Track changes
under review
Paula Stern
Need the ability for content author to make edits and have reviewers see the changes (think Track Changes in Word)
Log In
D
D360 Product Management
Merged in a post:
Feature request: Save article versions without publishing.
manoharan soundarraj
In Document360, the current revision history only logs changes after an article is published. However, during the drafting phase, especially in collaborative environments, it's crucial to track contributions and preserve content at various stages — even before publishing.
Problem statement:
- If multiple writers contribute to an article that is still in "New" (unpublished) status, we can't trace who updated what — there's no revision history or content-level audit.
- If content is deleted accidentally, and the article hasn’t been published, there is no revision to revert to.
- The existing backup system is either manual or 24-hour delayed, making immediate recovery impractical.
- The contributors list only shows names, not what changes were made by each person.
Proposed solution:
Introduce a "Save version" button or automatic draft versioning, which:
- Allows users to save interim versions without publishing the article.
- Helps reviewers track changes and ownership during collaboration.
- Prevents accidental loss of content by providing a fallback even in "New" status.
This feature would greatly enhance collaboration, version control, and accountability in draft-stage article writing.
Sam Fredericks
This would be a critical feature to add. Not being able to see changes on drafts in real time causes issues with our policy approval workflows resulting in users having to use Word and upload into Doc360 rather than work directly in Doc360.
Vijayendrad Darode
Most needed feature - may be you will have integrated this Track Changes feature within Workflow itself.
Dave Bigelow
Agree! This is an essential feature. Currently we are using word as our working version of the documentation so that we can sue track changes and copy-pasting updates to Doc360, but this wastes a lot of time each time we want to update a page.
Paula Stern
Thanks for the update Thiru - to be honest, track changes is a huge requirement AFAIK. While reviewers can leave comments, without track changes, the reviewers are required to read vast amounts of text for each new review. Few developers have the time or patience for this.
Thiru
under review
Thiru
Caroline Tabach thanks for sharing the idea, and yes Paula Stern that is the workaround we can suggest at this moment, since article revision history comparison helps you to identify / compare the changes performed by the contributors, which can be reviewed as well. W.r.t the request, currently we are not aligned with this feature in our existing roadmap. However, we would like to keep the thread alive and look upon for any tractions from other customer segments.
Caroline Tabach
Thiru: Not being able to track changes as Paula writes, is a major reason why you are getting requests like "Enable Export to Word", and why people are copying their texts outside of Document360 in order to be able to mark texts that change so that developers or Product Managers can easily identify the changes made in long articles. Working with SMEs and getting changes reviewed and approved is an essential part of a technical writing workflow, and this process is something that adds extra steps and makes our workflow longer. (I would like to ask Export to Google docs for this reason, and in fact if we could export the "Compare" page to google docs, this would help....but this is really something you should look into)
Caroline Tabach
Work around - for articles that do not exist at all - publish each iteration, hide the article and use the compare to see what changes were made
Paula Stern
Caroline Tabach: Yup - we're doing that but working with doc360 and correcting broken links and bad formatting has caused us to publish often. That's the beauty AND the curse of working on live documentation. When writing updates prior to product deployment, you don't want to publish too often. Track changes are a visible sign that the topic is not ready to be deployed as well as a critical way for developers/reviewers/PMs to SEE what they need to review.
Caroline Tabach
Paula Stern: Please see my additional comment just added above.