editing the document. Any additional changes made in Microsoft 365 after the Check In are not synced with the Microsoft 365 file. If you made further changes to the document after you checked it in, we recommend saving a copy of the file to your local drive.
Using Standard Authoring
If collaborative authoring is not enabled in your Vault, you can still update documents with standard authoring by checking them out, editing them, and checking them back in. To prevent editing conflicts, Vault locks the document so other users cannot check out the document while it is checked out to you.