Tag: document sets

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Records Center and Document Sets

Got this question asked last week for the second time.  What happens when you submit a document set to a record center?  Can you even do it?  Answers please!  Here we go…

Can you submit a document set to a records center? 

  • Yes!  it is not the typical "Send To->" menu in the drop down, but it does say "Send to another location", then you are presented your send to options. The directory is turned into a ZIP file and submitted!  Jury is still out on if this is a good way to go or not.

What happens if the document set is versioned?  Do the versions get submitted? 

  • No, only the latest version is submitted to the records center.  However, when the record is submitted, if it has the same name as another "record" it will get a unique ID appended to the record's file name.  This means that on top of every version that you submit and approve, you will also need to submit the record to the record center to keep track of its progress.  It will not move automatically if you don't do this.

 What will happen if you submit a document set with a document set?

  • You can't put a document set inside another document set.  At least, not with the UI anyway.  NOTE:  A document set is a folder, folders CAN contain folders and with some database magic you can make this occur. 

Therefore, what happens when you have a document set with a folder and/or a zip file in it? 

  • Simiarly, you can't add folders to a document set! You can however add a zip file to the document set, this works simiarly to simply adding a zip to a zip.  NOTE:  The zipping code is calling .NET Packaging and that's why you get the extra items like "_rels" and "resources" in the file.  I do a similar call in my course bulider tool

Can you rate a Document Set?

  • No, just like folders, you cannot rate a document set

Can you rate documents in a Document Set?

  • Yes, a document set is just like a folder and therefore any document inside of it can be rated.

Enjoy!
Chris

 

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Document Set Metadata – How does it work?

I had a student ask me the other day, does a document set get the metadata at the document set level?  I didn't know the answer…until now!  Let's start with a simple search on sanspug.org for "docset", we get nothing

Enable document sets in the site collection via "Site Actions->Site Settings->Site Collection Features->Activate Document Sets". Create a document set called "My Document Set" with a column called "Custom"

  • Create a new column called "Custom" in the document set 
  • We then need to setup some sub content types that the document set will contain via the "Document Set settings" link on the Document Set management page
  • Assign the Document Set to a library (with allow management of content types enabled)

Create a new instance of the Document Set with the "Custom" column filled in with "docset"

  • Re-index the content via the Search Service Application

Re-running the orginal search, we get only the document set:

Running a search for a sub document we get both document set folder and the document back:

So that begs the question…why doesn't Document Set metadata filter down to the sub items?  I think it should, but in the current version, it doesn't seem too with out some magic.

You may be asking the question what are "Shared Columns":

Well, you would think maybe it would cause the metadata to cascade down, but it doesn't, it only adds the column to the sub documents, which is weird in the first place because every time you add a content type, all the columns are added to the entire list anyway!

UPDATE!  A comment posted earlier pointed out there is a Timer Job Service that runs to update the metadata in the subcolumns.  Firing this job will supposedly update the sub document data.  However, I found that it doesn't for my Farm.  It would also make sense that your sub-document content types have a column with the same name as the document set level (if you didn't do the Shared Columns approach) or I'd guess this Timer Job would not do anything.  None-the-less, even after adding the column to the sub level docs via Shared Columns and the sub content types, the Timer Job still didn't update them 🙁  Still some bugs to be worked out here…

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc678870.aspx

So the answer to the students question is no, a document set folder does NOT cascade its metadata to sub documents by default, it has to be updated by a Timer Job (supposedly)!

Have fun exploring!
Chris