In Master Data Services (MDS), you can use the Master Data Manager Web User Interface “UI” to copy a version of a model and create a new version of it (via the Version Management screen). However, you may find the “Copy” icon on that screen grayed-out (although there is a bug where you can still click on the icon and the copy dialog box will pop up, which it should not. But it won’t actually perform the copy). To fix this, you need to go to the Master Data Services Configuration Manager and on the Database Configuration screen change the system setting “Copy only committed versions” to “No” (the default it “Yes”). Then go back to the UI and click the “Refresh cached information” link on the top right of the home page and you will see that the “Copy” button is no longer grayed-out.
So obviously if you have model version that has a status mode of Open or Locked and want to copy it, you will need to make the above system setting change. Because the default is to not allow this, it caused confusion on my part and hopefully this blog post will help you to avoid the same confusion.
It would be nice if the Version Management screen had a message on there as to why the “Copy” icon is grayed-out and how to fix it.