Feature Request - Collaborative Document Locking

communities@jivesoftware.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:37:59 GMT

This feature is pretty straight forward; however, can be implemented a million ways under the sun. Here is an implementation that might stir some thoughts and be feasible for next SBS release?

Currently, under Manage Collaboration, a user can assign other users as collaborators
- However, if the owner changes this option, to just themselves, all other collaborators are lost.
In addition, I'm not 100% sure as I'm going from memory, but I think the collaboration options are only available to the creator of the document, and not all collaborators.

Ideally, a solution to implement simple, yet effective Document locking:

Manage Collaboration available on Binary documents and Collaborative Documents to all Collaborators specified on the document
At any time, any collaborator should be able to come in and "lock" other collaborators from updating the document
1. For Open Documents, this should be anyone in the Container with Write permissions
2. For Collaboration limited documents, any of the defined users should be able to do this
  1. When this happens, the list of original collaborators should be maintained (perhaps an extended property on the document , or a full blown tracking table ), See 3.3
3. This use-case is not applicable when the creator is the only collaborator
Once a document has been locked
1. Previous Open documents, anyone should be able via the Manage Collaborations action and see who has the lock (IM,PrivateMessage access to Lock User)
  1. if the community wants to squelch the lock, perhaps a certain threshold of abuse-like reportings on the lock itself can auto Unlock it without admin intervention
    1. If implemented, threshold should be configurable via container meta-data and not a system setting
      1. For Communities, this could be set via Admin Console, for Social Groups it should be configured somewhere in the "Social Group Details" and/or a new section that controls the various content behaviors in the container. Projects should inherit from their direct parent.
  2. An appropriate Space/Container Admin should be able to remove the lock and return the document to the Previous state
2. Previous Collaboration limited documents, any of the specified collaborators should be able to see who has the lock (IM,PrivateMessage access to Lock User)
  1. Similarly, if all of the collaborators petition the lock on a document, or the "abuse-like" threshold (which ever is smallest), they can auto-Unlock it without Admin intervention
  2. Similarly, use-case 3.1.2, a respective Space Admin should be able to return the document to it's pre-locked state.
3. This use-case is not applicable when the creator is the only collaborator

In short, there are some opportunities here for a clean solution ... I'll let you guys respond with your thoughts on direction. Please file this as a feature request, and we'll dig up more information/details as necessary.

I'd be very interested to hear what the community has to say about this feature? While I am an avid believer in Revision Management and Version Diffing, there are some people who are more comfortable with the Document Lock version of content contribution. If there was an easy way to undo the "just you" setting in Manage Collaboration after a save...and allowing other users to access the controls as well, I think that would be "good enough".

Document Management - What to you do? (or think)

communities@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:25:54 GMT

I'd like to know how other businesses manage documents within or outside an enterprise social collaboration tool. This is an area we are struggling with and has already crippled performance on our enterprise portal and wiki environment. I don't want the same thing happening if we roll out a social collaboration solution. I also don't want this platform to be a dumping ground for documents. Iv'e heard others that accomplish this through policies and file size limitations. I would ultimately like to find a more elegant solution (e.g. one button publish from clearspace to a backend doc management tool).

Any comments ?

lhartley

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:25:57 GMT

Tangi Vass

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:47:59 GMT

User admin privileges

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:25:11 GMT

Can you please add me as the user administrator for this account?

Thanks

WebriQ

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:24:15 GMT

Randy Littleson

Mon, 04 May 2009 18:51:17 GMT