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SharePoint 2007 Versioning

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Introduction

Versioning is the method by which multiple versions of a document are numbered and saved.

Although there are lot of advantages and disadvantages of versioning from an IT perspective. It is important to have a version control as to keep a record of how the document changed over time.

There are some benefits of versioning:

  • There is a clear detail as who made changes to a document and when.

  • Users can access the latest version and previous versions.

  • Identify the differences between the different versions.

  • You can remove or delete the drafts and unwanted versions

SharePoint 2007 have 3 versioning options: 

No versioning

No earlier versions are saved only latest major version is available.

Create major versions

Save the document versions using a simple versioning scheme (such as 1, 2, 3). The first version of document will be 1.0, and subsequent documents will have an increase of “1.0” in the version number.

Create major and minor (draft) versions

Save the document versions using a major and minor versioning scheme (such as 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, and 2.1). Subsequent minor version will increase by “0.1”, e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. Subsequent major version will increase by “1.0”, e.g., the draft 1.3 will become a final 2.0.

Check-out and Check-in

SharePoint also provides a Check-out and Check-in features. The Check Out and Check In features enable the user to lock and unlock documents to control exclusive access for editing.

Require Check Out feature is a way to control document collaboration, if a document is checkout, other users cannot overwrite it. This feature is not enabled by default in document library, you can enable this feature in Library Settings – Versioning Settings page.

Important

It is very important that the users be aware that versioning may eat up large amount of space hence it is advisable to restrict the user to keep max of 20 Major and 20 Minor versions. Of course it depends on the company and industry as how many versions are required to be preserved. Large amount of versions not only eat a lot of database space but also complicate the process of storage and retrieval