If you use Microsoft Office 365 in your organization, you can work on documents collaboratively as part of a team. A group must be created in order to collaborate.

Suppose your team needs to create project documentation by a specific time. The project documentation is a Word document located in the d.3 repository. Your team leader has assigned your group with the task of editing the document. Once the document is assigned to the group, all the members of the group can work on the document online in Microsoft Office.

However, if you would prefer for the document to be edited successively by different members of the group, you can choose Assign for editing to select yourself as the assignee. Once you have finished working on the document, you can assign the document to the group again using Assign for editing.

If you are unsure of the user to which a document is assigned for editing, you can check in the properties under Editor:

When collaborating, it may occur that a different user is currently editing the document that you also want to edit. This user is entered as editor in the properties of the document. You get a message stating that the document is currently being edited by a user. The name of the user is displayed. If you have the permission to take over a document that is being edited by a different user, you can confirm takeover of the document to be edited. We strongly recommend contacting the user in advance to make sure that the collaboration works smoothly. A policy for the organization or the department can be helpful to specify when documents in editing can be taken over by other users.

The editing takeover function may also be useful when employees have to handle their colleagues' tasks in case of unexpected absences.