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What is the plan for "modern" Document Sets?

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So it's been asked many times in the old network and never answered, so want to ask it here in the hopes that people are actually thinking about this.

 

What is the plan for "modern" Document Sets in the new modern SharePoint?

 

Right now, the experience is you are in the modern UI for the doc library, click the document set and it takes you back to the old UI, in a very disjointed experience.

 

Document Sets are the most used feature in our environment (and I think one of the most powerful/useful tools in all of SharePoint).

 

Critical success factors in my opinion:

  1. Don't take away functionality (do no harm)
    • this includes modifying the welcome page
    • documents inheriting metadata
    • multiple document content types
    • default views
  2. We HAVE to have the ability to keep modifying the landing page for each document set (including adding web parts) - we have so many solutions that add script web parts to build on the capability - (if things go the way they are now with the rest of modern SharePoint and we lose that it would be a major business impact for usability)
  3. Update the actual document view to be modern like the new doc lib

 

Things we typically add in code:

  • We typically add some buttons via script editor web part that are specific to the current document set the user is looking at
    • could be something like going to a start a workflow screen
    • likes to external systems based some metadata on the screen
  • We add a button / scripts to hide/show the document metadata view at the top, allowing users to focus on the document view and expand the metadata summary only when they want to see it
  • Custom branding (via image web parts and other OOTB capabilities) based on the type of document set
  • Analytics Event Tracking code - to see what users are doing while viewing document sets
127 Replies

I know most of this thread is taken up with the modern v classic UI. However I'd like to post a 'wishlist' feature to tac onto Brent's original comment.

 

I'd like to see an option for 2-way updates of shared properties, such that an update within a document to shared properties flows back up to the doc set. Current property updates to shared properties flow from the doc set.

 

A current scenario is where we have stage payments for a project. In this scenario, there are always 4 stage payments, which are shared properties. The stage payments are calculated in an Excel spreadsheet, which is one of the default documents in the doc set. A macro updates server properties, so at least we get the stage payment amounts into document properties. It's then a manual task for the user to update doc set stage payments. It would be very useful to cascade those updates automatically back up to the doc set.

 

Can anyone suggest a way to do this in O365?

 

Expanding the thinking a bit, it would also be nice to be able to:

* Be able to set a property as updateable

* (Easily) share office objects for use between office docs in a doc set (kind of like what you can do with the new document assembly feature of Nintex and Intelledox)

@Lincoln DeMaris

After nearly a year of lookign closely do you have any news?

This really hurts - I have a very untehncial user base and the flipp betwen UIs is bafflign to them and hodlign up adoption. (There is talk of other technology e.g. bespoke meeting apps for goverment)

No updates yet.  I understand that's painful.

Anything for Ignite possibly?

Thanks

And no information either - seriously worried that the long delay means that a stupid decision is going to be taken here. Realistically how hard could it be to change the default colour and add a few buttons from existing modern libraries?

 

As with all things content services related, there is a long term plan to update and advance the cause during the coming months and beyond.  

 

I know its taking us longer to address modern docsets than it might seem, but please know that we are working diligently to complete the lingering classic experiences that are not yet represented in the "modern" user experience.  We are using telemetry on user frequency to help shape the order of operations and document sets are definitely coming.  Not by Ignite, not close enough yet that we have a public date for it, but coming...  

Good to hear this is not going away as it is one of those elegant things that is just the right solution when it is needed so whether telemetry says it is not used by everyone, those who need and understand it, need it.

Still at least this has a workaround... training for the users and posting stuff to some of the older councillors who are already techophobes and take the view that the experience is too complicated when the world chabges from screen to screen.

 

Now all I need is a fix from the bug by which a lookup coulmn embedded as Document property in Word returns the item index number not the data in the coumn!. Elsewhere I have another MFST post with "we are aware" but have no ETA type response as though that is good enough ... it's broken, you sold it saying it worked the customer wants to know about fixes. Our service partner has reported that engineering has declined to fix it (showstopper for us as the lookup is a  list of committees and every document we issue comes from a committee  -we are local government).

Researching I see this was reported as early as 2014 but no update, no news - but the monthly bills for the software come in without fail.

 

 

I feel that changes over the past few months for Doc Sets have been a great improvement - much more consistent with modern UI. I have just finished a handful of webcasts for a client and unfortunately have to explain the differerent UI for things like tasks, doc sets, etc., but they don't seem to really notice - SharePoint is new to them so that's just the way it is. 

Thanks...regarding your second issue, that sounds like you need to open a support ticket for that bug. Did MSFT respond to your ticket, or was that a forum post.

Thanks

We opened a tikcet via the admin and were contacted by our support partner who replied that issue was confirmed but that enginenring had declined to provide a fix.

