Essential SharePoint

Making Revisions Privately

Document libraries may contain works in progress, or they may contain only final documents. Until now, we've mostly discussed the works-in-progress scenario, in which changes are made directly to the library. In the final-documents scenario, changes are made offline in a document workspace, reviewed, approved, and then published back to the library when complete.

Making changes through a document workspace restricts who can see the changes before the documents are complete because only members of the workspace can read or edit the document. Workspace members can also create local document copies that are linked to SharePoint, as described in the preceding section.

One example of a final-documents scenario is the HR site in Figure 6-9. All employees have access to the current version of the Employee Handbook library, but HR members can revise it out of the view of others, cycle it through the approval process, and publish it once revision is completed.

Figure 6-9. Creating a workspace from a library to make revisions out of the view of others

There are two ways to create a workspace for a document from a library. The technique you choose depends on whether you want to allow members to create local copies that are linked to the workspace:

• To enable linking, follow the steps in the earlier section, "Linking Documents to Libraries."

• To prevent linking, choose Create ...