SharePoint 2010 Document Sets

SharePoint 2010 has a new feature for grouping and managing documents, called Document Sets. We have all experienced a need to work with a “group” of documents. When a company hires a new employee, there are ususally dozens of forms that need to be filled out – hence a New Employee Document Set. The challenge is that prior to this version of SharePoint there was no way to keep track of the documents together other than metadata.
It acts like a folder, but is not a folder. It is a container however, and that container can have policies, workflows, metadata that applies to the entire set of documents within the container.

Let’s use the example of the New Hire process. When a new employee starts working for your company they have to fill out their standard forms, Personal Information, Emergency Contact, W-2, etc. Instead of emailing the employee the documents and then have them exchange emails back and forth, you can use Document Sets to collect all the documents, display the review status for each of the document, create a nice Welcome Page that summarizes what the document set is about, and even use a workflow to streamline the review process. This eliminates the frequently asked question of “Is this the latest version?”, “Is this the right information?”, “Is this complete?”.
You Should Know
There is no limit on the number of documents that can exist in a Document Set.
Metadata can be shared across the Document Set.
Document Sets are based on Content Types.
Docment Sets can be versioned.
Workflows can be associated with the Document Set.
Permissions can be defined per Document Set.
Folders are not allowed in document sets.
Metadata navigation cannot be used in a Document Set.
To get a better understanding, here’s a great video.