Versioning Settings

Document versioning is often one of the driving goals for a SharePoint or other document management platform implementation project. This is a “basic” functionality not available with a standard file share and allows users to save copies of the document as it evolves without having to change the actual filename of the document. An example is given of a document uploaded as a draft and then approved below to illustrate what an end user would experience when interacting with a document library with major and minor versioning enabled.

Figure 20.14 shows the Versioning Settings page for a document library, which includes the Content Approval, Document Version History, and Draft Item Security sections of the page. Not visible in the figure is the final option to require documents to be checked out before they can be edited.

Figure 20.14. Versioning Settings page for a document library.

As with many SharePoint 2010 features, this one is complex, and there are many different combinations that can be configured. In this example, the library is configured for maximum control because Require Content Approval for Submitted Items is set to Yes, major and minor versions are enabled, a maximum number of major versions is set, as well as a number of major versions for which minor versions will be kept. Finally, at the bottom of the page, the library is configured so that only users who can approve items and the author of the item can see the item. So, a sample flow of a document submitted to this library is as follows:

1. User2 uploads a document to the library.
2. The document is saved, but in Draft Status (version 0.1), and no one but users of the site with approve items privileges and the author (User2) can see the document.
3. User2 believes the document is ready for others to see it, and decides to “publish” the document, which will create a major version (version 1.0). User2 selects the document and clicks the Publish button in the Documents tab Ribbon. User2 enters comments about this document and clicks OK.
4. User1 checks the document library regularly and in the Approve/Reject items view of the document library, available from the Browse tab, sees that there is one document with approval status Pending. User1 accesses the drop-down menu for the document and selects Approve/Reject. The Approve/Reject window opens, as shown in Figure 20.15, and User1 selects Approved, enters comments, and clicks OK.

   Figure 20.15. Approve/Reject window.

   

5. User2 now can see that the approval status of the document is set to Approved, and after checking version history for the document, sees that there is now only one version, version 1.0, because the version number was incremented at the approval stage.

Chapter 19, in the section titled “How to Use the Publish, Unpublish, and Cancel Approval Tools,” covers additional tools related to versioning and publishing, and an even more involved example is provided that includes the use of a workflow that automatically notifies participants in the process that their involvement is needed. Also, the topic of content scheduling is covered in this section.

Returning to the concept of planning lists and libraries, Table 20.3 provides some guidelines for when to use versioning, page approval, content approval, and scheduling features. A recommendation that can be seen in this table is to enable only major versioning in environments where “basic collaboration” is required, and where the users are new to SharePoint. This is a generalization, but after testing the different configuration options, most organizations realize that the process can easily become overly complex and frustrating for users who only need basic collaboration (“some place to store my files other than the file share”) and haven’t used SharePoint or another document management or enterprise content management system.

Table 20.3. Guidelines for Using Versioning, Page Approval Workflows, Content Approval, and Scheduling in Document Libraries