Automatically create new version for Lock & Edit without workflow

Sitecore will create a new version on Lock and Edit if the item is tied to a workflow. For our case, version has to be created even without using workflow. As mentioned by Dylan here, we can override the default behavior of Sitecore. Here we overridden the “Checkout” command which is executed on Lock & Edit.

Added a setting called EnableAddVersionWithoutWorkflow as a flag to enable this feature. If it is true, it will add a version and lock the new version for the user.

Note: By default, only a non-admin user will see the lock and edit button for an item.

if (!item.Locking.IsLocked()) {
  Log.Audit(this, "Start editing: {0}", new string[] {
    AuditFormatter.FormatItem(item)
  });
  if (Context.User.IsAdministrator) {
    item.Locking.Lock();
  }
  //Add new version if the custom flag is true
  else if (bool.Parse(Settings.GetSetting("EnableAddVersionWithoutWorkflow", "false"))) {
    Error.AssertObject(item, "item");
    if (StandardValuesManager.IsStandardValuesHolder(item)) {
      this.Lock(item);
    }
    Item item2 = item.Versions.AddVersion();
    if (item2 != null) {
      item = this.Lock(item2);
    }
  }
  //Add new version if the custom flag is true
  else {
    item = Context.Workflow.StartEditing(item);
  }
  Context.ClientPage.SendMessage(this, string.Concat(new object[] {
    "item:startediting(id=",
    item.ID,
    ",version=",
    item.Version,
    ",language=",
    item.Language,
    ")"
  }));