Your prescription for increased productivity and profitability
If you do a little investigating, you may be surprised to find there are just about as many different workflows for using InCopy with InDesign as there are blogs (or movies) on the subject. Now, imagine adding scripts to these traditional workflows and you increase the number more than two-fold. But then this is the advantage of scripting: it allows you to create your own workflow just the way you want it.
Set up a specific folder structure for your project. Use a file naming convention or file labeling to filter the files so just those assigned to the user are shown in a choose from list dialog.
Let the script that opens the assignment file also open all of the stories. If you limit the number of stories within an assignment file, having three or four stories checked out at once should not inconvenience other users.
To assist users you might think in terms of a script that does the following:
Assign the script to a keyboard shortcut and your user will love you
Manually, the steps required are:
With our collection of Assignment workflow scripts (coming soon), the Assign Stories script presents the user with a dialog in which to name the assignment. Optionally, the user can override the default name to be added to all .icml files associated with the assignment. The name of the user to whom the stories will be assigned is also chosen from a list. The script does the rest:
The assignment workflow is only one way that InCopy can be used with InDesign. What makes for a perfect pairing is the fact that both are open for scripting. And because you are a savvy user, you can take some of the code from our sample scripts and design your own super workflow.