Forum Discussion
Eat My Cake? SharePoint Search Folders
- For what you are describing, you may just be able to use "regular" folders. You can propagate metadata using Column default value settings so that solves (1) and for (2), the answer is yes. You can use Content Types if each document has different properties or just add a column called Document Type if they all share the same properties (i.e. Client Name). When you create a folder for each Client Name, set a default in Library settings. This seems a lot simpler than using document sets. I would consider document sets if I have a library of JUST proposals so I can keep all the files associated with a proposal together and have a standard "set up" for each proposal set. But, for what you are describing, I would first try using a Folder per client AND a Site Column that you add to the library for Client Name.
tictag While I used to be a big fan of metadata and content types, but it's alot of work and requires a great deal of discipline to maintain. This is particularly problematic if you are not the only person in this library. I've seen SO MANY metadata systems abandoned....
I've been converted to search. Works awesome out of the box with no extra effort provided your documents contain searchable text and your search term keywords.
Also, metadata only works WITHIN a folder. Not very helpful if you're trying to find content across folders as you've described.
But search works GREAT across all folders as long as the document contains the term. So organize your contents in whatever structure works for you. Or even no structure at all. Use the SEARCH box at the top of the window to find everything applicable.
Full Text Search is an amazing technology, no doubt, but it can be a very blunt instrument when it comes to managing potentially thousands or even millions of documents.
If SharePoint doesn't support metadata well, big companies will always see it as a toy for personal and small business use, which it most definitely is not, imho, nor do I believe do Microsoft see it that way.
When I search for emails in Outlook, I rarely, or at least only as a last result, use full text search. I always use metadata search first e.g. from:client.com attachment:yes date:>10/01/2021. The same, imho, should go for document management within SharePoint.
But ultimately, you may well be right. If SharePoint doesn't meet my business requirements, then I too will have to abandon SharePoint and go elsewhere. For now, I am still optimistic ... and potentially naïve!
- It's not a question of SharePoint support - SharePoint does FINE with metadata. It's a question of people and discipline. Most people are not that disciplined and any system with metadata is only as good as the people who are maintaining it. If they don't fill in the metadata values, then documents don't check in properly and sort/filter can't work.
But if you go the metadata route, you're better off abandoning folders altogether and use JUST the metadata to organize documents. Metadata columns only work WITHIN folders, not across them.Thanks for the advice, based on bitter experience, I'm guessing!
This solution is just for me and my own sales process so if I implement a solution for myself based heavily on metadata, then I'd me my own worst enemy if I didn't maintain metadata discipline. That said, I'm also human and make mistakes so I'm hoping a lot of the metadata population can be automated. e.g. from my CRM, flow variables etc.
I'm OK with the documents being in one document library, so long as I can filter/search based on metadata. I'm haven't tried this, but I am also OK with Document Type being a specific Content Type (as opposed to just being a document property metadata). A specific view could then be to 'group by content type' showing 'Proposals', 'Invoices' etc. As Paul_HK_de_Jong says, the features are likely all there, just need to combine them into a solution that works for me.
I guess ideally I was originally hoping for a 'Search Folder' feature similar to that in Outlook where opening the folder would result in a pre-defined metadata document query e.g. double-clicking 'Clients' would open a folder with either documents grouped by Client or preferably a set of 'virtual' folders where documents would be collated into Client folders. This doesn't appear to be a feature of SharePoint. Maybe something for User Voice, if that is still a thing.
You may want to look into SharePoint's property promotion/demotion mechanism. This basically allows you to set metadata in an Office file and upon uploading it is automatically captured into a SharePoint column. This works bi-directional: changing the metadata value in the SharePoint column also results in a change in the value stored within the document. There are several caveats:
- the names of the columns must match exactly
- download an Office file from one site and then uploading the same Office file to another site results in the metadata value from the original site ending up in the new site (promotion takes precedence).
- it only works for Office files (i.e. does not work for other commonly used formats like pdf, msg, zip, ...
- changing the properties in the Office file is tedious given that the document information panel was dropped several years ago.
The classic example is the Title property in Word.About using email metadata in SharePoint. OOTB this is not possible but there are Outlook add-ins or SharePoint SPFx apps that address this. For example, there are apps that automatically extract email metadata upon uploading (https://www.slimapplications.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/EmailManagerExtractedEmailMetadata.png).
Paul
tictag Metadata is one of the great features of SharePoint. Configuring search to leverage metadata as refiners was a little complicated but it now getting much easier. And using metadata syntax in search, like you are doing in Outlook, is great too (e.g., ContentType:Policy). But, getting people to consistently apply metadata is not as easy. That's where auto-classification can be helpful for structured documents (e.g. processing Contracts using SharePoint Syntex) or with simple column defaults associated with folders. There is no one best way. It depends on the outcomes you are trying to achieve!
SusanHanley
I agree. The SharePoint platform provides you with different tools in your toolbox (e.g. search, views, metadata, flows, compound documents, ...) and the challenge is to use/combine them to meet your objective and deliver a robust solution.
