Get the Most out of Team Projects
Axure RP’s team projects feature is what separates the middle-tier Team Edition from the Pro Edition. If you have the Team Edition—or the top-tier Enterprise Edition, which also includes the team projects feature—are you getting the most out of your team projects? Read on for some superuser tips. (Find a more detailed comparison of Axure RP editions on our buy page.)
And by the way, if you’re using the Team Edition but haven’t yet explored—or maybe even haven’t heard of—the team projects feature, you’re definitely not getting your value’s worth! Start by diving into our thorough team projects documentation.
See who’s got that page you want
As of the recent release of Axure RP 8.1, you can now check who’s got a given page or master checked out. Any item checked out to another team member will be showing an icon that looks like a blue diamond with a minus sign inside it; click on that icon to see the name of the team member who’s got the item checked out. This information updates in real time—a few times per minute if you have a stable internet connection.
Your prototype is always ready to share
As soon as you set up a team project on Axure Share, there’s an always-updated version of your prototype ready to send to stakeholders at a moment’s notice. Access this version of the prototype at <abc123.axshare.com>, where “abc123” is your project’s six-character Axure Share ID. The prototype at this location is automatically updated any time a team member checks in their changes to the central copy of the project, so it’s always current.
Note: If you’d like to maintain milestone versions of your team project’s prototype, you can do that by publishing to an alternative Axure Share ID in Axure RP’s “Publish to Axure Share” dialog.
Think in terms of workspaces
Workspaces, a feature of Axure Share, are the best way to control your coauthors’ and viewers’ access to your team projects. As soon as you decide to turn that rough prototype you’ve thrown together into something you’d like to develop further with colleagues, don’t reach for the “Team” menu in Axure RP; instead, fire up your web browser, log in to Axure Share, and create a new workspace.
Then, once you’ve configured security settings and invited coauthors and/or viewers, you’ll be ready to use Axure RP’s “Create Team Project from Current File” command to populate your new workspace with a team project. Think of configuring the workspace as setting the stage for your first act.
Collaborate on libraries too!
Widget libraries are a feature of Axure RP that lets you store and reuse common design patterns. We’ve got a big collection of pre-made widget libraries available for download on our website. But did you know that you can make your own custom widget libraries—or edit the ones you download—right inside Axure RP, the same way you’d edit a regular project? And on top of that, you can even author widget libraries as team projects if needed. Host your widget libraries on Axure Share to complete your round-trip workflow.
Switch between public cloud and private server
Here’s a tip for our Enterprise Edition users: you can quickly switch back and forth between publishing to the Axure Share public cloud and one or more private Axure Enterprise servers. The dialog for doing this is available via the “Manage Servers” button at the top of the Publish to Axure Share dialog. Switch between public and private instances of Axure Share when you want to publish the occasional public prototype (though still password-protected, of course!) from an otherwise private and siloed team project hosted on your company’s Axure Enterprise server.
What’s that you say? You weren’t aware that we offered a private version of Axure Share for hosting behind your company’s firewall? If that’s the case, you can read all about Axure for Enterprise here.