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beheerd97336823
Participant
January 30, 2019
Question

Searching for an InDesign workflow

  • January 30, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 564 views

We are looking a good workable InDesign workflow.

At the moment we have an OSX fileserver, serving out various shares over AFP.

Our creatives work directly on these shares, and that has worked perfect for years. Even though Adobe does not support opening files from shares.

We now need to replace our fileserver, and Apple has deprecated AFS. It still bundles AFS in its Operating Systems, but this may end the next update without warming.

Ideally we install a Synology NAS and work from that, but I hear there are some problems in working with InDesign files on a share using SMB.

Dragging files locally is not really an option for us, unless we find a good workflow to accommodate this.

We work with about 15 designers/DTP, and many work on the same project (in the same folder). We mostly cut up our publications in multiple InDesign files and place them in an InDesign Book. Right now, a designer cannot open a file that another designer is working in (because of de .indk files). If we need to drag the files locally, we would need to do something to the file on the server, so no one starts working on it as well. This does not feel like a favourable workflow to us.

How do other companies solve this issue? Is there a workflow we are not thinking of? Are there configurations for a NAS that have a proof of concept for working with InDesign files?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

hammer0909
Community Expert
hammer0909Community Expert
Community Expert
January 30, 2019

I would contact a reputable local computer service that can build a good File Server for you. There are many options out there. In my experience, NAS in general doesn't offer good performance working in Adobe applications over the network to a NAS device. Maybe there are ways to configure the NAS for better performance, I'm not a server guy, but my experience has not been good with those devices.

B
beheerd97336823Author
Participant
January 31, 2019

Thanks for your reply Chad, this only still leaves the question about SMB and a workflow. I have contacted various resellers, and they all seem to struggle with the same issue. SMB seems to work well, but not for opening InDesign files on a share.

hammer0909
Community Expert
hammer0909Community Expert
Community Expert
January 31, 2019

I'm curious who told you this. Although I personally prefer AFP when working on a Mac and connecting to a server, I've also used SMB reliably as well. That being said, a solid solution is Acronis which is a product that adds AFP over SMB shares. Years ago this product was called ExtremeZIP but now has a new owner. I have several clients who are using this successfully. Maybe this is the missing link you're looking for?

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