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SharePoint: Modern Document Sets 

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SharePoint is a powerful platform for managing and collaborating on documents. One of the features that SharePoint offers is the ability to create Document Sets, which are collections of related documents that share common properties and settings.  
 
Document sets have been around in SharePoint for years. They can be described as “super folders” or “folders on steroids,” and they group “like” documents. These sets can share their metadata with the files inside them. This helps by reducing the properties (or metadata) the user must provide. 
 
Document sets can help you organize, track, and work on documents more efficiently and collaboratively. For example, you can use document sets to store all the documents related to a project, contract, board meeting, or product. Document sets are more scalable and flexible than folders and can enhance the document management experience in SharePoint. 
 
Not all Document Sets are created equal. Depending on how your SharePoint site or document library is configured, you may have access to “Classic Document Sets” or “Modern Document Sets.” These two types of Document Sets have different capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages.  
 
Microsoft configures all new document libraries in SharePoint Online to the “modern” interface. This article will show you how to enable Modern Document Sets in SharePoint and compare them to the feature set in Classic Document Sets.  

Classic Document Sets

Classic document sets have a welcome page that displays the document set properties and the list of documents in the set.  

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Modern Document Sets

Modern document sets have a more responsive, intuitive, and mobile-friendly design than classic document sets. 

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Enabling Document Sets in a Site

1-Jan-18-2024-08-10-03-9911-PM  The document set feature is not enabled by default.
 
To enable this, go to: Gear > Site Information > View all site settings >  Site Collection Administration (group) > Site collection features 
Find the Document Sets feature and click the Activate button. 
 
Result: 
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 2-Jan-18-2024-08-11-52-1024-PM   Once the feature is activated, go to any library on the site, then: 
 
Gear > Library settings > Advanced Settings > Allow management of content types? > Yes and click the OK button. 
 
From the Library Settings Screen click “Add from existing site content types.” 
 
At the top of the screen, you may see: 
 
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This will lead you to believe that you cannot use this interface to add the Document Set Content Type. But just ignore it and continue.  
  3-Jan-18-2024-08-12-45-5919-PM   Add the Document Set content type by selecting it, clicking Add, and then Ok. 
 
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On the Library settings page, click on “Document Set” under the Content Types heading, then select Document Set settings.
 
This is where the power of the document set can be applied. In the Shared Columns Section, select “Description” and click the OK button at the bottom. 
 
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4Return to your Document library and add the Description column to the All-Documents view. 

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5-Jan-18-2024-08-12-45-6277-PM Create a new Document Site by clicking the New button and selecting “Document Set.”

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Fill out the metadata for the Document Set and click the Save button.

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You will be returned to the Document library and the Document Set will be showing. 

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Navigating into the document set will open the information panel so you can view the Document Set properties. 

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At this point when you add or create documents, they will take on the shared metadata. 

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Modern vs Classic Document Sets

While the only update the Modern Document Sets have yet to make is updating the welcome page, which displays relevant information and resources for each document set, Classic Documents Sets, still have a few drawbacks including:

  • They do not support modern web parts or custom views on the welcome page.
  • They may switch to the classic experience when you create or open a document set, even if your library is set to use the modern experience.

In Summary

Modern Document Sets are a powerful feature in SharePoint that allow you to manage a group of related documents as a single entity. Microsoft have almost provided feature parity between modern and classic Document Sets. Modern Document Sets take advantage of the modern responsive user interface in SharePoint and are a great way to improve document management and collaboration. 
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