Co-authoring in SharePoint Server 2010

By Tech me how to code - August 08, 2012

Co-authoring in SharePoint Server 2010 addresses these issues by making it possible for multiple users to work on a document, at any time, without interfering with each other's changes. This approach streamlines many common document-collaboration scenarios. For example:

Two or more authors are working on different parts of a composite document. While one author works on his section of the document, another author can work on hers, without either interrupting their work.
Several authors are working on a composite slide show. Each author can add slides to the presentation and edit them, instead of working in isolation and trying to merge several documents and make them consistent all at the same time.
A document is sent out to several experts and stakeholders, each of whom has some edits or additions. No user’s edits are lost, because they are all working on a central, server-stored document.

Microsoft Defination

Co-authoring Office 2010 and Office Web Apps products: Several Office 2010 and Office Web Apps products enable multiple authors to edit documents at the same time

Word 2010
PowerPoint 2010
Excel Web App
OneNote 2010
OneNote Web App

Co-authoring and the checking out of documents (Microsoft)

Co-authoring is not compatible with the process of checking out and checking in documents in a library. Checking out a document means you want to exclusively write to it, and then eventually check it back in so others can see the changes or do further work on the document. Therefore, when you check out a file, other users cannot co-author the document with you. By default libraries do not require checking out files, and should not be enabled where co-authoring will be used. You should also not explicitly check out a document if you want to co-author the document.

Software Version Requirements

For users to co-author documents by using Office 2010, those documents must be stored in SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010. To take advantage of the co-authoring functionality, users must have Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, or OneNote 2010.

Co-authoring test cases : User A and User B working on the same document.

Following are the test cases

Test Case	Condition	Result
1	1. User A checks out first. 2. User B tries to check out the same doc	B was unable to check out and got a message indicating that A already checked it out.
2	1. User A opens the doc directly without specifically checking out. 2. User B tries to check out.	B had the option to check out and overwrite A's change. However, when B chose to do it he was unable to check back in. In the meantime, A was not able to check in from her side. B Unable to check out. Because document is locked.
3	1. User A opens the doc without checking out. 2. User B opens the doc without checking out.	User B is not allowed to edit the Document. It is locked Exclusive to the User A.
4	1. User A checks out first. 2. User B opens the doc without checking out.	User B is not allowed to edit the Document. It is locked Exclusive to the User A.