Document Checkout/Versioning Best Practices - Survey

[philhege]

In SPS2003, what is everyone doing for checkout and versioning of documents? We have seen some inconsistent behavior with file locking and checkout status (users can edit files that have been supposedly checked out, etc.). Also, it's not really clear what the procedure should be. Given a choice between "Edit in Microsoft Whatever" and "Check Out", the user wants to edit the document, so chooses "Edit..." If you're editing a document, don't you want it to be checked out and unavailable? Shouldn't this be a combined function?

I'm still scratching my head over why MS ripped the approval and publish functions out of SP from the previous version. Why, so they could give us this "new and improved" method?

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa.

 

[wolvie3421]

yeah, i think if you want to actually edit a file and be able to save it back to the doc library, you need to check it out first. if you edit without checking out you can save it locally while someone else could be editing a checked out version.

 

[philhege]

That's a known behavior. What we've been observing is inconsistencies in the way that it should be working. I've seen a number of MVPs recommend using Check Out, then "Edit in...". This doesn't always behave the way it should. I had a colleague check out a document to edit, and when I went to the document on my machine, I was presented with the Check In option, as if I had checked it out. The document library didn't show the document as checked out to my co-worker.

Sometimes you need to refresh the browser to show the true state of the document; this should be built in to the function.

I get Word 4172 errors when I try to save or check in a document from Word. I have to exit the application, and only then am I presented with the check-in options dialog.

I'm hoping some of this is cleared up in SP2, which I should be applying before the end of the month.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa.