Hi there, this is Quentin again. In today’s post I would like to introduce an exciting new content type that is used as an architectural component for organizing multi document based work products. Document sets fit between documents and sites. You can use document sets when you have a group of related documents to collaborate on, but don’t need an entirely new document library or site. Document sets provide a collaborative workspace where users can work on a related group of documents. Since the release of SharePoint 2010, I have seen document sets being used for a wide variety of scenarios internally here at Microsoft and with some of our customers. Some examples include research projects, software development specifications, knowledge management repositories, and usability studies.

Document sets are similar to folders, but when you access a document set you get a web part page that can be customized. When you upload documents to a document set they are displayed in a web part that works just like a document library view. Several document set features make it faster and easier to work on projects of related documents. Here are a few of these features:

• Shared metadata enforces the same metadata on all items inside the document set
• Default documents can be automatically provisioned when a document set is created
• A web part page called the welcome page displays the contents of the document set and can also be customized to display more information than just documents

Document sets fit in with our overall document management vision by helping manage the unmanaged and bringing collaboration and metadata into document creation and management. Document sets can be used to organize and find content and they make it easy to group and relate documents. Document sets encourage using columns for metadata on the document set itself and the documents within. Shared columns put document set metadata on all of the documents inside and it is useful to display the properties of the document set on the document set welcome page. Document sets make it faster and easier to work on groups of related documents, saving time and money.

We built document sets based on scenarios that we saw both internally at Microsoft and from our customers. For example on the Office team we organize the parts of the products we build into features and each feature has a team that works on it. These features have specifications, development plans, and test plans. Document sets make it easier to create the necessary documents and manage a collection of documents for a feature.

We also saw customers with similar scenarios, such as sales proposals that require presentations, spreadsheets, and sales contracts. Rather than manage each item individually, in these cases there may be metadata that should be shared and workflow processes that should happen on the collection of items. We expect partners and customers to take document sets and customize them for specific vertical scenarios to support important processes such as managing cases and research projects.

Now that I have given a quick intro into what document sets can be used for, allow me to give an overview of the main features of document sets.

Welcome Page

When you go to a document set you will notice that it isn’t your typical folder view. Document sets have a customizable welcome page. By default this page has a document set properties web part. From the document set settings page of the content type you can specify which document set columns show up in this web part. There is also a Document Set Contents web part which displays the documents that have been added to the Document Set.

This is an example of a non-customized document set welcome page with a few documents.

This is an example of a customized welcome page that has had the image changed and a note board added. The welcome page is shared by all document sets of a particular content type in a list so any changes will be reflected for all instances. This makes it fast and easy to make changes to the welcome page because the updates will be instantly available to existing document sets.

Allowed Content Types

You can select the content types that are available to the document set, allowing you to control the types of content that are available to be used inside the document set. 

Default Content

Documents can be specified to be automatically created when a new document set is created. Default documents can be specified, allowing you to control the templates people use for a document set. This saves the time of having to find and upload templates to get started with. Of course users can still upload their own documents to a document set as well.

Shared Columns

Document set columns can be shared to all the documents inside the document set. This will make the column read only so the value can only be changed by editing the properties of a document set. This saves users time because they only need to update metadata in one place and it will then be updated on all documents inside the document set. It also helps ensure that metadata is consistent. You can use shared columns to make sure all of the documents have certain metadata.

Send To

Send To locations that have been specified in Central Administration will be available to document sets so you can send them to a configured content organizer. You can also use workflow actions to send document sets to a content organizer. The content organizer is a new SharePoint 2010 feature for moving content based on metadata to folders, libraries, or other sites.

Customizable Ribbon

One of the major improvements with SharePoint 2010 is the ribbon interface that is similar to the ribbon interface used in the Office client applications. Document sets have their own ribbon to perform actions such as send to, delete, and capturing versions. This ribbon can also be customized to add new commands.

Versioning

Document sets have their own versioning that is used to capture a snapshot of checked in versions of documents and the properties of the document set.

Workflow

Document sets support workflows on a collection of documents. Several workflow actions specific to the document set are available in SharePoint Designer including capture a version and start an approval process.

