One tool that has become increasingly popular in the workplace is Microsoft SharePoint. What is it? Basically, it provides an “instant portal” if you will for your group or organization. It is aimed at the new collaborative centric workplace, where everybody can access all the information they need from a central location.
Probably the most commonly used feature is the document management section. You can think of it as the child of the “shared drive” that many people are used to. It allows for a single location where say a document can be stored, viewed, and worked on by many people. However, unlike the shared drive, it allows for much better management of documents when multiple people are working on them. That brings me to the main topic: Why you should always check-out and check-in documents if you are working on them.
The ideas of check-in and check-out have long been the province of programmers and a smaller sect of people who would use it to manage code. However, with the advent of SharePoint into the workplace, it is now applicable to a much broader audience. From a SharePoint perspective, it applies to anything you store in the document management system. From spreadsheets to word documents, everybody should follow these processes. However, what do they mean exactly? To define:
Check-Out - Checking out a file means that you are locking it for editing by yourself. This allows you to work on it without worrying about other people modifying it. The key here is that in SharePoint and many other similar systems it will show who has the file checked out. That way, everybody knows who is working on it.
Check-In - Checking in a file means that you are uploading the modified file to the document management system and it is now available for edit by other users. This is done after you’ve checked it out and made your changes. The key here is that when you check it back in, you can describe what changes you made to it. Then, other users can see the history of changes made to the document. This is great especially when you have many people collaborating who may or may not be working in different locations.
So how do you do it in SharePoint? This is actually very simple. To check out a file, such as a Word document, simply click on the arrow next to the file and select “Check Out” from the drop-down menu. Then, your username should be displayed in the “Checked Out To” column.
You can check in a file a few different ways. One is from the same drop-down menu where you checked it out from. In the instance of a Microsoft Office file such as a Word document, you can do it right from the File menu of the document. Either way, you have the chance to note what changes you made to the file. This is especially important for both the other people working on the file as well as yourself. Otherwise, you may lose track of what has been going on.
As an additional note, to see the Version History of the file, click on the arrow again and select “Version History”. This will bring up the list of changes made to the document, the dates, and who made them. This is where describing your changes becomes important as it will be shown here.
Why should you do it? That’s simple: To make working collaboratively as painless as possible. It’s a simple process that will save you lot’s of time and effort and used correctly, and well worth the few extra seconds it will cost you in time.
