Creating a Document Set in SharePoint 2010

Document Set is a brand new feature in SharePoint 2010. Simply put, it makes it easy to contain and manage a pool of documents. It also provides a good user interface to give end users a better experience to work with a set of documents.

As most of the end users are already familiar with the concept of document containment/aggregation by zipping them, "Document Set" just appeals naturally to them. In this tip, you will see how to set up your first Document Set.

1. "Document Set" is not available by default so you need to first enable it. You need to activate a Feature for this; navigate to SharePoint 2010 site, and go to "Site Collection Features" and activate "Document Set" feature. The activated feature is shown in figure below.

2. In order to use Document Set you need to configure the document library. You can use any document library -- this example uses document library titled "Documents". Browse to the document library, click on "Library" tab above, then click on the "List Settings" button from the Ribbon. This is shown in figure below.

3. On the settings page, locate the "Content Types" section and click "add from existing content types" link.

4. From the "Available Site Content Types" list box, select item "Document Set", and click "Add"

Finally click "OK".

5. The newly added content type "Document Set" is now available under the "Content Types" section.

6. Document Set can be created by selecting "Document Set" option under "New Document" Ribbon button.

7. The new "Document Set" document UI will be opened as shown below, enter a Name and Description fields, note that only Name filed is required. Click "OK" to create the document set.

8. The new Document Set will be created, as shown below. The main point to note here is that as Document Set act as a container of items, it gets whole new welcome page (as shown below) along with other related details.

9. For adding/uploading the documents to a document set you can click on the "New Document" or "Upload Document" button from the ribbon , following image show the "Upload Document" option.

Upload document dialog will appear, select the document of your choice by clicking "Browse" and click the "OK" button.

Finally, click "Save".

10. The document is available in the Document Set, as shown below. It's more likely that you will add the more documents to the document as time passes.

11. Now go back to the document library, you will notice that document set is displayed with a special "Document Set" icon in the Type column, as shown below. By simply clicking on the name of the document set, it take you to the document set.