Creating a reusable document library with metadata columns

Question

I'm going to create document libraries for our various clients in our portal. Each document library will have common metadata columns, such as Business Line and Solution Line, which will help organize the files.

Rather than creating a Document Library app (instance?) and adding these columns for each customer, I was wondering how I can create a pre-defined Document Library type that has these two metadata columns in place already; which I can then add for each customer.

Version: SharePoint 2013 on-premise

Answer 1

You can consider the approach of Creating Content Type and then associating content type to document library. In this approach, however, you will have to create document libraries for each clients and then associate content type to document library.

But the benefit here will be that once when you have created content type, change management will be easy across all document libraries.So, if there is any change in any column, or you want to add new column in all document libraries, you just have to make change in Content type and all document library can be updated automatically.

For More information on how to create a content type and associate with list/library, refer this link.

Answer 2

Within the Library Settings for any of the libraries you have already created, you should find an option called "Save document library as template" under the "Permissions and Management" section. Click that and provide the required information.

The next time you use Site Contents > Add an app, the template you just created should be toward the end of the list of available apps.