How do I force authors to check-in the changes in workflow

Question

Few authors don't check-in the changes they submit directly which locks the item and the approved couldn't approve since the item is locked, is there an OOTB way to handle it?

Answer 1

To change the behavior of locking and unlocking, an administrator or developer can configure one or more of the following settings.

• RequireLockBeforeEditing - requires users (except those with admin rights) to lock an item before editing or changing workflow status. Set to True by default. If you disable this setting, users can change an item or workflow state without being required to lock the item.
• AutomaticLockOnSave - causes items to be locked automatically when a user saves the item.
• AutomaticUnlockOnSaved - causes items to be unlocked automatically when a user saves the item.

To ensure that items do not remain locked for long periods of time, you can use these settings:

RequireLockBeforeEditing=true and AutomaticUnLockOnSaved=true

With these settings, the user must manually lock an item before editing it, and when they save the item, it is automatically unlocked. In this case, the user will have to lock the item again to continue editing, but it avoids the situation where a user leaves an item locked when they are out of the office or on vacation. For more see - https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/91/sitecore-experience-management/en/configuring-item-locking.html