Adding short usage notes per folder

Question

I was tasked with restructuring our department's Sharepoint library, because people were complaining that nobody finds anything any longer. After consulting the literature, I believe that it is not enough to simply have a different folder structure, and I am trying to apply some more UX-friendly "nudges".

One thing that I would very much like to see is to have a very short text hinting towards how a folder should (or shouldn't) be used, a bit similar to the tag blurb on Stack Overflow sites. But what I am missing is a way to really implement it.

Ideally, this would be visible before the folder is opened. I had hoped that I can just add a site column with "usage notes" and fill it with these notes, but I never found a way to fill this column for folders, only for files. The picture below is a mockup of what I wanted.

Another thing I considered is to have some text showing after the folder is opened, above the list of folders and files. I tried adding a separate web part, but its content stays the same no matter where one has navigated to within the library. And I need the text to change for different folders.

What are my options to achieve my goal, be it in these places or somewhere else?

Answer 1

I'm not sure on this point (maybe someone else can expand on why), but the folder content type doesn't seem to be customization. If you want a new folder with a new field, you'll have to add the folder type content type to the library. To do this you need to go to your

Library Settings > Advanced Settings > Allow management of Content Types > Yes > Ok

In your Library settings should be a new table with Content Types as the header, and likely document as one of the items. Click Add from existing site content types and you should be able to find the Folder Type content type somewhere in the scrollable box (See image). Click OK, go into that content type and add your column by clicking the Add from existing site or list columns under the Columns table for that content type.

Once the column is added, you can create a new Folder Type by selecting

File > New Item dropdown menu > Folder Type

It's properties can be added when you create the item, or if you click the ellipsis ( ... ) beside the items title, then you can select properties to edit the columns if you want to add/make changes retroactively.

If you want some more images, I can modify my response with some more. Hope this helps!