Forum Discussion
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.
- Thank you for the update, we are patiently waiting and are looking forward to this release.
Hopefully we can use the move function within Modern libraries to move the Doc Set to another library and or Collection as needed for Archiving purposes like you can with files & Folders.
Something to consider,
Within the enterprise document handling is often tied to a Customer, project, etc. generated from a LOB system. Often this data exists upstream so it would make sense one would wan't to generate the document set, folder, etc. from an upstream process rather than a manual process within SharePoint. I would really like to see the ability to be able to create Document sets & Folders directly from PowerApps. In my opinion most organizations rarely start their enterprise ECM processes from within SP and often begin well before we get to SharePoint. This would really take Document sets to a new level. Currently to do this you have to use a variety of work around's by writing your values to a SharePoint list and 3rd party tools to finally take the values and generate a Doc Set.Please consider voting for moving & Copying of modern Document sets. You can find the suggestion here in the user voice.
I also added a user voice for replacing the classic welcome page with a modern one when creating new document sets however it still has not shown up, will check back tomorrow.
LincolnDeMarissjakester Flow on document sets and items in document sets will work the same as Flow on folders and items in folders today.
- Do we know when this will happen? It is pertinent to a project I have completed recently and though I am no longer working with the customer, they would love to have this month.
LincolnDeMaris Thanks for the update. I was just about to roll out document sets to our team but waited so not to put the users through a double change!
One of features I really liked about document sets was that each project could have a mini home page. I could then use WebParts to query certain pieces of information and display them on the welcome page. Almost like a synopsis of the project all in one place. Looking at the move away from Welcome Pages is there a way I can do this within the modern view with web parts that pull documents up using web parts?
So if a document set is clicked through the normal folder navigation it shows the folder list, the options panel and then a couple of Web Parts with details related just to that document set?
Rather than managing knowledge by copying 'Case Studies' or 'Purchase Orders' from one folder to another we keep everything in one place so not to duplicate content and make sure that the latest file/folder is being accessed.
Could this be achieved with views?The image demonstrates where I was going before I realised that modern was on its way!
p.s Please update us as regular as you can as I have a large team waiting for this change .
Deleted Agreed. The welcome page is a must for our customers. We use it all the time as a landing page for a particular case file or grant application. Metadata in the side panel isn't going to cut it for us.
It's quite strange that the welcome page is opening a new tab and is classic while the rest is modern. I am pleased that we have this update even though it feels unfinished. Our bigger concern is you still can't move these like other folders within SharePoint, You can only move them within the context of their respective library.
Jonny CaldwellLincolnDeMaris Will you be supporting the ability to assign a retention label to the document set level to ensure disposition of records as a whole document set, rather than individual docs within a document set?
- LincolnDeMaris
Jonny Caldwell Yes
- Jonny CaldwellGreat, and will this happen as part of the current road map item or later?
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.
Michael_SilversteinUdaybhanu 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.
What happened? This was live in our Office 365 tenant a couple weeks ago and now it is gone. The new icon and copy/move functionality is there at the top level of the library but when navigating into a Doc Set it is back to classic. Help! We already sent an announcement to all our users. :-(
LincolnDeMaris Thanks for the update. I was just about to roll out document sets to our team but waited so not to put the users through a double change!
One of features I really liked about document sets was that each project could have a mini home page. I could then use WebParts to query certain pieces of information and display them on the welcome page. Almost like a synopsis of the project all in one place. Looking at the move away from Welcome Pages is there a way I can do this within the modern view with web parts that pull documents up using web parts?
So if a document set is clicked through the normal folder navigation it shows the folder list, the options panel and then a couple of Web Parts with details related just to that document set?
Rather than managing knowledge by copying 'Case Studies' or 'Purchase Orders' from one folder to another we keep everything in one place so not to duplicate content and make sure that the latest file/folder is being accessed.
Could this be achieved with views?The image demonstrates where I was going before I realised that modern was on its way!
p.s Please update us as regular as you can as I have a large team waiting for this change .
I sure hope this May delivery holds, we are looking at using these, but the classic view is not going over with the management stakeholders.
No update from Microsoft in the Uservoice discussion thread on this.
Also disconcerting that the 365 road map was updated after this post, and stills says in development?
- LincolnDeMaris
SWalter2937 We posted the official announcement to the Message Center yesterday. Modern document sets rollout will begin early May!
Deleted I think that everything you're using Document Sets for, as evidenced by your screenshot, will continue to work with this change. Document set metadata is displayed in the details pane. Default content that's specified in your content type will be created by default. You can configure which view is used to display document set contents.
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 another, it does not work.
