Strategy for identifying active document version in a read-only environment

In a read-only environment with limited document access, identifying the active version can be challenging when all documents share the same book icon. While disabling the "show all versions" setting is one option, there are alternative strategies to consider. Users can be encouraged to include version info in the document itself, like in headers or footers, making it visible in read-only mode.

A standardized naming convention with version numbers or dates can help identify the latest version, and collaboration tools and metadata can provide version history and timestamps. Clear communication channels and an index document for the latest versions further streamline this process in a read-only setting.

In a read-only environment with limited document access, identifying the active version can be challenging when all documents share the same book icon. While disabling the "show all versions" setting is one option, there are alternative strategies to consider. Users can be encouraged to include version info in the document itself, like in headers or footers, making it visible in read-only mode.

A standardized naming convention with version numbers or dates can help identify the latest version, and collaboration tools and metadata can provide version history and timestamps. Clear communication channels and an index document for the latest versions further streamline this process in a read-only setting.

Users can be encouraged to include version info in the document itself, like in headers or footers, making it visible in read-only mode.

This means you have to open each document to figure out which is the latest? That seems particularly slow. Also not really possible in a lot of reference files.

A standardized naming convention with version numbers or dates can help identify the latest version

Frequently our naming standard is set by the client. This can also make it non-obvious which files are versioned together. And while it doesn't break reference files, it will cause everybody to get notices "reference files has been moved or renamed" which is pretty annoying.

This idea works better if you put the date in the Description field. But you could also use the File Modified column to find the latest one, but all of these are SLOW.

Clear communication channels and an index document for the latest versions further streamline this process in a read-only setting.

So now we have to create and maintain a separate index and then every time we just want to reference a file, open and check for the latest version (which still won't help us pick it out of a list of all book icons with the same name, because the naming standard is set by somebody else).

All of these solutions are extra burdens on the USER just so Bentley can avoid writing code for a system that is supposed to help us keep track of files. It's super frustrating. I should be able to tell at a glance which file is latest. Not investigate a bunch of alternate files and file headers/footers just to help us locate a document it already knows about but doesn't want to show us.