While working on another feature (which I will talk about someday soon) for ScreenSteps we decided that is was time to implement a status setting for lessons. A lesson can now be assigned a status of one of the following:

• Ready to publish
• Needs review
• Not finished/needs revision

The status of a lesson is pretty useful if you are the only person working on a manual as it helps you keep track of what needs work and what is finished. The feature becomes really useful when you are working on a manual as a team though. Now as you pass lessons around using manual/lesson packages or ScreenSteps Live everyone in the group can keep track of what stage each lesson is at.

In addition to helping you track the progress of a lesson you can also use the status of lessons to filter which lessons are exported when exporting to PDF or HTML.

Here is a video of me changing the status of lessons in a manual and then displaying the PDF and HTML export dialogs with the new lesson status filter feature. We are still working on the UI but the video should give you an idea of what is coming.

We ran into a problem recently. We used the new skinning feature on ScreenSteps Live to make our manuals page have the same theme as our standard ScreenSteps site. That was great but there was a problem. We had a manual on our ScreenSteps Live account that didn’t belong there. ScreenSteps users that viewed our manuals would feel right at home. But the users of the other project would feel out of place.

And What About Lessons Just For Us?

We also weren’t sure where to post lessons for our internal use. And since we weren’t sure where to post them we didn’t post them. Obviously some tweeking was in order.

A Space For Everything - More Than Just a Tweek

What started out as a tweek has turned into something that is going to represent a major upgrade to the functionality of ScreenSteps Live. Sometime in the next couple of weeks we will be releasing a new feature called Spaces. This is going greatly simplify the way permissions on ScreenSteps Live are managed and help you get the right content to the right audience.

There are going to be two types of spaces:

• Manuals Spaces
• Lesson Buckets

Manuals Spaces

With Manuals Spaces you will be able to assemble manuals for a specific audience. For example, if you had three different products you could set up a manuals space for each one. Each space can then have its own custom styling, its own links, etc.

Lesson Buckets

Don’t want to organize your lessons into a manual? Use a lesson bucket. We are going to use this for all of our internal documentation. We will set up a lesson bucket that only Trevor and I have access to. Need a reminder on how to make a new branch from an old Git commit? Dump it in the bucket. Need to document how to process a purchase order? Dump it in the bucket. We think it is going to be a great resource for us.

Controlling Access and Presentation with Spaces

All access permissions will be handled at the space level. If you make the space public then anything in that space is public. If you want to control access, make the space private and assign readers to the space. Anything that shows up in the space will be available to the reader. You no longer will have to manage permissions at the lesson or manual level. Want someone to see a lesson? Drop it in a space that they have access to.

You will also be able to custom skin each space. This will allow you to tailor the look and links for each space to meet the needs of each target audience.

There is more coming with this update. We will be posting more information about this major upgrade to ScreenSteps Live in the coming days and weeks. Until then, get ready to put everything in its proper space.

We have been using http://search.twitter.com (previously summize.com) to see what people have been saying about ScreenSteps. It is pretty cool. If you want to see what the latest opinions of ScreenSteps are on Twitter then click here.