Best practice for managing rtf templates?

[secondWheel]

I'm starting to looking at how to manage and distribute custom rtf templates across multiple team members and EA projects.  I'm interested in hearing how other people manage this.  

Obviously, one approach is for the author of the custom rtf template to export it from within the rtf template editor, and then each team member manually imports the template.  I'm not keen on this approach as I don't expect it will scale nicely and it opens up lots of potential for templates to get out of alignment if individuals modify their local copy or fail to update changed templates.  

The approach I'm favouring at the moment is to establish an "Enterprise Reports" project that will be the repository for all custom rtf templates.  The report templates will be exported using the "Export MDG Technology File..." wizard.  The resulting MDG Technology file with have nothing in it other than rtf template definitions.  Other team members can then just set up an MDG Technologies Path to the directory that contains the exported MDG Technology file.  Everytime a new template is created, or an existing one is modified, recreating the MDG Technology file from the "Enterprise Reports" project will expose the changes to all team members without them having to take any additional action.  

The only concern I have with either approach is that the report templates cannot be put under change control from within EA as they are not part of the Project hierarchy.  The only way I can see this working is to have a manual process of exporting the rtf templates from the rtf template editor after they have been changed, and managing the change control using an external source control application to check them in/out.  This is not perfect, but with the MDG Technologies based approach at least only template authors need to deal with this.  

Am I on the right track here?  Are there smarter or more effective ways of managing both the distribution and change control processes for custom rtf templates?

Thanks

[Paolo F Cantoni]

The Exported MDGT is an XML file which CAN be put in the VCS...

The other (less controlled) method to TOO fraught with danger...

Sounds like you're on the right track to me.

I agree that the inability to place all aspects of the repository under VC IS problematic...

Paolo