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.
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.