Create a Notes Field for a Document Set

I have been working on a Case Management solution in SharePoint and one of the requirements asked of me was the ability to have Notes added to the Case.  Now my first thoughts are to edit the Document Set page and add the ‘Notes’ web part using existing functionality.  But it not only disrupted the page layout but also didn’t follow the Document Set when it was sent as a record.

So I came up with a solution using fields added to a custom Document Set for the project area.  This article outlines how it was done.

Added fields to the Document Set:

New Note                          Multiple Lines of Text                     Optional

Case Notes                        HTML Publishing                              Optional
HiddenCalcNote               HTML Publishing                              Hidden

Then create a Reusable Workflow with these fields added as reference fields.  In the Workflow create the first step with the following design.

In the first ‘Update item’ settings we configure it to update the Case Notes field with the following ‘String’ built up.

Note that this HTML tags allows us to add in line breaks between the fields.

The other ‘Update item’ settings are simple ones allowing us to keep a copy of the case notes in our hidden field of ‘HiddenCalcNote’ and then clearing the ‘New Note’ field in preparation for our next case note update.

Finally ensure the workflow runs on a Document Set when it is new or updated and make sure the Case Notes field is displayed on the Document Set welcome page.