When you are working alone and updating a public document, you will be fine with the checkout feature that the document library offers. But what do you do when you are working collaboratively with one or more other people, or when you need input from two other colleagues during the development of an updated version of a document? This is clearly not something that can be addressed with the checkout procedure. This is what you use Document Workspaces for. A Document Workspace is a team site that initially contains only one thing: a document copied from another site, usually the parent site.
To create a Document Workspace, you have two options:
Use the quick menu for the document and select Send To Create Document Workspace.
Inside MS Office 2007, display the Document Management pane by clicking the Office button and selecting Server Document Management Information, Then click its fourth icon from the left, the documents tab, to display the documents in this library. Locate the current document (it will be marked with a different color), then select Create Document Workspace from its menu.
When creating a Document Workspace, a copy of this document will be stored in the new workspace. Initially, only the user who created the workspace will have access, so the next step is often to add one or more users to this workspace. Note that even in a Document Workspace the same rules apply; only one user at a time can update a document. If necessary, you can also use the checkout/checkin feature in the workspace.
Why do you need a new site for just one document? Well, it is simple. If the document is so important that you need several people to be able to update it, you will most likely want to have your own private playground for this work. This workspace will also allow the group to share ideas, links, tasks, and maybe other supporting documents by storing all this information in the workspace.
When the document update is done, it should be copied back to the original location. This is taken care of by SharePoint's feature "Publish back to source location." Use the steps in the following Try It Out to create a workspace, update the copy of the document, and finally publish it back to the source location.
Try It Out: Work with Document Workspaces
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Note that the Document Workspace will still remain after you have copied the document back to its source location. The reason for this is that you may later be interested in going back to the workspace to see what users were active in developing the new version and view the other information used during that development.
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