Create Case change history for a Document Set

One of the problems with Document Sets is that they don’t automatically create version history.  You can configure a workflow to trigger a version but this takes a snapshot of the complete Document Set including contents which can grow rapidly.

To capture changes in the metadata I have spent some time building a workflow which captures changes in metadata settings and stores them to be viewed.  Additionally I have added the option to hide History when it grows too big.

So to start this we need to create a custom document set.  For this demo I want to capture the ‘Forward To’ setting which is who my case is assigned to and ‘Case Status’ which is a simple choice value to move the case through a process.  To do this I start with the following Document Set settings:

This Document Set is then assigned to our Document Library so we can start building and tracking cases.

Now we are in a position to create our ‘Globally re-usable’ workflow in which we first associate the values we plan to include.

We then start building our workflow and separate these in to two steps.

The key setting here is building our ‘HiddenCaseHistory’ value to build on the existing Case History and this string is built using the following settings.

Now we have a working workflow which we publish to our site and associate to our Document Library.

When we set this to automatically run on case creation or on change it will check and update our Case History.

So a standard case would show the history as standard:

But by editing the Case we can hide the Case History although it will continue to be updated within our Hidden Case History value.

Once the Display History is un-ticked we will see the following in our Case History for the Document Set.

I have been running this in Development without any known problems but any changes to this will be included in a blog update.