When an appraisal form is sent to an approval stage with two or more different approvers (e.g. a user nominated stage) they will both be required to edit the same appraisal form. As two users can't edit a form at the same time and both save their changes, the locking functionality enables one approver to edit the form at a time.
When one user is editing the form, the other stage participants see a read-only copy of the form. Once they click Finished Editing, the form will be unlocked so that the other participant(s) can edit the form.
Examples
The following example shows what happens when each of the 3 approvers locks the form:
Approver 1 clicks to Edit the form:
As Approver 1 has clicked to edit, they have locked the form. Therefore, Approver 2 and Approver 3 will be unable to edit and will see a read-only version of the form.
Approver 2 clicks to Edit the form:
As Approver 2 has clicked to edit, they have locked the form. Therefore, Approver 1 and Approver 3 will be unable to edit and will see a read-only version of the form.
Approver 3 clicks to Edit the form:
As Approver 3 has clicked to edit, they have locked the form. Therefore, Approver 1 and Approver 2 will be unable to edit and will see a read-only version of the form.