Team Workflows
Closed Caption Creator Pro and Enterprise accounts support multi-user collaboration, allowing teams to work together on captioning, translation, review, and audio description projects. There are two distinct approaches to team collaboration, each with different trade-offs depending on how your team is organized and how much concurrent editing is required. Before setting up any team workflow, ensure that your team members have been added and assigned the appropriate roles via Help → Team Management. See Users & Groups for full setup instructions.
Workflow 1: Shared Team Storage​
The simplest way to collaborate is by saving projects to the Team Drive within the Storage Explorer. Any project saved to the Team Drive is immediately accessible to all team members with the appropriate permissions — there is no additional sharing step required. This makes it well-suited for sequential handoff workflows where one person finishes their work and passes the project to the next.
The primary limitation of this approach is that it does not support concurrent editing. If two users have the same project open at the same time and both save their changes, the second save will overwrite the first. For projects where only one person is actively editing at a given time, this is rarely a problem. For higher-risk assets, Closed Caption Creator provides a Lock mechanism to protect against accidental overwrites. When a project record is locked by a team member, all other users who attempt to open it are required to save it as a copy, ensuring that only one user's changes are committed back to the original file. Locking is applied from the Information panel on the right side of the Storage Explorer when a record is selected.
Workflow 2: Team Projects​
Team Projects are designed for situations where multiple users need to work on the same project simultaneously without the risk of overwriting each other's changes. Rather than relying on a shared file that only one person should edit at a time, Team Projects use a commit and snapshot model: each user's changes are tracked separately and merged together on the server whenever a sync is performed. This produces an updated version of the project — referred to as the head file — that incorporates contributions from all collaborators.
The sync model supports changes to Event Groups, Events, the project name, and the frame rate. Other project-level settings, such as style configurations and export presets, are not currently included in the merge process and should be configured consistently by each team member independently.
Converting a Project to a Team Project​
To enable the Team Project features on an existing project, open Edit → Options and change the Project Type from the default setting to Team. After saving the settings, the application automatically creates the first commit and synchronizes it with the server. Once this is complete, three additional icons will appear in the top-right section of the toolbar: Project History, Share Project, and Sync Changes.
Sharing a Team Project​
Once a Team Project has been created, the Share Project button opens the Share Manager. From here, click New Share, provide a name for the share, and select which team members you want to invite. By default, you can choose which specific Event Groups each share includes, giving you the flexibility to expose only the segments relevant to a particular collaborator. If you want to grant unrestricted access to all Event Groups, enable the Full Permissions option.
After saving, the Share Manager displays a shareable URL that can be sent to collaborators using a web browser, as well as a Share ID that team members using the desktop application can enter via File → Import → Team Project. It is important to note that Closed Caption Creator does not upload or store media files. When a team member imports a shared project, they will need to re-import the video or audio source on their own system before they can begin working.
Syncing Changes​
The Sync Changes button is available to all users who have access to a Team Project, not just the project owner. Clicking it opens the Sync panel, where you can optionally enter a commit message describing what you have changed — this message will appear in the Project History and can be a helpful reference for the rest of the team. Once you click Sync Changes, an animated progress bar tracks the operation as your local changes are uploaded, merged with contributions from other team members, and returned to your session as the updated head file.
To keep the project in a consistent state and avoid large divergent edits that are harder to merge, team members should sync their work frequently throughout the day rather than only at the end of a session. When local unsaved changes are present, the Sync Changes icon in the toolbar displays an amber animated state as a reminder to sync.
Reviewing Commit History​
The Project History button, visible only to the project owner, opens a log of all commits that have been created for the project. Each entry shows the commit ID, the date and time it was created, the username of the team member who submitted it, and any commit message they provided. If needed, the most recent commit can be deleted from this panel — this is useful for rolling back an accidental or incorrect sync.
Example: Fast-Turnaround Broadcast Workflow​
One of the most effective uses of Team Projects is for broadcast captioning work that requires multiple contributors to complete the project within a tight deadline. The following example outlines how a team might divide and deliver a large captioning job in a fraction of the time it would take a single editor.
The project owner starts by creating a new project, importing the source media, and running the AI transcription service to generate an initial draft of the captions. Once the transcription has been imported as subtitles, the owner segments the main Event Group into smaller sections — one segment for each contributing team member. After segmenting, the owner syncs the project to create the initial commit and then opens the Share Manager to generate a share and distribute the Project Code or share link to each team member.
Each contributor imports the project using the Share ID in the desktop application or by opening the share URL in a browser. They re-import the media on their own system if needed, then begin editing their assigned segment. As work progresses, contributors sync their changes regularly so that the head file on the server stays up to date with everyone's progress.
Once all contributors have completed their segments and performed a final sync, the project owner merges the individual Event Groups into a unified final Event Group. This merged result represents the complete captioned program and can then be reviewed, passed through QC, and exported in the required delivery format. Speaker consistency should be verified at the merge stage to ensure that naming conventions applied by different contributors are uniform across the final output.
Troubleshooting​
Team Management is not visible in the Help menu. This option requires the application to be running in online mode with an active Pro or Enterprise subscription and an admin-level user account. Verify all three conditions before attempting to access the dashboard.
The Sync Changes icon remains amber after syncing. The amber animation indicates that local changes are present that have not yet been committed to the server. If the animation persists after a successful sync, confirm that the sync completed without errors and try syncing again. Check your network connection and authentication state if the issue continues.
Team members see different project content after opening the same share. This usually indicates that users are working from different commit states. Perform a clean sync cycle — each team member should sync their current changes, then reopen the project to confirm they are on the same head file. Compare Event Group names and event counts to identify any divergence.
Users are overwriting each other's changes in the Team Drive. This is the expected behavior of the Shared Team Storage approach when multiple users save simultaneously. For projects that require concurrent editing, convert to a Team Project and use the Sync Changes workflow. For shared-storage projects that have strict single-editor access, apply a Lock to the project record before opening it.