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MicrosoftUpdate: Document Sets in Modern Document Libraries
I am pleased to announce some updates on the plan and timeline for improving the Document Set experience in modern document libraries.
In January, we communicated a March delivery date for these improvements. We apologize for missing that date. We’re now planning on rolling out this change in May. We will be making the official announcement to the Message Center very soon with exact dates. Thank you all for your patience!
This change allows organizations to use the power of document sets to group related documents together with consistent metadata and structure without having to go back and forth between classic and modern experiences.
Document sets now look and feel like ordinary folders in modern libraries, and benefit from all the cool new features in modern. This means that users can drag and drop content to upload to document sets, link to content that lives outside the document set, pin files to the top of the document set, start flows on document set items, and define conditional formatting on document set items. It also means that the Document Set experience can be customized using SharePoint Framework Extensions, just like all other modern list views.
All the content management rules you can define on document set content types are still supported. No business processes were harmed in the making of this change! Document set metadata can be viewed and edited in the details pane while in a document set. Shared metadata specified in a document set content type continues to work as it always has; values inside shared columns will be copied to items inside the document set. Columns that are identified as Welcome page columns in the content type are sorted to the top of the details pane, so that users can find them easily. Content and structure rules specified in the document set content type are also supported, including the default content and default view settings.
Document set versioning functionality will appear under the context menu on document set items in the modern list view, include “Capture Version” and “Version History.” Other document set-specific actions from the Document Set ribbon are still there, but only in classic. Just like any other modern list view page, you can click “Return to classic SharePoint” in the lower left hand corner to go back the classic document set experience back.
The one caveat is that customized document set welcome pages are not supported in modern. This change will not affect document sets that use welcome pages that have been configured with custom HTML or web parts; those welcome pages will still be displayed in classic mode, as they are today.
200 Replies
LincolnDeMaris Hello, in our tenant we have received this update recently but the behavior is not consistent. In modern view we are not shown the content types added in the document set if we create a document set and navigate into it to add content. But, in classic view this is working fine.
1. Document Set content type in 'New' Menu2. Created a new document set3. Go inside the newly created document set4. Content types under the document set is now shownAs you can see in the last screenshot, here the menu should show all the content types available under the document set, but, it is still showing the actual document set content type!
Now, if I go back to 'classic experience' at this point, I can see all those content types shown properly.
5. Classic exp shows all content types under document set properly
Weird thing is, if I now chose to go back to "modern view", then all these content types will show up.
6. All content types show up now in modern view
At this point, you can upload/ create documents from the above content types. In the properties section you can see the 'Content Type' property as editable.
But, if you close the window and open a new session, all goes back to original state. Any idea how to fix this behavior apart from moving to classic experience completely.
Note: I have a demo tenant created few days back, there also I can see modern document set published, but the experience is not buggy, there it is working fine.
Udaybhanu Karmakar Dudditz MikeAllen
Thanks for all of the great information about the issue with allowed content-types in the "New" menu - it definitely helped us track down the problem!Here are some workarounds while we're working on rolling out a fix:
- Return to classic SharePoint, click on a document set, and click "Update the Document Set" above the document set properties.
- Create a new document set item in the library (you can delete it after, if you’d like).
- Add the missing content types to the library. The “change new button order” link below the content-types will allow you to hide them from the “New” button outside of Document Sets, if that’s desired.
LincolnDeMaris LincolnDeMaris I've read through this whole post and all of the replies so I apologize if I missed something. It seems to me that the default view of the Document Set is simply the list view that the docs set came from. When I change the columns, the list view changes too. Seems simplified from your perspective but a document set is very different that a list view and needs special attention so a user can differentiate.
First of all, you need to clearly differentiate that container (Document Set) metadata from the individual document metadata. Right now it looks indiscriminately mixed and you can even falsely edit the container metadata at the document level without effect. My understanding is that this is even true in classic mode with is really bad. Why not fix this? You could color the container metadata in the in the individual document context and make it read only?
Also, it seems you really need to be able to configure different columns in the document set view than the list view? They simply don't suit each others purpose.
Am I missing something? What's the best way to independently configure the document set list view and individual document property editing within within the document set? It should be completely independent.FrankJohnson The default view of the document set will be the "Welcome Page View" from the Document Set Settings (the view which showed up on the classic document set welcome page). You can find this by going to the Library Settings page, clicking on the document set's content type, and going to Document Set settings.
We currently list the welcome page columns before the other metadata on the document set, but I agree that we could do a better job of differentiating these columns. Thanks for the suggestions!
LincolnDeMaris I've read through this whole post and all of the replies so I apologize if I missed something. It seems to me that the default view of the Document Set is simply the list view that the docs set came from. When I change the columns, the list view changes too. Seems simplified from your perspective but a document set is very different that a list view and needs special attention so a user can differentiate.
First of all, you need to clearly differentiate that container (Document Set) metadata from the individual document metadata. Right now it looks indiscriminately mixed and you can even falsely edit the container metadata at the document level without effect. My understanding is that this is even true in classic mode with is really bad. Why not fix this? You could color the container metadata in the in the individual document context and make it read only?
Also, it seems you really need to be able to configure different columns in the document set view than the list view? They simply don't suit each others purpose.
Am I missing something? What's the best way to independently configure the document set list view and individual document property editing within within the document set? It should be completely independent of the list view that the document set is coming from.If you are using custom folder content types within the modern document set they use the classic form similar to the classic welcome page that is used when creating new document set. This in combination with the classic welcome page results in a fragmented experience for our organization. The very thing one would have though would have been eliminated by the modernization of the Doc set sill exists.
- Another thing, The welcome page does not seem to respect which columns you are actually showing and not showing within the Document set settings. It simply shows all columns after the modernization regardless if they are selected or not selected. I am trying to stay positive here however whats the point on releasing something with a key component such as the welcome page not working correctly. You use the welcome page to create a document set so it's not like this is an optional feature that you can simply disregard.
