Document Sets

With SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has introduced the Document set which is a great new feature to manage documents. Document sets can be viewed as improved version of folder. It is a group of documents which can be considered as a single entity.

The most relatable example of usage of Document set is maintaining project documents. If you have a library to store documents related to project, you can create document set for project and store documents related to it. Few benefit of using document set is that:

1. You can set property for the document set rather than individual documents
2. You can configure documents to be automatically created for a document sets based on the template you provide. So if a project needs Estimation, Requirements, Design documents etc. you can configure the Document set to create them for you as soon as document set is created
3. You can apply workflow etc. to all the documents in the document set together
4. Document set can have its own customized welcome page
5. You can version document set
6. You will get additional settings in SharePoint designer with document sets

Technically, Document set is a content type and has to be enabled first at site collection level. You can follow the steps below to enable document sets if you have site collection administrator permission. If you don't, please contact your administrator to follow these steps.

Once the document set is activated, you need to activate the content type for your library and then add the content type for your library as shown below.

You can now start using Document set.  When you click on the document set under content type section on library, you can modify its property. Below is an example of how to create a Project content type exploring some of the features:

 

You can also modify the Document set content type to add more functionalities to it. http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/sharepoint-server-help/redir/HA101782461.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA101782466

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/sharepoint-server-help/redir/XT101829597.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA101782466