Best way to find Related documents/subfolders in "document library" with litle or no coding

Brass Contributor

 

Hi,

 

We have office 365 with a Teams-Sharepoint site. 

The physical teammembers uses the main document library with a folder structure in a following manner.

 

Sales

Services

SoldProducts

PreSales

 

Documents/subfolders in each Mainfolder have some relationship with other documents/subfolders in other Mainfolders. 

In example a "Service" is always linked to a "SoldProduct", a "soldproduct" or a "Presales" has a reference to a customer.

 

Our problem here is actually finding the linked documents/subfolders... This results in lost time whenever we need an overview.

 

I have a background as a programmer and know how to analyse this in order to create custom software but the team would prefer to keep working in this Folder structure (and preferable keep working in microsoft teams) but would like a tool to easily find links between documents/subfolders.

 

In the past I looked in to metadata but back then Microsoft Teams did not support meta data search.

 

Is there a low impact modification that I could do in order to make life easier for the team?

 

PS. We also already heavily use microsoft Teams. For example, we get "Service"-Requests in a Teams/Sharepoint-List, and manually link the Service request to a "Service"-Folder via a column in the list. This way we have an easy overview on the properties of a "Service" via the List.

 

PPS. Some custom software would be acceptable. I have worked with CSOM before in WPF and could make some view or something if possible.

 

 

3 Replies

@ErdYar Hello,

Have you considered creating your own MS Teams Tab using SPFx? It is extremely powerful when you leverage the MS Graph, the solution will provide for users to still work from MS Teams and by using Fluent UI, you will have reusable components for documents and so much more.

Yours sincerely,
Aref Halmstrand

@ArefHalmstrand 

 

Hi,

 

I know it's just a hint that you are giving, but never the less, the hint seems to point at a direction with a lot of custom coding. This could be interresting if a clear path to a solution is available, but I'm assuming your suggestion would not lead to an improvement, unless I spend a significant amount time on it (I'm guessing atleast several fulltime weeks).

 

Currently, I'm trying to gather ideas on  how others are handling a simular situation  where they have related documents in a folder system and want to find related documents/subfolders.

 

Perhaps it is best I ask this question in a  Microsoft Teams forum.

 

Regards,

 

 

 

@ErdYar You are correct! Creating a custom solution would take a lot of time.

Please check this blogpost regarding metadata in MS Teams:
https://microsoft365pro.co.uk/2020/01/12/teams-real-simple-with-pictures-teams-files-and-adding-meta...

 

Please note that there are some limitations at the moment, for example: The metadata can not be updated from MS Teams, it has to be edited from SharePoint. However, this might improve findability and get you one step closer to your goal!

Yours sincerely,
Aref Halmstrand