You may have been wondering what this button is for.

To put it simply, when working in one of the edit windows, such as when an Author is creating new content, the site locks the content while it is being edited in order to prevent other users such as Editors and Publishers from accessing the content.

There are times when exiting these edit windows improperly could result in content being locked to others. Here are just a few cases that could cause this to occur:
• The user may accidentally close their browser window before canceling or saving the content.
• The user may use the browser navigation functions to move away from the site before canceling or saving the content.
• A power failure or computer glitch/crash causes the user to lose their place while editing the content.

Whatever the reason, not saving or canceling the transaction improperly can lock users from accessing the article later. If a user clicks on the edit icon to edit an article and sees an error message like,
"The module (module name) is currently being edited by another person," it probably means that the user didn't save or cancel an editing session properly. To correct this, users may use the ‘Check-In My Items’ button to release the content item so that it may be accessed by other users.

As a final note, if there seem to be items that are still locked and no one is sure who has the content item checked out, send one of the Administrators an email about it and we'll check in all outstanding items.