I'm aware that document sets being modernized is on the road end of May 2019. Any idea when they will actually be modernized? Right now there is some peculiar behavior within flow regarding document sets. For instance, if i create an approval flow and I submit one document set, i get an approval for the number of documents within the set and an additional approval for the document set item itself. I have opened a ticket and I hope to see a solution to this issue soon as my business process heavily depends on the document sets for several key financial approvals. Is there a workaround available? Folders don't seem to be an option either. I've even gone so far as to create a manual flow and place a json button directly in the library. We are exiting a company and we need a solution asap before they shut down our on prem servers.
I opened a ticket
- Case #: 14584840 (initial ticket)
- Created on: Wednesday, May 29, 2019 4:45 PM
- Description: Document sets within SharePoint Online are creating multiple approvals each time a new document is added.
they sent it to the flow team? 119052922003785 looks like a (mindtree) ticket this is what happened the last time i opened a ticket.
Yes, there is a workaround. I had the same problem, my solution is this.
This is the start of my flows for documentsets:
Recurrence and then Get files (properties only), click on advanced options and use Filter Query. I add a standard Yes/No column to my documentset and the default value is False, so my filter query is Status (this is the name of the column) eq 'False'. Now i will only receive an approval for the documentset and not all the documents inside the documentset.If you use, When a file is created or modified, you can click on settings and then use Trigger Condition. I use the same column, Status so this is my condition:
"@equals(triggerBody()?['Status'], false)". Now you only receive the approval for the documentset instead of all the approvals.
Hope this will help you
LincolnDeMaris I think I detected a bug with the modern document sets.
How to reproduce :
1- Create a new document set
2- In the new document set, click on "Edit all" in the right panel to edit the properties
3- Notice that the Name column contains a value
4- Click on the Save button
5- The process is blocked. The Name column is now empty and the error message "You can't leave this blank" is shown. The Name column is read-only so the changes can't be saved.
Chris600 I am having the same issue. Can Microsoft report if this bug is being worked on or resolved? This occurs in both Edge and Chrome. See screenshot below.
When I edit document sets in list view at the top level of the Document Library this does not occur - It only happens when I navigate to a specific Document Set within the library and then try to edit.
Just a quick reminder that the issue I reported is not resolved right now. The "Edit All" pane is not working because the content of the Name column disapear when I click the Save button.
This is happening in a brand new site collection.
Thanks.
Chris600 Thanks for reporting this issue! We have a fix in the pipeline.
In the meantime, you should be able to edit the properties by navigating out of the document set and selecting its row (the same way you would edit its properties if it were a document).
thank you very much for that update. Tree days ago this update was rolled out to our company.
But there are two more issues now:
1. when I click on a document set, the link opens in a new browser tab. Is this intended by you or did I something wrong? It would be good to have the link open in the same tab!
2. our default view for the ducument library and inside the document sets are different. when I click on a document set and it opens a new tab, everything is correct. But when I have opened the document set and using the breadcrumb to go back, the view isn't switching to the default view of the document library!
I hope you can give me a solution for that.
Thanks a lot
Michaellotz-hellerau same thing for me. Seeing the Welcome Page columns is vital to the process my company uses that involves document sets. This update had great intentions but came up short with basic functionality.
lotz-hellerau and LincolnDeMaris
Another major issue:
If you had content types that were part of a document set, the modern experience has massively messed that up. Now the library and the document set seem to share content types. Within the document set if you go to New, the default is to re-add the document set content type, not other content types defined within a document set.
- After you add the doc set based content type to a library it takes a while for library settings to be fully updated, and for the content types included in the document set to be available via the New button. Until then you see the default New menu content types. It took about 40 minutes for this to update.
lotz-hellerau and @Lincoln DeMaris
This is the same, on my library. And a really bad behavior. With this, the modern sets will not work for us. Please review them again, to have all functions 1:1. Thank you.
BR,
Steffen
LincolnDeMaris - Document sets used to update the folder view when clicked on them on "modern" libraries. With this rollout, it does not happen anymore.
It has defaulted to the same experience as a normal folder where, even if a view is set as default for a content type, it doesn't get affected.
This is bad and I hope this functionality will be brought back for folders and document sets soon.
Regards,
Deepu.
Deepu Nair LincolnDeMaris Did you ever get a response on this? I have the issue as of today with a new Document Set feature rollout. When document sets are accessed in the modern library they would automatically load with a custom view for the specific document set. Now it just retains the default top level view - I don't want users to have to manually select the right view.
Hannah1990 wrote:
Deepu Nair LincolnDeMaris Did you ever get a response on this? I have the issue as of today with a new Document Set feature rollout. When document sets are accessed in the modern library they would automatically load with a custom view for the specific document set. Now it just retains the default top level view - I don't want users to have to manually select the right view.
Hannah1990 If you set a "Welcome Page View" on the document set's content type, we should switch to that view automatically. You can access this setting via Library Settings: click on the name of the content type and then choose "Document Set settings".
LincolnDeMaris We are hitting a 5000 threshold limit in our libraries that are set up as a modern library but use document sets (which are classic views). Will this limit go away with the update?
LincolnDeMarisCool stuff, thanks. I guess the functionality will also include Copy To and Move To for the full document set, like for 'normal' folders?
JanKlooster It appears your assumption may be wrong. I am currently researching if "Copy To" works with DocSets and in my experience and in an experience of https://mydigitalworkplace.wordpress.com/2018/05/20/10-things-about-copy-and-move-sharepoint-online/?unapproved=12688&moderation-hash=2739c0753019b9910c2364f3238902e1#comment-12688, it does not work.
