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Utilizing Notes in Lectora and Lectora Online

Utilizing Notes in Lectora and Lectora Online

Utilizing notes in Lectora and Lectora Online is a great way to keep your ideas and team collaboration organized. Have you ever walked away from developing a Lectora or Lectora Online title and forgot about what you wanted to develop or forgot what type of interaction you were working on? How about working with other team members on a project and you always end up going back and forth to emails looking for recommendations on changes or edits that need to be made? Not anymore… use Lectora notes to keep yourself organized. Lectora notes can be added to any Lectora or Lectora Online title and will serve as reminders to provide instructions to authors who you may be collaborating with on a shared title. You can add notes to any location within your title, whether it be a chapter, section or page.

Note Tips

Here are some tips to help you utilize Notes to the fullest:

  • You can add notes throughout a title; you can also select a predefined note style or create a note using a custom note style.
  • The note will display your name, date, and time it was created.
  • You can color coordinate your notes to help with development. As an example, yellow notes can be text related, blue notes image related and green notes media related, etc. You can also have each developer have his or her own distinct note color if collaborating on one project.
  • Keep all your notes organized, depending on whether you’ve shared your titles with other developers and they have created notes or you’re going back to review the notes you’ve created on your title.
  • When you place notes within your title, the Title Explorer reflects the location of the notes. Each chapter, section or page containing a note will appear in bold and italicized in the Title Explorer.  
  • Notes will only appear in Edit Mode and will not appear in published titles. To view note contents double-click any note icon.
  • If you import existing PowerPoint presentations into Lectora, any instructor notes will transfer over into Lectora notes. You’ll notice the bold and italicized pages in the Title Explorer. This is great if you storyboarded your content in PowerPoint or had a subject matter expert (SME) look over your outline and the SME left notes or recommendations.

Add a Note

  1. Do one of the following:

A. Simply right-click on the location within the Title Explorer that you want to place the note and select Add a Note.

B. With the location selected select Add Note from the Tools ribbon in the Review section.

2. In the notepad, type the text of the note and close the note by clicking the Close button in the upper-right corner. Expand the window if more room is needed. The note icon appears on the content page.

Editing an Existing Note

You can specify a custom note style, edit the text, or adjust the status (Lectora Online only).

  1. To edit an existing note do one of the following:

A. Right-click on the note icon and choose from the appropriate options.

B. Within an opened note, click on the Lectora Online icon in the upper left-hand corner. Choose from the appropriate options.

Delete a Note

  1. To delete a note do one of the following:
    A. Right-click on the note and select the Delete Note option.
    B. Within an opened note, click on the Lectora Online icon in the upper left-hand corner. Choose from the Delete Note options.

Specify the Status of a Note (Lectora Online only)

In Lectora Online you can assign a status to a note. This allows you and the members of your organization to track the progress of notes through the title’s life cycle.

  1. To specify a status do one of the following:

A. Right-click on the note icon and choose from the Note Status options.

B. Within an opened note, click on the Lectora Online icon in the upper left-hand corner. Choose from the Note Status options. The status is updated in the title bar when you save and close the note.

2. Select from one of the following states. These states can be defined to meet any of your development needs.  Here is what we recommend:

  • New – Just added and needs addition, either to finish or review.
  • Accepted – The edit has been accepted.
  • Completed – The development of the review process has been completed.
  • Verified – The issue has been verified by an outside party.

Notes Report

No matter how you’re developing, you have the option to generate a notes report with all the notes associated with a title. The report will provide an at-a-glance summary of the order, location, color, originator, timestamp and text of each note. You can filter these notes as needed as the columns are clickable. You can also print the Notes Report.

Pull a Notes Report

To pull a notes report select the Tools ribbon and the Notes Report icon. This opens the Title Notes Report window.

Print a Notes Report

With the Title Notes Report window open select the Print button.

Download a Notes Report

With the Title Notes Report window open select the Download CSV or Download Text buttons. The Notes Report can either be downloaded into a Comma Separated Value (CSV) or a text (.txt) file.

This article last reviewed Dec, 2015. The software may have changed since the last review. Please visit our Release Notes to learn more about version updates.