Creating your own document library with your own set of fields

Creating your own document library with your own set of fields

You manage a large document management system in your organization. Your organization has many departments. You create a site for each department and each site has a document library. You add some custom fields in your library but you don't want the dialog box to pop-up asking users to enter values for the custom fields whenever they insert a new document. You may have experienced this in your company. When you add custom fields in your document or form library, a dialog box pops up every time user tries to add a new document. Suppose, the number of custom fields exceeds 10. You don't want your users to be presented with a dialog box with more than 10 fields to be filled up every time they add a file. You need to add these fields in all the document libraries in your SharePoint Portal. What do you do? Go to each library, and add these fields? Not a good solution!! Wouldn't it be nice if all these fields get added to your document library template? This way when you will add a new document library to a site, all the custom fields will already be part of the document library and interestingly, you won't get that dialog box popping up each time a document is added to the library.

Let's create a document library template of our own with the following new fields:

1. Level
2. Workflow
3. Approver

Here are the steps to create a template of our own:

1. Go to following location: C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions60TEMPLATE1033STSLISTS

2. Copy "DOCLIB" folder and paste it in the same folder. Rename new folder to "MYDOCLIB"

3. Go to: C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions60TEMPLATE1033STSXML. This location contains ONET.XML file.

4. After taking back up of the original file, open ONET.XML and locate the following line:

<ListTemplate Name="doclib" DisplayName="Document Library" Type="101" BaseType="1" OnQuickLaunch="TRUE" SecurityBits="11" Description="Create a document library when you have a collection of documents or other files that you want to share. Document libraries support features such as sub-folders, file versioning, and check-in/check-out." Image="/_layouts/images/itdl.gif" DocumentTemplate="101"></ListTemplate>

Copy and paste the following line underneath the above line:

<ListTemplate Name="mydoclib" DisplayName="My Document Library" Type="899" BaseType="1" OnQuickLaunch="TRUE" SecurityBits="11" Description="This is a customized Document Library. Create a document library when you have a collection of documents or other files that you want to share. Document libraries support features such as sub-folders, file versioning, and check-in/check-out." Image="/_layouts/images/itdl.gif" DocumentTemplate="101"></ListTemplate>

5. Open Schema.xml from the following path:

C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions60TEMPLATE1033STSLISTSMYDOCLIB

6. Take backup of the original file before making changes. Locate following code in the schema.xml:

<List xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint" Name="Documents" Title="Shared Documents" Direction="0" Url="Shared Documents" BaseType="1" >
<MetaData>
<Fields>
...

Inside <Fields> tag, you can include your own fields. Add following lines inside <Fields> and </Fields> tags:

<Field Type="Text" Name="Level" ShowInNewForm="FALSE" ShowInFileDlg="FALSE" DisplayName="Level"></Field>
<Field Type="Text" Name="WorkFlow" ShowInNewForm="FALSE" ShowInFileDlg="FALSE" DisplayName="WorkFlow"></Field>
<Field Type="Text" Name="Approver" ShowInNewForm="FALSE" ShowInFileDlg="FALSE" DisplayName="Approver"></Field>

Save schema.xml!

7. Restart IIS.

Now, go to "CREATE" page, you will see two document library templates. Select your newly added template and create a document library. This library will have additional fields by default. You can add as many fields as you like. 

-SSA