How do I make fields required for documents within a doc set, without that field be required for the doc set itself?

Question

I need to be able to create document sets where each document with the doc set has a required field, without requiring that that field be required when the doc set is created.

Each document within a doc set needs to have a 'borrower doc type' column that is specific to the given document, and this field should be required for the document. I do not, however, want the 'borrower doc type' field required for the doc set as a whole because there is no one doc-type for the entire set.

When I click on "+ New" in our document library, the only option is to create a new document set. This is how we want it, but at the Doc Set level, we only care about a location and borrower name as seen in the following image:

Once we click save, however we need to have a required column (called "Borrower Doc Type") that ensures users designate what type of borrower document they're uploading to the document set. This is a Choice column that will be different for each document with in the doc set. We have tried the following:

• adding the custom "Borrower Doc Type" column to the Doc Set as required - This makes it so that the user is prompted to add the "Borrower Doc Type" when the doc set is created, but that is wrong because there is no single Doc Type that applies to the entire Document Set. We just need to know the document type of the files added to the doc set.
• adding the custom "Borrower Doc Type" column to the document library - This ensures that the user doesn't have to enter the Borrower Doc Type when the document set is created, but it does not make the column required for documents uploaded to the document set.

We're using SharePoint Online via Office365. I feel like I'm running around in circles trying to figure this out, but I'm positive it should be a simple solution.

Answer 1

Based on your requirement, I understand that you want to add a required column to only one document set in the document library. The other document sets in the document library should be without the required column.

You should create a new content type based on the document set content type, then add the new content type to the document library. After that, you could create other document sets by using the new content type.