Sharing Step 7 Projects on a network allowing two or more to work at same time

We are just moving from Step 7 5.4 Pro and WinCC 2008 to Step 7 V11 TIA portal.
In the past we have shared one simatic project on the network which has allowed more than one engineer to work on the project at any one time. As long as you didn't try to open, a block, hardware config or WinnCC project which somebody else already has open this worked fine. If someone did have the block open a popup would warn you of this and it wouldn't open.

We have just tried this with Step 7 V11 Professional SP2 and when the second person tries to view the project a popup appears saying it is locked.
This is a simple project with one PLC and one HMI and we want to have one engineer working on the PLC code while the other is working on the HMI screens.
I've just spoken to some one at siemens and they couldn't understand why I would want to do this and didn't relise you could work like this in Step 7 V5.4 and just said it couldn't be done.
So I've got a question to you all did anyone else used to work like this prio to tia portal and how are you achiving this now. This appears to be a step backwards.

Unfortunately this is not supported yet

JRW said:

Unfortunately this is not supported yet

Click to expand...

Siemens followed u[p with the following.

Step 7 V12 SP1 does support multiple users working on the same project by something called team work but this is slightly different in the way it works because it uses the global library and project library and then they have to be merged.'


Still trying to find the bit in the manual of V12 where it explanins this in more detail

I have also had multiple enginners working on the same project in the past but mostly larger projects. I'm surprised at the responce from tech support in Manchester, they're normally pretty well clued up.

I have recently started using tia portal and tried this you have to save to you desktop and then program then save back onto server; however, The person that was supposed to only do certain parts didn't follow specific instructions. be careful.