Reviewing Reviewlink 3

When I first logged into ReviewLink it was sometime in 2012 or 2013. The company I was working for was considering an alternative method to enhance SME participation and ease of use in reviewing course material. We first began to consider using it because of the integration into Lectora. Back in the day, I was usually put in charge of writing standard operating procedures so I started to formulate a way to make it work within our current process.  It wasn't hard because developers would publish out to Reviewlink instead of the test server of our LMS, SME's would log onto Reviewlink instead of the LMS, and comments could be created and marked as complete just like what we were doing in Word or PowerPoint. I presented my findings to my superiors but it lost to politics.  I heard "it's not broke let's not fix it" and it's going to cost us to much money. We were also going to have to consider hosting the tool since the companies firewall was so strict. At the time we had around 15 developers and Instructional Designers on staff working on any where from 3 to 30 projects at one time. The sheer volume we dealt with on a daily basis meant we needed a large amount of uploads. I still really feel like we could of reduced review time and the total number of back and forth emails. I've seen success stories floating around with crazy hour reductions.

Fast forward to now and it has a monthly or yearly fee with different package sizes to fit everyone's needs. They also pushed the tool out as it's own SaaS making it available for non Lectora users which makes perfect sense because you can now upload Storyline and Captivate content. For companies that work with freelancers or multiple authoring tools you can now have a shared platform outside of your strictly limited LMS to review content! You can also review on the go because Reviewlink is responsive.

I love how if you suggest something they take it into consider. That's probably one of my favorite aspects of Trivantis products.  If you ask for it, they'll figure out a way of putting it in, especially if they see the value as well. I feel a lot of pride and excitement when I work in a product where I get to see my suggestions come alive. When we were researching the tool we wanted the ability to comment in multiple languages because a lot of the work we did was in translated content, done!  We wanted a way to sort through and pull off comments if needed, they added it.  The only thing I see that still could be a great feature is adding callouts.  Sometimes it's hard to explain in text where an object is or what it's doing especially if your working in a language your not familiar with.  It would be nice to have some basic shapes or even just one that was color coded to your particular feedback. That way instead of reviewing the page in full you can easily pick out what the reviewer is talking about.

All in all the versions just keep getting better and better. I can see the value of adding this into my tool set. If you want to check out ReviewLink they have a free 30 day trial.