Are use of folders detrimental to the use of content types?

Question

Background: I have rather recently taken over the use of the document center aspect of our intranet from a colleague who has moved on to better things.

Our organization consists of a number of different sections and for each section he had been establishing libraries and content types, and the users had so far been content to leave it at that.

In the case of my first established library for a section being migrated from our old 'shared folders' system, the initial feedback has also been good - except that they have also taken the liberty of adding a couple of folders (not document sets) within which to group particular content types.

While my instinct is telling me that this is a behavior that I want to nip in the bud before the size of the library becomes such that it will be unfeasible to amend, I am having a little difficulty placing my finger on precisely what the problem with folders is in this scenario.

Question: So - could somebody kindly enlighten me as to the precise drawbacks of permitting this creation of folders and sub-folders to continue?

Presuming that there are major drawbacks - I take it that I can attempt to get around this issue through grouping and sorting by content type.

Answer 1

Moving from folders to metadata is a very common scenario when organizations reach a certain level of maturity in their SharePoint adoption, and communicating the value proposition to the user base is a pain point I've experienced time and time again with clients. The "folder mentality" is often deeply entrenched and getting out of it requires a willingness to think in different terms.

Folders impose a rigid one-dimensional structure into your document library. If you have multiple levels of categorizations for your documents, you have to repeat the same nested folder structure inside each top-level folder. Suppose you have a "region" folder with a "client" folder inside. Now someone wants to see all the documents for Client ABC regardless of region. With metadata it's easy, just click the column header on the view. With nested folders, I really don't know how you'd do that. Now, suppose you gain a new client. Would your users propose creating a new folder inside every region? Nah, just go to the term store and add a new client to the term set.

The only situation where I would recommend the use of folders is if there are special secuity requirements. Rather than securing individual items, create a folder and secure that, and put your secured content inside. It's better from both a technical and usability point of view.