force users to checkout documents prior to editing?

[jason_botwick]

I'm curious if there is a built-in configuration or setting that would force a certain role (or maybe even all users) to execute a check out of a document prior to being allowed to edit it. In our environment, it's problematic to simply allow users to edit documents without checking them out, since this inevitably leads to one person overwriting another's changes because they forgot to check something out.

So can this easily be done through configuration? If not, are there any ideas out there as to how to accomplish this? Scripting against the API leaps to mind, but before I dig into that, I'd like to make sure there's not some easy setting I'm overlooking.

If anyone has ideas on this or has run into this issue, please post how you handled it.

Thanks,
Jason

[dinger]

Will this allow more control over the permissions (as discussed above) or is it just the functionality to automatically download the file?

I've tried out the new code from SVN and can't figure out what it offers apart from auto download (and slightly more icons  )

Cheers

Rob