One of the nice things about SharePoint document libraries is that they
allow you to retain multiple versions
of documents so that you can go back
and review how a document has been
modified over time.
Although SharePoint Portal Server
2003 supported versioning, Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
2007 goes a step further— offering
the ability to differentiate between
major and minor versions of a document.
This new feature can make
tracking down changes in earlier versions
of a document a lot easier.
The process of controlling versions
is relatively simple once it's set up in
MOSS 2007.
Document version history is
controlled through SharePoint's Document
Library Versioning Settings
page. You can access the page by
going to your SharePoint site's default
page.
Once there, click the Document
Center tab. You'll see that the Document
Center page contains a list of
the various document libraries and
lists in the Site Hierarchy window
on the left side of the window.
Click on your document library,
and then choose the Site Settings
option from the Site Actions menu.
When you arrive at the Site Settings
page, click the Site Libraries and
Lists link, followed by the Customize
"your document library" link. Finally,
click the Versioning Settings link. You
will now be taken to the Document
Library Versioning Settings page, shown in FIGURE 1.
Figure 1 (click to enlarge)
[IMAGE]
The first part of the Document
Library Versioning Settings page is
the Content Approval section. This
section asks you if documents should
remain in draft form until they have
been approved. SharePoint allows you
to configure workflows through which
documents can receive any number
of approvals prior to being posted in
a document library.
If you require approval for submitted
items, then any new or modi...
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fied
items remain in draft form until the
approval process is complete. This
usually means that the document is
treated as a minor version until it has
been approved.
The Document Version History
section allows you to control how
versioning is implemented and how
many versions are retained from each
document. Versioning is not enabled
by default, but you have the option
of creating a new major version of a
document each time it is edited. Or
you can create major and minor versions of the document throughout the
editing process. Creating a new major
version is theMOSS 2007 equivalent
to the versioning option implemented
in SharePoint 2003.
Just beneath the options to enable
versioning are options that allow you
to specify how many major versions
of a document you want to retain and
how many drafts you want to keep for
each major document version.
Although it might be tempting to
shoot for the moon and use really
high numbers, keep in mind when
deciding how many versions of a document
to retain that the documents
are stored within a SQL Server database.
Any time you create a new version
of a document, an entirely new
copy of the document is stored in the
database. In other words, SharePoint
does not just store the deltas from
one version to the next. You'll consume
a lot of disk space in a hurry
if you get carried away with the
number of document versions you
retain.
MOSS 2007 can also define drafts
as either minor versions of documents
or documents that are awaiting
approval. The Draft Item Security
section allows you to decide who can
view draft documents. The default
setting makes drafts visible to anyone
with permission to read them. You do,
however, have the option of making
drafts visible only to those who have
permission to edit them. If a document
requires approval, you have the
option of making the document draft
visible only to the person who created
it and to people who have the authority
to approve the document.
The last decision on the Document
Library Versioning Settings screen is
the Require Check Out option. As the
name implies, this option simply asks
you if you want to require users to
check out a document before they are
allowed to edit it. Requiring a document
to be checked out prevents two
different users from making contradictory
modifications to a document
at the same time.
Versioning has come a long way
since SharePoint 2003. Although
the new versioning settings inMOSS
2007 add to SharePoint's complexity,
it is really nice to be able to distinguish
between major and minor
document revisions.
Brien M. Posey, MCSE, has received Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional Award four times for his work with Windows Server, IIS and Exchange Server. He has served as CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities, and was once a network administrator for Fort Knox. You can visit his personal Web site at www.brienposey.com.
