Daniel AndersonFrom six folders deep. To zero.
Rebuild your SharePoint project library from a six-level folder maze into a flat, metadata-driven structure. Document Sets, content types, the shared columns trick, and the view setting most admins miss.
- ✓Map the information architecture. Flip the hierarchy: projects at the top, everything else as filterable metadata.
- ✓Build the content type hierarchy. A Project content type built on Document Sets, with your columns as site columns.
- ✓The shared columns trick. Set metadata once and it flows to every document inside.
- ✓Configure the views. The welcome page view, filtered views and colour choice pills.
Every move, on screen, in 23 minutes.
A real library rebuild, from a broken folder structure to a flat library, step by step. Pause it, copy the moves, ship the fix.
Flip the hierarchy. Project to the top.
Before a single click in SharePoint, the architecture decision: what's the container and what's the metadata. We turn a six-level folder tree on its head, with projects at the top and everything else as filterable metadata.
Project as a Document Set. Columns as metadata.
Turn on Document Sets (they're off by default), then build a Project content type that inherits from Document Set. Add department, discipline, asset and project manager as site columns.
Set metadata once. Watch it flow to every document.
The setting buried in Document Set settings that fills in metadata on every file inside. Most SharePoint admins have never turned it on, and it fixes the "nobody fills in the columns" problem.
Welcome page view, filters, choice pills.
The welcome page view that lands people in the right place, filtered views by department and document type, and colour choice pills. The layer that makes the whole thing feel native.
From Daniel Anderson, Microsoft MVP
I've spent 20+ years cleaning up libraries nobody could find anything in, building information architecture that scales, and getting Copilot to work because the structure underneath finally makes sense. This blueprint is the pattern I use when a project library has become impossible to navigate, whether that's construction, finance, energy or anywhere else structured project work happens.
Watch it once. Use it forever.
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