Saving over other entries

Kevin Kline

I know SS will tell me when another user is viewing the tab, and it will tell me when they make changes so I can refresh.

 

The challenges we're facing are: there's a good 30-45 seconds before SS tells me that someone is viewing the tab. That's plenty of time for them to get in, make a change, save it, and have me save what I'm working on at the same time. As we know, SS will only save the "last saved".

 

I know SS will let me look through the history and see what was saved previously in the cell, but that's only assuming I know there were changes made. And even IF I somehow find that out, now it's a huge pain / time drain to pull that information out, rearrange the projects, and put the information back where it should go - again, that's assuming I know there were changes made to start with.

 

For instance, as a test, I created a tab and invited my office-mate to it. He logged onto the sheet, made a change, saved it, and closed the tab - and SS never said a thing to me about him making a change or even viewing the sheet.

 

Then, we did the test again on another tab, and it never told me he was viewing it, but it DID tell me when he saved a change (took about 6 - 7 seconds - which is pretty darn good). Finally, we ran it a 3rd time and SS again, didn't tell me anything... I refreshed the tab after about a minute, and his changes were there, but 0% chance of me knowing that if someone across the building did that change.

 

Am I missing something? Is there a setting or some kind of way to ensure notifications are faster ( instantaneous? ) or some kind of way SS can say "changes have been made to this sheet" when I go to save it so I don't save over someone else's entries? 

Brad Jones

This is part of the problem with using an online system.  It's not fool-proof, and simultaneous write access is an inherent problem for any data sharing platform.

 

I don't know that there is a faster way than is currently offered.  It 'should' pop up when something changes, or someone logs in, but it is definitely not instantaneous.  Currently, the only way to make sure that you don't save over anyone elses work is to first refresh the sheet, then make the change, and then save.  It's not perfect but it will reduce the likelyhood of interference.  Not an elegant solution, but the best I have found so far.

 

Make sure that all of your users have their 'inactivity save' set to 1min.  This should at least help reduce the chance of someone saving a really old version of the sheet on top of your current one.  (wish that was a SS user admin feature)[SS Feature Request]