Lawmaker allows more than one user to edit a document at the same time. To do that it operates a locking system where individual provisions or groups of provisions can be locked by different users. These exercises will help you understand how multi-drafter editing of a document can be used.
đ Introduction
Locking document fragments/multi-user editing
Releasing Locks
Refreshing a document
đ Exercises
đ ď¸ Getting Started
Before you can complete this exercise, you will need to create your own training project. You will also need a partner to pair up with. If you havenât got one already, create a project.
The following steps will allow you to create the data required for this exercise.
How to create a new project
Download the XML document for the exercise by clicking on the link youâve been provided with. By default, the downloaded file is usually placed in the âdownloadsâ folder on your computer.
Log in to Lawmaker.
From the Dashboard, create a new project of the type you need for the exercise. Give it a title such as [Your Initials] Drafting a bill. (See Creating a new project.)
âď¸ Exercise 1: Edit a document with another user
In this exercise you will edit the same document as another user.
To do this, you will need to both open the same document and decide who will be Drafter 1 and who will be Drafter 2
Detailed steps to create
Drafter 1
From the Project tab, create a new working version and open it in the Editor
Add 2 sections, each with 2 subsections and save
Drafter 2
After Drafter 1 has saved their changes, open the same document as Drafter 1
Start typing into section 1. You should see a pencil icon appear against section 1 in the structure view showing that you have section 1 locked for editing
Drafter 1
When Drafter 2 has started editing section 1, you should see a padlock appear against section 1 in the structure view, the section will be highlighted grey in the Editor and you wonât be able to edit that section.
Start editing section 2: this provision hasnât got a lock which means you can edit it. You will see a pencil icon against section 2 in the structure view and Drafter 2 will see a padlock
Insert a new section after your section. A new section is inserted and this section will have an asterisk against it in the structure view indicating that itâs a new, unsaved section.
Drafter 2
You wonât be able to see the new section, but there will now be a padlock against the âbodyâ element in the structure view which means you will not be able to insert a section until Drafter 1 saves their changes and releases their lock on the âbodyâ (needed to insert new sections)
Drafter 1
Move your new section using the structure view so that itâs now the first section in the bill.
Renumber the provisions which have now got out of sequence. You cannot renumber all sections (and schedules) in a bill if other users have sections or schedules locked to them. This is because you need to acquire a lock on a section or schedule in order to renumber it. Instead, the renumber operation will work as far as it can until it comes up to a locked provision, where upon it will skip to the next section without a lock and continue renumbering from there.
Move your new section so that it is the last section in the bill and wrap it in a Part
Save your changes
Drafter 2
Once Drafter 1 has saved their changes, you should see a yellow warning message appear letting you know that the document has been updated and you will need to refresh your document to see the changes
Refresh the document
Select your section and wrap a part around it
Insert another section inside the same part
Change the order of the sections within the part
Drafter 1
Also change the order of sections in your part.
You should both see that the other drafterâs part is locked for editing, but you have more flexibility with reordering provisions within your part than you did without a part. This is because a lock is required on the parent provision of the provision you want to move using the structure view. Having a grouping level such as a part provides a âbufferâ that reduces any impact to other drafters in the same document as you. For more substantial restructuring, it might be best to only have one person in the bill document, then you can renumber and update references across the whole bill without tripping up over other draftersâ locks.
Drafter 2
Create a manual cross reference to the other drafterâs section by typing in a reference to the other drafterâs section e.g. Section 2 and run âtag x-refâ to see it automatically marked up as a valid cross reference
Drafter 1
Change the number of the section that the other drafter cross referred to
Save your changes
Drafter 2
Once Drafter 1 has saved their changes, refresh your document
Run âUpdate x-refâ across the whole document. You will see that both your cross references are updated to the new section number assigned by Drafter 1. You can create cross references within your provision to locked provisions and update them when changes have been saved.
âď¸ Exercise 2: Release locks
Letâs pretend Drafter 1 won the lottery and was so excited they forgot to save their work and promptly left the organisation.
Drafter 2 can release Drafter 1âs locks on the document so that they can continue drafting the document and if they had an auto-saved snapshot, this will be made visible to all users in the same organisation so that you can see what changes they made in read-only format.
Detailed steps to release locks
Drafter 1
Delete one of your sections and close the browser window without using the Close Editor button and click on âLeaveâ on the browser warning message.
Drafter 2
Select Document > Release All Locks and confirm the warning message by clicking on the Release locks button
Save your changes and close the document
On the Project tab, look for the snapshot version created from Drafter 1âs unsaved changes
