Document Management in SharePoint Server 2010

From past couple of days I have been investigating the New Document Management Capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010 and here are some of the terms that I came across.

*Document ID
*Document Sets

Let me define the above in a simple and understandable way:

Document ID
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When do we need an ID?..In MOSS 2007 we did have a column type called "ID" which would assign unique numbers to the document or list items in the document or list library. As we saw that this ID was restricted to the library level only. What if we need to have unique string ID's to all the document across the site collection. The answer was given in SharePoint Server 2010 with Document ID feature.

This is a feature that you need to enable in the Site Collection Features. Once done, all the document will get a unique ID and this unique ID will STICK to that document forever. That means when a document is assigned an ID it also provides a URL using which you can track down the document regardless of the location of the document.Even if the document has been moved to different site collection the Document ID that was associated with it remains with it.

The ID's prefix can bedefined as well. For Example : If you have a site collection made for the HR team, you can have the ID prefix as "HRDoc" and the actual ID would be something like HRDoc 1-1, HRDoc 1-20 etc.Basically the format Document ID can be customizable.

Document Set
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Document Set as the name tells is a set of documents that are treated as a single unit of work.In MOSS 2007 the closet that can be related to the document set was a folder. Document Set can be called as a improved and much sofisticated version of folder.

It is again a feature and so it has to be enabled in the site collection feature.Once the feature is enabled it can be used in a document library to create document set. Wait a minute!!!!!................. Document set is a special content type in SharePoint Server 2010. Which means that if you want to use the document set content type in the document library if you to make sure that the document library is ready allow multiple content types.This can be achieved by following steps:

1. Go to the document library settings.
2.Click on Advance Settings.
3.Choose YES in the section which tells "Allow management of content types".
4.Once this is done now you need to add the document set content type to this document library.
5. Go back to the Library settings page.
6. You would see a section for content types and also a click that tells" add from existing content types".Click on that.
7. Choose the Document Set content type from the list and now the document library is ready to produce the document set types.

Once you have followed the above steps, click on the new document and you will find a new content type listed there known as the "Document Set".

Multiple content types can be associated with the Document Set.  For Example: A single document set can have one word document,one excel document and a presentation document.

The welcome page of the Document Set can be totally cutomized according to our requirements.

Also when you choose to download the Document Set, all the documents associated with the document set will be put into a zip file and then downloaded.

Since the document set acts as a single unit,a document ID will be associated with it. Even a workflow can
be assigned to the document set. All features like versioning, security permission can be given to the document set directly.

Last point about the document set is the concept of  "Shared columns". We can add columns to the document set and they get inherited to the documents that are present in the document set. For example: Say I create a document set called "Sales Proposal" and this document set has 3 content types (word,excel and ppt). Also I add a column to the document set called "Date".So what happens is that all the 3 content types will gert this column called "date" into them.

More on Document Management in some time........ :)