Summary

Document sets are a great way to organize related documents for project based work. They provide a customizable and collaborative environment that you can use to meet the needs of multi document work products. They are also a central information architecture component that can be used to represent concepts such as research notebooks, sales proposals, and product specifications. Document sets make it easier to automatically provision templates, collaborate on a group of documents, and share information about documents (such as metadata properties).

Be sure to subscribe to the ECM blog RSS feed and keep reading the blog. I will be posting more blog posts about document sets where I will cover creating a custom document set content type and customizing the welcome page.

Quentin Christensen

Program Manager, Document and Records Management

SharePoint Server 2010 unleashes new features such as managed metadata and metadata navigation that make metadata even more important. But a big problem for many SharePoint projects is getting metadata onto documents. It is important to consider the tradeoff of metadata vs. user tax. As the number of metadata columns that must be filled in increases it becomes less likely that users will fill in metadata because it is that much additional work to go through and see which columns actually apply. If a large amount of required columns are used then user adoption may be slow because it is so taxing to upload content. In a very open and collaborative scenario this can be detrimental. But as the value of the content and effort to create that content increases, it becomes more likely that users will take the time to fill in the appropriate fields, especially when this operation is not frequent.

For any SharePoint project you should carefully consider what metadata will be needed to perform required operations and for users to find content. Evaluate how long it will take users to fill in that metadata, and evaluate the user impact. If lots of metadata is required but end users do not adopt the system because the overhead for creating content is high it will be difficult to have a successful implementation.

Metadata defaults help with this problem because you can automatically fill in metadata for users. If a particular field will have the same value 50% or more of the time then you should specify a metadata default to help users fill in forms faster. Metadata defaults can be specified for each column at the site level, list level, and folder level. Metadata defaults inherit from each other and the child default will always override. For example if a default is set on a folder and there are defaults for the list and the site column, the default for the folder will be applied. If there are defaults for a column and a list, but no default for a folder then when an item is added to that folder it will get the list default. When users create or upload a new item the metadata default will be applied and be displayed in the edit properties form. The user can then change the property as needed. By planning for and setting metadata defaults early it will be easier to evaluate what the metadata defaults should be and how they can be used to help make it easier to get metadata applied to items.

Metadata defaults are supported on the following column types:

· Single Line of Text

· Choice

· Number

· Currency

· Date and Time

· Yes/no

· Managed Metadata

Setting metadata defaults when editing columns:

When creating or editing a column at the site or list level there is a field to specify a default value. You can specify defaults at the site level, and then override them at the list level.

Setting metadata defaults with the tree control: 

In libraries you can use a tree control to set metadata defaults for the library and per folder. To do this go to library settings and click on the link “Column default value settings”. This will give you a tree control that you can use to navigate the folders in the library. You can set defaults at the root of the library as well as for each individual folder. Folders will inherit default values unless you specify a particular default value for the child folder.

Metadata defaults are a great way to help place metadata on columns. You can even use it to apply defaults on hidden columns so users never even have the option to edit the field, but they can use the metadata to navigate and retrieve content.

Quentin Christensen

Program Manager, Document and Records Management

Document ID Overview

A common content management problem is documents getting moved to different locations and links no longer working. Another problem is submitting content to a repository and being able to find it at a later time. These are the types of problems the Document ID feature handles. Document ID is a site collection level feature that when activated adds columns to all document content types. Whenever an item is created or uploaded and is set to a content type that inherits from document it will get a Document ID. The document sets content type is a special case non document content type that also gets Document IDs.

Quick Tip: You may want to activate the Document ID feature on site collections that already contain a large amount of documents. Because this event triggers a content type pushdown on the Document content type the process can take a while. As a result, Document ID activation is done through a timer job that by default is run nightly. If you would like to activate the Document ID feature right away please run the Document ID enable/disable job in Central Administration. There is a separate time job that assigns Document IDs to existing documents.

Document ID Settings

Document IDs consist of two parts, a prefix (that is randomly generated per site collection by default) and two sets of numbers. An example Document ID looks like this: J2W3DN6QF6XW-2-10. The first number is the ID of the list that the document was first created in and the second number is the ID of the item in that list. The prefix can be specified per site collection and can easily be changed from the Document ID settings page.

