A Managed Document Center – Part II

In my previous post I explained the approach I will take to respond to a very interesting request about configured an automatically managed document center. I divided the job in the following steps:

1. Create the necessary Term Sets in the Term Store.
2. Create a new site using the Document Center template.
3. Enable and set up the Content Organizer.
4. Create a site Content Type using Document as Parent Content Type.
5. Edit the default Documents library with the columns and views needed.
6. Create a workflow to rename the documents.
7. Save the Documents library as template and create a new document library for each facility.
8. Create Content Organizing rules to route the documents to his final location.
9. Redirect the default “Upload a Document” button to the Drop Off Library.

You can check more about the request and how the first step in this link.

In this post I will cover steps 2 to 5. Let's get started.

2. Create a new site using the Document Center template

This step is very straightforward and I am sure more than one has already created a site. On the site where you want to create the subsite, click on All Site Content. On the All Site Content page, click on Create. On the left side, under Filter By, select Site and the click on the Document Center template. Type a name for the document center, a URL, and then click on Create.

3. Enable and set up the Content Organizer

The Content Organizer is a feature of the SharePoint sites that creates rules based on metadata to move content to the correct library or folder.

To enable the Content Organizer, click on the Site Actions menu of the newly created document center, and click on Site Settings. Under Site Actions, click on Manage site features.

 The Content Organizer is the first option in the Site Features page. Click on its Activate button. Wait until the Active labels shows up next to it.

 4. Create a site Content Type using Document as Parent Content Type

Since each document that we are going to upload to this document center needs to be associated with the metadata we created in the previous post, we are going to create a site content type that inherits from the document type.

Click on the Site Actions menu of the document site and click on Site Settings. Under Galleries, click on Site content types.

On the Site Content Types, click on the Create button. Type “Managed Document” as the name of the content type. Select Document Content Type on the Select parent content type from drop down list, and Document as Parent Content Type. Click OK when done.

After clicking ok, the Set Content Type Information page appears. Is in this page when we can set up the columns with the metadata that our content type will have. To do this, at the bottom of the screen, click on Add from new site column. Type “Facility” on the column name and select Managed Metadata for the column type. On the Term Set Settings section, expand the taxonomy root and expand also the Document Center group; then click on the Facility term set. Also, on the Allow Fill-in section select Yes.  Leave the rest of the parameters with their default values.

Repeat he same process to create a managed metadata column for Document Type and Product. At the end you should have a content type similar to this picture:

As a separate note, while in the Site Content Type Information page, if you click on Information management policy settings you will see a series of option to define auditing, compliance and other settings. I will write later in a future post about all these policy settings.

5. Edit the default Documents library with the columns and views needed

When we created the site using the Document Center template, SharePoint will create a document library named “Documents”. Click on its name located in the navigation bar at the left of the screen. Once in the Documents library, look for the Library Settings icon in the ribbon located in the Library tab.

First, make sure the management of content types is allowed in the site. Click in Advanced Settings and verify that Allow management of content types? is set to Yes.

Next, under Content Types click Add from existing content types. Select “Managed Document” and add it to the list on the right. Click OK when done. Remove the current document types clicking on their names and then clicking on Delete this content type link. At the end, the Managed Document should be the only document type associated with this library.

In order to view the documents attributes, edit the All Documents view and add the products and document type columns. You could also set up grouping.

Finally, in order to provide a easy way to filtering, let’s enable the navigation hierarchies. Within the Document Library Settings page, click on Metadata navigation settings. On the Configure Navigation Hierarchies section, remove Folders and add Document Type and Products. Click OK when done.

Our model library is now ready, let’s test it uploading a document from the Upload a Document button in the home page of the document center. Immediately the document has been uploaded, it ask to complete the metadata requested:

The next step will be to create a workflow to rename automatically the documents. I will cover it on my next post. Keep posted!

A Managed Document Center – Part I

I was challenged last week by a very interesting request. A potential Office 365 user wanted an application where he can upload scanned documents in PDF format to a Web site. The documents will be automatically renamed based on three attributes: Facility, Document Type, and Product. The number of facilities is static, but he needs to be able to add more Document Types and Products. Each facility has one or more users that need read-only access to the documents on their own facility only; and they need to filter documents by document type or product easily. The application needs to be secure and available 99% of the time.

After a brief discussion with my team, we decided that SharePoint in Office 365 was the best an easy solution compared with developing and coding a new application. This is how we would use SharePoint Online to meet the customer requirements:

• Users need to access the document on their own facility only: A document library with unique permissions for each facility.
• Upload documents to a central place: A drop-off library with content rules to move the documents to other libraries.
• Be able to add Document Types and Products: Use managed metadata as document attributes.
• Rename documents based on their attributes: Workflow rules to rename documents.
• Be able to filter documents easily: Metadata Navigation Hierarchies.
• Security and availability: SharePoint Online meets this requirements.

In order to accomplish this mission, I will divide the job in the following steps:

1. Create the necessary Term Sets in the Term Store.
2. Create a new site using the Document Center template.
3. Enable and set up the Content Organizer.
4. Create a site Content Type using Document as Parent Content Type.
5. Edit the default Documents library with the columns and views needed.
6. Create a workflow to rename the documents.
7. Save the Documents library as template and create a new document library for each facility.
8. Create Content Organizing rules to route the documents to his final location.
9. Redirect the default “Upload a Document” button to the Drop Off Library.

In this series of posts, I will go over all those steps, so you can create a totally managed document center from the ground up.

Let’s start with the first step!

Create the necessary Term Sets in the Term Store

As the SharePoint Administration Center mentions, the Term Store “contains a set of related keywords (called managed terms) organized into a hierarchy of information, such as a well-defined product category or materials list, that you can then use to control the entry of list values. A Term Store helps improve the consistency, reliability, and discoverability of information within a site collection.” The reason we are going to use managed metadata instead of site columns is because managed metadata allows user to add more terms in the fly. With site columns, users need to go to the site settings or library settings every time they need to add new items. Also managed metadata allows easy filtering using Navigation Hierarchies.

In order to access the Term Store, you need to login into the Office 365 Portal with admin credentials. Then, in the Admin tab, click on Manage under Microsoft Office 365 > SharePoint; this will open the SharePoint Online Administration Center. Click on Manage Term Store.

In the Term Store, you will see a hierarchy that has the word Taxonomy followed by a series of characters as the root. If this is the first time you use the Term Store, you need to add Term Store Administrators on the right side. Make sure you add the account you are currently using. Then, click on Save. Only the Term Store Administrators can add new groups and new term sets.

Next, right click on the root of the hierarchy (Taxonomy_xxxxxxxxxx) and click on New Group. Name the new group as “Document Center”. Now, right click on the newly created group and click on New Term Set.

Name the new term set as “Document Type”. In the right panel, type a description for your term set. Under the Stakeholders field, add all the accounts that will have permissions to add new items to this term set. Make sure also that Submission Policy is Open.

Save the Term Set and then you can enter some initial terms. To do this, right click on the newly created term set and click on Create Term.

Press enter after creating a new term and a SharePoint will add a blank line, so you can create new terms easily.

Repeat this whole process to create two new term sets called “Facility” and “Product”.
At the end your structure should look similar to this:

 You could also create a hierarchy inside the term sets, as the following example:

This way, you can organize your products and document types by category, or your facilities by region. For the simplicity of this demo, I will use only first level terms in each term set.

In my next posts, I will cover how to use this metadata on content types to achieve the goal of a totally managed document center. Keep posted!