I'd love to hear more about this, John. We have a very archaic check in/out program that copies the file from the server to the C drive for editing, then copies it back when you check it back in. This was fine until data references. When you create the data reference, it creates an xml file that is pathed to the c drive. At the moment, as soon as we create a data shortcut, we have to go and edit the xml file to path to the server. This causes all kinds of problems, and the biggest annoyance is, when you are working on a file, if you want to see the results in another file, you have to make your edits, close the file, check it in, and syncronize all references. If you need to make another change, you have to reopen the file and start the process all over. It's very cumbersome.
I've been reading some about git as a replacement, but the coding is over my head.
I was wanting to put together a check in/out system, that did version control, and had a searchable database that could be filled in with all project information (client name, job numbers, etc.), including a field for lat/long, so a kml/kmz file could be generated as the database is updated. One could open the kml in google earth and easily view all projects in a certain area.