Provision custom Document Sets with CAML

In this article I am going to review how to provision a custom Document Set with CAML. For the demo I will create a custom Document Set called “Meeting Document Set” with one associated custom content type “Meeting Document”. I will provision a custom document library list (named “Meeting Documents”) and our custom content types will be associated with the list, so after the deployment the user can start adding Document Sets and documents within the list. The article also explains how to provision custom Welcome Page for the Document Set and discusses how to customize this page. Below is a brief description how to implement and provision the solution step by step:

1. Activate feature Document Set is a site collection level feature that must be first activated.

• Go to Site Settings > Site Collection Features page
• Activate Document Sets feature

2. Create the metadata

For the sake of the code sample let’s assume that our custom Document Set will have next columns metadata:

· Meeting Notes – brief description of the meeting

· Conducted At Date – date on which the meeting has held

· Witness – User who is responsible for the goals of the meeting

· Position – his position

· Outcome due Date – end date for achieving goals raised during the meeting

· Internal meeting reference number – internal number. This won’t be visible and will be filled behind the scene (for dummy data for the sake of the demo). The population of this field will be discussed in a separate article for the Document Sets.

The other content type (“Meeting Document”) inherits from Document and which will be associated with the document set will have next metadata:

· Document Internal number – department internal number attached to each document attached to the meeting.

3. Create content types

Creating the “Meeting Document” is out of the scope of this article, so I will skip this.

Below is the CAML definition of “Meeting Document Set” content type:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <ContentType ID="0x0120D5200064ab7524b97440fcba3080cd5edb05ac"
             Name="Meeting Document Set"
             Group="KB Content Types"
             Description="A custom document set."
             ProgId="SharePoint.DocumentSet" >
    <Folder TargetName="_cts/Meeting Document Set" />
    <FieldRefs>
      <FieldRef ID="{CBB92DA4-FD46-4C7D-AF6C-3128C2A5576E}" ShowInNewForm="TRUE" ShowInEditForm="TRUE"  Name="DocumentSetDescription" />
      <FieldRef ID="{a3a36b22-c551-462c-9ccb-205208770332}" Name="MeetingNotes" Required="TRUE" />
      <FieldRef ID="{4d55b920-f135-4a41-b7cb-4dd94151046d}" Name="ConductedAt"  Required="TRUE" />
      <FieldRef ID="{a646fbed-e3cd-4551-b510-cc92d9eb3c43}" Name="WitnessPosition" Required="TRUE" />
      <FieldRef ID="{165017b9-08c9-4e9e-8560-69488cf67abf}" Name="Witness" Required="TRUE" />
      <FieldRef ID="{36dfd900-a47a-11e0-8264-0800200c9a66}" Name="OutcomeDueDate" />
      <FieldRef ID="{2340e4d0-a55a-11e0-8264-0800200c9a66}" Name="MeetingInternalRefNumber" />
    </FieldRefs>
    <XmlDocuments>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/sharedfields">
        <sf:SharedFields xmlns:sf="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/sharedfields" LastModified="1/1/2010 08:00:00 AM">
        </sf:SharedFields>
      </XmlDocument>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/allowedcontenttypes">
        <act:AllowedContentTypes xmlns:act="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/allowedcontenttypes" LastModified="1/1/2010 08:00:00 AM">
          <AllowedContentType id="0x01010051a7427b4c1d4fe3aa6a9c0055f60067" />
        </act:AllowedContentTypes>
      </XmlDocument>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/welcomepagefields">
        <wpFields:WelcomePageFields xmlns:wpFields="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/welcomepagefields" LastModified="1/1/2010 08:00:00 AM">
          <WelcomePageField id="CBB92DA4-FD46-4C7D-AF6C-3128C2A5576E" />
          <WelcomePageField id="4d55b920-f135-4a41-b7cb-4dd94151046d" />
          <WelcomePageField id="165017b9-08c9-4e9e-8560-69488cf67abf" />
          <WelcomePageField id="a646fbed-e3cd-4551-b510-cc92d9eb3c43" />
        </wpFields:WelcomePageFields>
      </XmlDocument>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/defaultdocuments">
        <dd:DefaultDocuments xmlns:dd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/documentsets/defaultdocuments" AddSetName="TRUE" LastModified="1/1/2010 08:00:00 AM">
        </dd:DefaultDocuments>
      </XmlDocument>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms/url">
        <FormUrls xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms/url">
          <New>_layouts/NewDocSet.aspx</New>
        </FormUrls>
      </XmlDocument>
      <XmlDocument NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms">
        <FormTemplates  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms">
          <Display>ListForm</Display>
          <Edit>KBDocumentSetEdit</Edit>
          <New>DocSetDisplayForm</New>
        </FormTemplates>
      </XmlDocument>
    </XmlDocuments>
  </ContentType>
</Elements>

As you see the outcome due date and internal reference number fields are not required.

On the Welcome Page we show the out-of-the-box Description field, conducted at, witness and witness position fields.
To get the out-of-the-box description field:

• Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DocumentSet


• Open Elements.XML

Tip: Don’t put comments in your content type definitions. You most likely will face unexpected results, as missing the columns in the content type definition.

4. Create custom Welcome Page

• Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DocumentSet


• Create new module element in your solution and name it MeetingDocSetWelcomePage


• Copy the DocSetHomePage.aspx from the content of the folder with path 1) and place in the newly created module

Modify the Element.xml in the module to look like this:

At this point your newly created Welcome Page will be completely empty, and you will see an empty page after creating new meeting document set.

Customization it is up to you and may include custom web parts, user controls, custom controls, etc.



The out-of-the-box Welcome Page comes with 4 WebPartZones, but you can define as many as you need for your customization purposes.

5. Define web parts for your custom Welcome Page

In this code sample I will define the same content for my custom page as it is in the Document Set OOB.

Create new Document Set (based on OOB content type), select “Edit Page” and export next web parts:

• Image


• Document Set Properties


• Document Set Contents

Below is screenshot of how to export the image web part.



Go to the Elements.xml in module MeetingDocSetWelcomePage, open the content of each exported *.dwp file and place them under AllowWebPart elements with appropriate WebPartZoneID within a CDATA.



At this point you may build and deploy your solution.
If you want to test it:

• Create new document library


• Go to Library Settings


• Go to Advanced settings and select “yes” for Allow management of content types.


• Under the Content Types list click “Add from existing content types” link, find and add Meeting Document Set.

6. Create List

Now we can create a custom document library, which has the Meeting Document Set associated and it is ready and operational.

The image below is a screen shot from the list definition Schema.xml. Outlined in red are the changes which allow management of list’s content types and associate the custom document set content type and the “Meeting Documents” content type.

In <Fields> sections we enumerate the existing column definitions.



Our final solution deploys the column definitions, our custom content types “Meeting Document Set” and “Meeting Document”, and custom document library called “Meeting Documents”.



You can attach the related code sample here.

The code sample contains code related to my next article about the rendering templates of Document Set and their customization.