concept document set in category sharePoint

This is an excerpt from Manning's book SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action. Login to get full access to this book.

In addition to those two techniques, SPD 2010 has a host of new actions and conditions of particular interest. The two most exciting groups include actions and conditions that manage document sets and security permissions. Document sets are groups of documents. Workflows can run on top of these sets and do interesting things such as routing them for retention within the Records Center. This may be desirable for compliance or legal considerations. The second group includes actions and conditions concerning SharePoint security. With SPD 2010, your workflows can manage security by adding and removing user permissions on documents, for example.

After using this action on a document set, you can view the document set’s version history using its context menu in the SharePoint interface. You’ll see the latest major or minor versions, along with the comment that was captured with the action. From here, it’s possible to restore the previous version of a document within the set or the entire document set.

The Capture a Version of the Document Set action could be useful when creating a presentation that includes several documents containing related information. As the presentation is developed and its documents are modified, saving a snapshot of all related documents will allow you to more easily track the progress of the presentation. You can still manage the documents individually, including their version history, if required. After capturing a version of the document set, you can view it by opening the document set from within a document library. You’ll notice that the Ribbon will include a new tab called Document Set. Opening this tab will reveal the Capture Version button, which is similar to the workflow action but is used manually. There is also the Version History button, which will show you the captured document set versions (figure 5.12).

Figure 5.12. A Document Set’s version history shows all the related documents at a point in time.

Clicking the Version History button for a document set will show you a version screen similar to the one used for documents, except that documents within the document set are also shown, with their respective versions (figure 5.13). Note that modifying the document set’s properties such as the title still generates a new version of the set. The documents will not be captured or shown in the history unless you use the Capture a Version workflow action or Ribbon button again.

5.3.1. Creating document sets

Before you can interact with document sets in a workflow, you must activate the Document Set feature and apply the content type to a document library. Follow the steps in table 5.2 to enable document sets in your site. Note that you must be a site collection administrator to activate the document set feature.

Table 5.2. Creating a document set in SharePoint 2010

Action	Steps	Result
Activate the Document Sets feature in your SharePoint site.	In the root collection site, browse to Site Settings under the Site Actions menu. Click the Site collection features link under the Site Collection Administration category. Click the Activate button next to the Document Sets feature.	The Document Sets feature becomes active.
Add the Document Set content type to a Document Library.	In a document library such as Shared Documents, browse to Library Settings using the Ribbon. Click the Advanced settings link under General Settings. Set Allow management of content types to Yes and click OK. At the Library Settings screen, under Content Types, click the Add from existing site content types link. Highlight Document Set in the available content types list and click the Add button, then click OK.	Document sets can be created in the library by clicking the New Document menu item and choosing Document Set (figure 5.10).
Create a new Document Set.	Click the New Document dropdown and select the Document Set content type (figure 5.11). In the New Document Set dialog, give the document set a name such as Sales Presentation and give it a description. Then click OK.	The Document Set is shown with no documents. To upload documents into the document set, use the Upload Document Ribbon button.