The Document ID settings page can be accessed in Site Settings at the root of the site collection, and will be in the Site Collection Administration category. On the Document ID settings page you can specify whether or not Document IDs are assigned and the prefix that is used. By default this is randomly generated so Document IDs will be unique across a farm. You can change this to a more readable prefix such as an abbreviation. If you change the prefix there is a check box that you can select to reset all Document IDs. If you do reset the IDs of existing documents then you will break the intended functionality of Document IDs (the ID will no longer work because no document with previous IDs will be found). Reset Document IDs should only be done fairly soon after IDs were initially assigned (before people use Document IDs.) On the settings page you can also specify the search scope to use, by default the All Sites scope, to find Document IDs across other site collections.

Document ID (linked to document) Column 

In list views and in view properties of documents the Document ID column can be displayed. The Document ID column is a URL with a format like: http://site/_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=J2W3DN6QF6XW-2-40. When this URL is clicked search will be used to find the document. This allows the URL to work even if the document has been moved to another location.

Document ID Send To Hint URL 

In Central Administration you can configure send to locations that allow you to submit content to another site and a content organizer will automatically route the document to its final destination. In this case a Document ID lookup URL is returned (If the Document ID feature is activated on the destination) which also contains a HintURL on the end so users can find the document immediately even though search may not have indexed it yet. Here is an example of a link to the HintURL:

http://sites/_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=J2W3DN6QF6XW-2-96&hintUrl=DropOffLibrary/A1.docx

Document ID in Documents

One scenario you can use Document ID for is to track the electronic version of a document with a printed one. For example you may print out a document and give it to people, but they have no way to find the electronic version to see if there have been updates. You can use a Word quick part to insert the Document ID into a document.

You may even want to create a template so whenever users create a new instance of a content type it has the Document ID right in the header or a page of the document. To do this upload a document into SharePoint where it will get a Document ID. Then download the document, customize the template as you want to use it for your content type and insert the Document ID Value property using quick parts from the Insert ribbon of Word. Then save the file as a Word Template (dotx) and create your content type. In advanced settings for the content type, upload your template. Now when people use the New Document drop down to create new items of your content type they will have the Document ID Value embedded as a quick part.

Find By Document ID Web Part

There is a Find by Document ID web part that can be used where users can enter Document IDs to lookup a document. You can find it in the Search category of web parts. You can use the Document ID web part in combination with Document IDs that are printed out on physical documents so users can look them up.

Of course users can also just copy the Document ID into a normal search box to find the document as well. DocID is a managed property so you may want to use the following search syntax: docid:doc id value, for example in search type – docid:J2W3DN6QF6XW-2-96.

Document IDs are a new SharePoint Server 2010 feature that makes it easier to find documents when they have been moved to other locations. When documents are copied a new Document ID will be assigned and when Documents are moved or cut and pasted they will retain their Document ID. You can also use Document IDs to track physical documents with the electronic version.

Quentin Christensen

Program Manager, Document and Records Management

I’m pleased to announce that we have Released to Web, the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Connector for SharePoint.  The CMIS Connector for SharePoint ships as part of the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit, providing a CMIS interface over the top of SharePoint as well as a CMIS Consumer Web Part that can be used to display content from other CMIS enabled repositories.

You can download the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit today and start to take advantage of this new set of capabilities within SharePoint Server 2010 by building your own Composite Content Applications that talk to SharePoint through CMIS or configuring SharePoint to interoperate with other ECM repositories through the CMIS Consumer Web Part.

Microsoft has been involved in defining the CMIS specification since the beginning and has invested significant resources to ensure that our customers are able to take advantage of support for CMIS in SharePoint 2010 just months after releasing the latest version of our platform.  We are excited about the opportunities that the CMIS standard will open up within the industry and look forward to seeing more ECM vendors deliver support for CMIS in their upcoming product releases.

For further reading on CMIS, visit these sites:

• Details of the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit on TechNet
• Original announcement of the CMIS specification and Microsoft’s involvement
• OASIS Members Approve Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Specification
• OASIS CMIS Technical Committee

Ryan Duguid
Senior Product Manager
Microsoft Corporation