How SharePoint 2010 Document Sets can Help Boost Business Productivity

If your organization deals with a set of documents as your work product or deliverable, SharePoint 2010 has a great solution for you. Document Sets is a new feature that allows you and your team to manage one set of deliverable or work product that contains a variety of files (documents, videos, audio, etc.). It acts like a folder in the older versions of SharePoint but based on my usage of it so far, I would call it the “superfolder.”

Why? Document Sets combine unique folder attributes, a great user interface, and metadata.

Let’s say for example you are a boutique staffing company. When you respond to an RPF, you have to put together several documents which need to be compiled and reviewed by five people in your organization. Instead of having your team team exchange emails back and forth, you can use Document Sets to collect all the documents, display the review status for each of the document, create a nice Welcome Page that summarizes what the document set is about, and even use a workflow to streamline the review process. This eliminates the frequently asked question of “Is this the latest version?”

Moving files from a folder to a Document Set
The other day I was trying to move a bunch of files from a folder to a newly created Document Set without losing the existing metadata. In the process, I ran into trouble primarily because I ignored the obvious and went right into geek mode.

You Should Know

• There is no limit on the number of documents that can exist in a Document Set.
• Folders are not allowed in document sets.
• Metadata navigation cannot be used in a Document Set.

Step-by-Step Instructions
Here’s a video on how to set up a Document Set from http://www.lynda.com/.