About teamwork
Many projects involve multiple researchers working together. This topic explains how you can work as a team in an NVivo project.
NOTE Teamwork features are not fully implemented in this release—for example, you cannot identify coding by particular users. Refer to What's in NVivo 10 for more information.
In this topic
- Can my team collaborate in a project?
- How project user profiles are created in projects
- Manage project users who share a computer login
- Set passwords to restrict access to your project
- Why it is important to keep your software up-to-date
Can my team collaborate in a project?
This release of NVivo 10 for Mac has limited support for teamwork. You can collaborate by working with a single project file, however only one user can open and work with the project at any point in time.
Each team member can have their own user profiles in the project, however, users are not 'authenticated', so team members must take care to use the correct user profile—refer to Manage project users who share a computer login for more information.
We recommend that all team members use the same version of the software. We do not recommend working in teams with some members using NVivo 10 on Windows and others using NVivo for Mac due to some known limitations and issues. Refer to Work with your projects on Windows or a Mac (Cross-platform limitations and issues) for more information.
NOTE Other teamwork features (for example, merging projects) are not implemented in this release—refer to What's in NVivo 10 for more information.
How project user profiles are created in projects
When you first start NVivo, you are prompted to set up your default NVivo user profile. When you work in a project, this user profile is used to create your project user profile. If each team member accesses the project using their own user profile, you can monitor the work done by different team members.
If you change your default NVivo user profile, the next time you work in your project, a new project user profile will be created. Work you do from this point onwards will be associated with the new project user profile.
If you accidentally create two separate profiles in your project, you can merge the two user profiles, by removing one of the project user profiles and assigning all associated project content to the other user.
Manage project users who share a computer login
If team members login to a computer using a shared user account, then—if you want to be able to track their work individually in a project—it is important that each person uses their own NVivo user profile.
Each team member can create their own user profile and should ensure they use the correct user profile whenever they access the project. When a team member opens the project, they can check to see which user profile is currently in use. If they are not using the correct user profile, they can switch user profiles without closing the project.
You can also turn on the automatic prompt for user option, so that team members are prompted to enter their user account whenever they launch NVivo. When one team member finishes working with the project, they should exit NVivo, so that the next user is forced to launch NVivo and will be prompted to enter their user profile.
Set passwords to restrict access to your project
You can set passwords to restrict access to your project—you can set the following passwords:
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A 'Read/Write' password—allows full access to the project.
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A 'Read Only' password—allows users to view the project. This password also allows users to copy your project or import data from your project into another project.
Refer to Set project passwords for more information.
Why it is important to keep your software up-to-date
If you are using features that were added in a service pack, make sure that everyone in the team has updated their NVivo software so that they can use these features too. You can check which version of the software is installed on your computer.