SharePoint Document Library Headscratcher

Here’s a head-scratcher for you…

In a SharePoint Document Library where you have Versioning and Check In/Check Out enabled, when you first upload a document, the “save” button on EditForm.aspx is labeled “Check In” and saves and also checks the document in (good). On a subsequent edit of the metadata (properties), you’re forced to check the document out again (good), but the “save” button is labeled “OK” and doesn’t check the document in (maybe good, maybe bad). Now I can see where this is a good thing because the user might want to fiddle the document a few times before they check it in. But what if you want to be sure they check it in?

It surely is by design, but in this case, the design isn’t what we want!

We have over 20 Content Types stored in one list, and we don’t want to give up the great capability that is there out of the box where the EditForm.aspx is “Content Type aware”. (When you switch Content Type, the form automagically adjusts the columns.) So I was thinking about using script to add a new Check In button to replace the OK button.  I’ve already got a lot of script on the page (of course it’s a custom version of the form called EditFormCustom.aspx — never edit the original!) that enforces business rules around the metadata interdependencies.

Alternatively, I was also thinking of redirecting on every save to a dashboard page where the user could see all of their docs and their disposition (a la My Site) so that they could manage them there.

Any other ideas?  (Short of writing a lot of crufty C# code.)