Whereas I find that when suddenly presented with a bar full of buttons that appeared on no other screen (most of which don't do anything very useful but can cause serious problems) people press them esepcailly wgen they options they use in every other library are gone.

After nearly 35 years as an IT trainer, I still think that inconsistent UI and unpredictable behaviour is one of the things that makes technology a disappointment to most people - they like to feel they understand something and then when they find they don't it's like being slapped in the face by a friend .c.f the confusion that is teams vs groups vs UI in outlook vs ui in mail, browse library vs files, e-mails to a group address not being visible in the corresponding teams UI, planner appearing and disappearing depending on where you click etc .etc

Today I was helping user who had put a date column as a document property in word - when she viewed the same document in word online the date switched to one day earlier - no idea why but how could this happen?

 


@Julie Sanders wrote:

I feel that changes over the past few months for Doc Sets have been a great improvement - much more consistent with modern UI. I have just finished a handful of webcasts for a client and unfortunately have to explain the differerent UI for things like tasks, doc sets, etc., but they don't seem to really notice - SharePoint is new to them so that's just the way it is. 


 

Out of interest, is your timezone BST? I've seen issues when doing SharePoint development where I've entered a date as, for example, 16/08/2017. This gets stored within the list as 16/08/2017 00:00:00 which is fine for BST. However the underlying timezone is UTC, which means that the date saved is actually 15/08/2017 23:00:00, which is probably why you're getting a discrepancy between the two applications. What the solution is in O365, I unfortunately don't know (yet), other than reverting your site settings to UTC.

Thanks
Yes - and we (me & the remote tech from MS yesterday) were wondering about that. I think there is something going on. And whilst we were able to repro on our team site (created some time ago as well - it was classic), we found that when he created a new site in our server the problem didn't happen. I was thinking of adding a date with time column just to check this and I bet there's something going on with timzeones.  (This has long been an issue livign in the UK - not foreign enough to have our own versions but far enough away to have differnet time behaviour. I can remember when system Management Server first shipped the despooler always waited 8 hours to install packages on Windows for wokrgroups machines as regardless of timezone, as it thought they were in Seattle. I guess the Word team are better and checking timezones than Word online). I will report back if this proves to be the issue.

I just spent 2 hours find a solution that could match (even closely) document set but wasn't successful. Document set are really great with default templates, and inheritance of metadata.

 

I am really happy to hear that it is coming.  It would be helpful to update some of the annoying user experience bits (new tabs, copying files), if it is going to take time toget the full modern experience.

 

Please request uservoice team to update the status as it has been on the thinking mode since last 2016. https://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/329214-sites-and-collaboration/suggestions/14209284-document.... Thanks

My 2 cents worth on doc sets, adding to some of the suggestions above...

Some wish list things...with High, Medium and Low priority based on my personal preferences
* Modern UI...HIgh
* Able to inherit a choice of views from parent library AND/OR...Low
* Able to specify views within the document set...to ensure consistency across libraries and sites using the same doc set...High
* Able to set default content type for a doc set...High
* Change the sharing dialog for a doc set, such that by default the checkbox indicating that sharing of docs inside the doc set is overridden is NOT checked...Medium
* Fix info management policies so doc sets can be sent to another library when criteria are met...High
* Fix Send to / Copy to so they work with doc sets...Medium
* Fix Content Organiser so that rules work with doc sets...Medium (overall medium, but high when I'm working with Content Organiser and Dropoff Libraries)
* Able to define lists within doc sets. E.g. for a meeting doc set, list of attendees, for a training course, list of bookings and confirmations
* Shared metadata changed within a document flows back up to the doc set...High

We've been getting very poor results in the last six months when opening tickets: I have two members of my team at Ignite hunting down people to get answers to business critical issues related to "changes" made to workflows, powerpoint (we use it to allow users to update content and links in a format that are very comfortable with). At this time none of those content solutions are user-manageable because of an undisclosed change on September 11th. And the third-party support took a week to escalate it, and it languishes still...

Waiting for it as well!

I was able to create a document library, where my document sets are also modern "inside". I was changing the views and editing the "welcome page" for the document set, where I added the document library web part and selected a view. So now when I create new document sets or open existing documents sets in that library, the entire experience is modern.

 

HOWEVER I cannot recreate this in another library - so I wanted to know if anybody had the same experience and could reproduce the steps?

 

 

 

 

Could you share a screenshot of the new document set look?

I tried to replicate this by creating a new communications page and wasn't even able to select document sets from the term sets in a newly set up library. Maybe comms pages don't allow for document sets?

My doc lilbrary - with folders and document setsMy doc lilbrary - with folders and document setsInside my doc. set.Inside my doc. set.