As we all probably know, InDesign doesn't work well with servers, but my team has to work from a server on InDesign docs that contain lots of large images and we experience crashes and hangs throughout the day.
I'm curious what others' file structure environments are like with InDesign files that are shared between multiple people and if anyone has found solutions or workarounds to alleviate these issues .
If you have large image files that are typically in high res to prevent occasional crashes you could work in "Fast Display" which is located under View -> Display Performance.
There will not be much of a solution for collaboration because InDesign doesn't support revision control and the issue you will always face is if someone pushes an update, will the previous person have the changes in their version?
A somewhat solution I've run across is only allowing a sole individual and locking the InDesign source until that person is finished. This may not be the best ideal solution but it's the only one I know of to prevent possible loss of edits. If you have large collaboration there is Dropbox or something like BitBucket. However, there are pros and cons so if I were you I would integrate the images with Dropbox for the speed to the hardware and use the BitBucket solution to obtain revision control. This is based on if there are no edits to the images, if there are edits to the images I would just use BitBucket directly and have revisions made to the files but then you're having to manage the edits.
If you want to prevent the crashes, working OFF the server is the best option and prevents relying on internet connection and the server load as InDesign was never really intended for that. I would get your team or collaborators to download there piece and push for revisions and when finished tell them when they're allowed to make edits. If you have a very large team there are options like SharePoint but that price point could be well above what you're looking for.
A tip, I would also suggest populating a log to track edits from InDesign with File -> Package -> Summary -> Report...
I am not sure how much of your original question was about the collaboration process and how much was about working on a server. I can't offer advice about collaboration, but I can share my experience working across a server.
First, I just want to preface my comments by saying that I have been working on InDesign files off of local servers for at least the past 14 years, and have never had any real issues to report. As long as the server and your computer are correctly configured, you shouldn't really even notice a difference most of the time. And since most the of the firms where I worked didn't back up individual hard drives, I have always been a stickler about not using my local drive for anything.
If you are having trouble, and your server is located near you (like in another part of your office)...then you need to discuss things with your IT folks because something is set up poorly. Don't let them blame InDesign for that issue...
BUT...a previous employer stored all of our shared documents and images on a main server in Charlotte, NC. My office was in Los Angeles. And I did have some challenges with this particular workflow. Whenever I had to work on a document, I would usually copy it from the main server to a local location, and then open it and save it there. If I tried opening directly from the remote server, there was a noticeable lag time (5-10 minutes to open the file), and frequent crashes. Any images or linked files that I had to use, I would do the same thing, copy them to a local drive and then work with them there.
If I had to collaborate with someone in a different office, I would send them the document (or section) directly--either embedding linked items, packaging the file or telling my coworker to ignore errors and work without the links.
Once the entire document was complete, part of my "close-out" process for that project was to upload the final version of the document to the main server, and relink to images stored on that remote server. As long as I retained the image names for the images that I had been storing locally, then relinking wasn't that difficult a procedure (we made sure that our image names were somewhat descriptive so that they were fairly simple to locate).
As a firm, we developed a number of templates for different types of content (like portfolios for our projects, resumes, etc.). Then we created pieces of content to fit within those templates and exported those sections of content as snippets (.idms files). The snippets were saved on the main server, and our entire team was very careful about regularly updating those snippets, so that our entire marketing team felt confident that the snippets were up to date and accurate.
Nowadays, shared CC Library files would probably serve the same function, only even better because then you would be notified if one of the snippets had been updated since you placed it.
Last, but not least, I use the InDesign book feature a lot. I started using it back in the days when the help manual (which was actually a printed book that was included in the box along with the 16 floppy discs that you used to install the program) said to limit the number of pages in one InDesign document. For the most part, that is no longer an issue, but I have found that working with large documents, especially when they have a lot of linked files (most of my documents run around 100-200 pages with lots of images, and file sizes are frequently 50-75 Mb) it really does make a difference to break your document into smaller pieces.
Anyway, I don't know this is of any help to you...but that is how I have been able to work successfully with large documents and remote computer servers.
