Flare & TFS - automatic checkout upon editing?

[LindaL]

We are in the process of migrating Adobe RoboHelp with Visual SourceSafe to Flare with TFS. But we have one problem.

We are a team of 6 writers that work together in one project (master). So in our current situation with RH & VSS, once one person starts editing a file, it is automatically checked out and locked. The second user can't even type anything as he/she will receive a message that the file is checked out. In our environment, this is what we want. However, in Flare, chekcing out happens upon saving, not editing, which is causing a hassle for us as we would have to manually checkout a file before doing something to catch up on this. I know about the merge tool, but prefer the locking as we had some instances with testing where text disappeared.

My question therefore: is there absolutely no way that a file can be checked out & locked upon editing?

We have tried a lot of settings in both TFS and Flare, but I am hoping we're overlooking something. Can someone here help?

Thanks!

[techwriter31]

I haven't used TFS, but we are using Rational ClearCase integrated with MadCap Flare and I've experimented with a few other tools (Surround, SVN, etc.) integrated with Flare.

My guess - the configuration for when/if a file is locked (a.k.a. an "exclusive checkout") would be configured within the version control tool settings. Depending on the tool used, Flare may enable the "Advanced" button from the Project Properties dialog and allow you to configure these settings directly from Flare. If not, you'd probably need to configure this setting from the version control tool itself. For example, when one of our projects is bound to ClearCase, we can click the Advanced button in the Project Properties dialog and specify that files be checked out as "Reserved", and locked so no other users can check it out. However, these settings are applied to all projects bound to ClearCase.

Regarding the automatic checkout upon edit - I think this too would probably be a setting specified within the version control tool settings, if it exists. It will probably require a process change instead. For example, if a writer opens the topic with the intent to modify it, they could just save the file immediately, and it would kick off the automatic checkout. If each writer does this consistently, you should be able to achieve the same effect since they would be (or at least should be) prompted that the file is already checked out and/or locked by another user. But again, I haven't used TFS, so I can't be certain.

There are a few other Source Control options, buried in the Options dialog, but these settings are even more restrictive than the automatic checkout upon save option that you are currently using.

I am also wary of the automated merge tool option!