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Microsoft SharePoint Metadata

by: Michael Mullin, Consultant, CRCP, MCAD

SharePoint supports content management. This article is the second in a series which will describe and explain content management. The first article discussed the components and features which are part of content management. The last article will address content management as a whole. This article defines and explains versioning.

Version Control is tracking the various versions of an object. SharePoint supports versioning. Any list or library can be set to maintain versions. Notice above I referred to “versions of an object”. While it is typical to think of versioning applying to a document, it can also apply to other types of digital information. In SharePoint, any list or library can support versioning.

At a library, select the Settings menu option and then select “Document Library Settings”.

This will display the settings page for the library. In the snapshot below, the settings page for my library “OnionCentral” is displayed. It is titled “Customize OnionCentral”. The entire page is not shown, but the part we are interested in  is viewable. The second item below “General Settings” is “Versioning settings”.

Clicking on “versioning settings” brings us to versioning settings page.

SharePoint users are assigned permissions. For a library, a user may have permission to read a document but not to edit a document or publish a document to a site. If content approval is required for a library, then any document submitted to the site is considered a pending document and is not displayed to users who have read only privileges. However, it is displayed to users who can edit or approve the document. Once a user with approval privileges approves the document it is published, and all users can view the document. (This isn’t exactly true as you will see shortly). Obviously if you have a library were some of the documents are drafts, and are being actively sculpted, this can be a handy feature. To version your document does not require that this feature be turned on, it is only an option.

The second section of the settings page, “Document Version History”, contains the real meat of versioning. There are two different flavors of versioning to choose from: Major Versioning and Major and Minor Versioning. With Major Versioning, documents are numbered with whole numbers: 1, 2 , 3, etc. It is also possible to specify the maximum number of versions to be maintained.

Major / Minor Versioning is more complex. Major Versioning only tracks published documents. If a document is a draft, it is not versioned. With Minor Versioning, each draft is saved and numbered. It is assigned a number to the left of the decimal point of the existing major version for example 2.1, 2.2. This way every little change can be tracked. When using Major and Minor Versioning, you may specify the number of major version to maintain, and the number of major versions for which the system maintains the minor versions. You do not specify the number of minor versions maintained. If minor versions are kept for a major version, then all the minor versions of that major version are kept.

Above I indicated that with minor versions, the minor version is not available to the general user until it is published as a major version. This can be the case, but does not necessarily have to be. The “Draft Item Security” section of the settings page provides various alternatives as to who may view a minor version. The important idea is the minor version can be invisible to most users until it is approved.

The settings in the “Require Check Out” section will determine how the versioning will work. If Bob and Jane each start to edit the same document, someone’s changes are going to be overwritten when the changes are saved to the library. Who ever saves their changes second will cause the first person’s changes to be lost. Of course if you are using Minor Versioning, the version saved first is still available, but both set of changes will not exist in the same version of the document. The “Require Check Out” option addresses this problem.

When turned on this institutes what is called the Lock-Modify-Unlock method of versioning. To edit a document a user must check it out. This will prevent another user from editing the document until the first user checks the document back in. The current version is still available and can be read, but SharePoint will not let any one else edit it. This solves the preemption problem described above. However it can lead to administrative problems, like Bill checking out a document and then going on vacation without checking it back in.

So we have configured our library to maintain versions. How do we see the old versions? Actually, it is very simple. In the library, open the items drop down contextual menu.

One of the items on the menu is “Version History”. Selecting that item will open a list of that document’s versions.

Any particular version can be viewed by clicking on it.

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