Multi-level Group By in Document Libraries

Copper Contributor

Hi,

I've just watched a youtube screencast by Lincoln DeMaris taken from this year's Ignite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJzR2SL0qFs.

 

In it Lincoln talks about the roll-out of 'multi-level group by' although the screencast itself seems to only ever show 2 levels of grouping. Can someone please confirm:

1) if functionality for grouping by more than 2 levels is coming

2) what, if any, will be the new limit on grouping

3) when this is expected to be rolled out for SharePoint Online

 

Many thanks,

Phil

6 Replies

We still have this in our backlog - there's no ETA for the capability.

 

How many levels of group by do you think would be useful?

Hi Lincoln,

 

Ideally there wouldn't be a limit on it (which in effect means it's limited by the number of columns you have).

 

At the moment the use case I have is around migration and taking an organisation who has used SharePoint libraries as a direct replacement for a file system and implementing a flat structure which uses metadata to aid with findability. To help those users who are wedded to their folder approach to document browsing, multi-level group by allows the creation of a 'virtual folder' hierarchy which can replicate any folder structure.

 

Offering search based UI, filter based UI and folder-based browsing UI means we can offer a really rich experience that meets lots of different users needs/desires rather than forcing people to change their habits overnight.

 

Thanks,

Phil

What we notice in the old view is when you do grouping the performance of your library is going down..

Thanks for your feedback.  I'm glad you see it this way:  cool metadata features help share the benefit of SharePoint above flat files and folders in a file share.  We should focus on features that help ordinary users realize this value.  

 

If you're in first release, you should give the new Smart Filters feature a try and let us know what you think!  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-smart-filters-to-find-your-file-or-list-item-293561ed-f...

@Lincoln DeMaris 

2 more would cover 80% of all my requests. It would perfectly emulate old folders structures and help people stop using folders and move into the metadata world. So, how are we looking on the ETA?