New article
Recently updated
How to Merge Changes to the Master Review
Who is this article for?Please Review Users merging changes to the master review.
Review Owners with permissions to merge changes.
Merging changes to the master review in Please Review is a critical step to consolidate feedback and ensure a unified document review. After completing sub-reviews on specific document sections, the changes, comments, and annotations made by sub-reviewers can be merged back into the master review. This process allows the main document to incorporate all the individual contributions while maintaining a cohesive and coherent definitive version.
Merging Changes to the Master Review
When a sub-review Owner publishes the accepted changes to the master review, Please Review will simply enter the changes into the master review as if they had been typed by the sub-review Owner. This may result in conflicting proposed changes which are handled in the normal Please Review way.
If the auto-update of accepted changes is not enabled, the following scenario may happen: Assume that there is an accepted proposed change in the master review which changes the entire paragraph text. This will not be reflected in the sub-review.
Meanwhile, the sub-review Owner accepts some minor modifications to the original paragraph text. When the sub-review Owner publishes these minor modifications to the master review, it will create a new proposed change in the master review which has the effect of removing the already accepted changes in the master review and reverting the paragraph to the original text with the minor changes from the sub-review. As this is an open proposed change in the master review, the master review Owner can obviously close (reject) it where upon the previously accepted proposed change will remain as the updated paragraph text.
This reverting to the original paragraph text may seem inconsistent. However, it is a result of Reviewers working on outdated paragraph text which is a consequence of not having auto-update enabled. The resulting proposed change from the sub review is, in fact, entirely logically consistent.
Auto-Update Accepted Changes
When creating a sub-review, the Owner will have the option, at step 4 of the new review wizard, to allow accepted changes in the master review to automatically be pulled down into the sub review. This effectively means that the sub-review is constantly updated to reflect the master review document.
In the case that auto-update is enabled there are some system behaviours to be aware of:
- Sub-review has an open change and a master review change on the same paragraph and text area (i.e. which conflicts with the sub-review change) is pulled down. In this case the sub-review change is withdrawn and the master review change overrides it.
- Sub-review has an open change and master review has a non-conflicting accepted change on the same paragraph. When the master review change is pulled down, the system will update the paragraph to reflect the master review’s change whilst maintaining the sub-review's open change.
- Sub-review has an accepted change. Master review has a change applied and accepted on the same paragraph which conflicts with the sub-review change. When the update occurs the accepted change from the master review will override the accepted change from the sub-review. The sub-review accepted change will be withdrawn.
- Sub-review has an accepted change, and the master review has a non-conflicting accepted change on the same paragraph. When the master review change is pulled down, the system will update the paragraph to reflect the master review’s change whilst maintaining the sub-review's accepted change. When the sub-review's change is published, the merged master change will also be included.