The new document library experience in SharePoint Online is simple, streamlined, and easy to use. Modern document libraries combine the power of SharePoint with OneDrive usability. They provide a consistent user experience across OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and document library and hence provides a standard way of creating folders and uploading files. Modern document library combines the power of both OneDrive and document library. For modern document library, columns, views and content types still remain the key components which distinguish it from OneDrive

Key features of Modern Document Library:

• UI shared with OneDrive
  • Thumbnail and List Views
  • Contextual Commands
  • Responsive UI (works with  Mobile browsers)
• Usability
  • View column resizing (double click column name to expand or click and drag)
  • Easy schema updates (create new list scoped columns from UI)
  • Show/hide/reorder existing columns from view in UI
  • Save current view as public view (Manage View permission level enforced)
  • Highlight key content using new pinning feature (Every View/Folder combinations has its own pinning)(Contributor permission enforced)
  • Upload entire folder
  • Support for file types – Photos, Adobe files, Photoshop files ( Photo viewing experience – similar to personal camera roll)
  • Group By directly from UI (drag and drop items across groups and metadata will automatically inherit the group tags)
  • Up to 2 levels of Group By available
  • Link type added to library – add item as link (Thumbnail view shown)
  • Copy and Move files and folders options available
• Details Pane
  • Preview of document(Office Online Preview) and its associated properties
  • Metadata Population
  • Required Metadata Alerting
  • Recent Activity (If folder selected then activity across entire folder will be shown in details pane)
  • Displays who item is shared with
  • Update metadata on the fly – support for all column types (people picker, managed metadata )

Command Bar

• Contextual Trim command bar replaces the traditional ribbon
• Any custom ribbon customizations made will appear on the new command bar.

Details Pane

• Preview of document(Office Online Preview) and its associated properties
• Metadata Population
• Required Metadata Alerting
• Recent Activity (If folder selected then activity across entire folder will be shown in details pane)
• Displays who item is shared with
• Update metadata on the fly – support for all column types (people picker, managed metadata )

Pin Files

• Modern document library provides pinning feature which enables featuring content and empowering users to highlight important documents.
•  Select file and pin to top. Every view/folder combination has a unique pinned items set
• Minimum contribute rights needed to perform pinning of files

Quick schema updates

• View column resizing (double click column name to expand or click and drag)
• Easy schema updates (create new list scoped columns from UI)
• Save current view as public view (Manage View permission level enforced)

Edit View Columns

• Show/hide/reorder existing columns from view in UI
• Select columns to be shown in view

Link Content Type

• Link type added to library – add item as link (Thumbnail view shown)
• When adding link – recently viewed documents are shown

View Features

Update view settings from UI

• Order items
• Filter
• Group By
• Rename and move columns
• Show/Hide columns
• Add columns

Modern document libraries  vs. Classic Document Libraries

• Class might still be right for organizations since all features from classic are not in modern yet
• Customizations in classic mode will not move over to modern
• Currently both modern and classic UI is supported and can be controlled at different levels (Lowest level setting wins)
• Tennant Switch (admin center)
• Sit collection and web level via PowerShell (enable hidden feature)
• Library level (Advanced Settings)
• Back to Classic link (single session)

Default tenant configuration is to auto-detect and modern UX is used by default

Certain features configured on the library will also cause it to default to classic mode (example :- Metadata filtering and navigation)

Features not (yet) in modern

• Ribbon
  • Seldom used ribbon buttons like Popularity Trends, Tags & Notes, RDD feed etc.
• View Features
  • Item totals
  • Custom styles (example :- Basic Table)
• Navigation Features
  • Tree View
  • Metadata navigation and filtering (auto detect and fall back to classic)
  • Managed Navigation
  • Per-location views
  • Customized navigation links on Publishing sites
• Field Types (Auto detects and falls back to classic)
  • External data columns
  • Geolocation columns
• Library Features
  • Content Organizer
  • Minimal Download Strategy
• Customizations (Auto detects and falls back to classic)
  • JSLink on field and views
  • Custom Actions

Required Metadata

• Files with no checked in version are only visible to uploader
• No “penalty” on leaving required fields blank
• “Missing metadata” and “files i need to take action on” views
• Bulk tagging after upload

Will Microsoft remove classic mode?

• Aspiration is clear, timeline is not
• Classic deprecation will not happen in 2017
• User Voice and usage data will be taken into consideration for modern mode
• Goal is to include core adoption blockers and issues in modern mode before deprecating the classic mode
• When and if usage data shows classic is no longer used, MSFT might pull the plug on the same

Upcoming Features for Modern Document Library

• Modern Document Library web part
• Modern Document Sets
• Bulk download
• Bulk Tagging
• Better Large List Management
• Custom field and list views (JSLink)
• Web Part Connections

Scenario

It’s odd, but SharePoint handles links in search results differently than you might expect. To clarify, I’m talking about those items that have a content type of “Link,” meaning they’re typically in a Links list a SharePoint site. By default, links will be displayed in search results just fine, but when you click on one, you’re taken to the display form of the link within the Links list instead of the actual destination of the link.

Expectation

Most of the customers I’ve worked with would much rather click on the link and go directly to the link, instead of having to first go to the display form, then click on the link again to finally get to it. Of course, I agree with that and that’s the purpose of this post. Let’s walk through how to create a custom display template specifically for “Link” items in a SharePoint 2013 environment.

Solution

Overview of solution steps

1. Create a Links List
2. Create a Managed Property and Start a Full Crawl
3. Create a Display Template
4. Create a Result Type
5. Test Your Search Results

Create a Links List

This is necessary to ensure that you have some content to crawl in the next step. You need to have at least one links list with at least one link in it to continue. If you already meet this requirement, you can skip to the next section, “Create a New Managed Property.” Follow the steps below to create a new links list.

1. Navigate to a SharePoint site of your choice.
2. From the gear menu in the upper-right of the page, click “Add an app.”
3. Select the Links app, give it a name, and click Create.
4. Add a couple of links to the list. It’s a good idea to give them different names and URLs so that you can easily differentiate between them while testing. Also, it’s nice if they’re working links, so be sure to use working URLs.

Create a New Managed Property and Start a Full Crawl

The crawled property that contains the actual URL of a link is ows_URL. This crawled property is already mapped to an existing managed property called OWS_URL. However, if you attempt to reference OWS_URL in your display template, you’ll only get “undefined” as a return value because the OWS_URL managed property is not marked as “Retrievable” in the search schema within Central Administration. When I tried to edit the OWS_URL managed property and mark it as retrievable, I received a message stating: “The settings could not be saved because of an internal error: The managed property “OWS_URL” has an invalid name: The following invalid characters were used: ‘_’.”

Welcome to SharePoint. This is a built-in managed property with an underscore in the name, yet SharePoint won’t allow you to update it through the GUI because it has an underscore in the name. Confused? Me too. Don’t waste any more time on this and move on to create your own managed property.

I decided to create my own managed property to avoid tampering with the built-in one since SharePoint typically doesn’t like it when you change anything that’s there by default. I created a new managed property called owsURL, mapped the ows_URL crawled property to it, and then ran a full crawl. Running a full crawl is necessary for the change to take effect. Follow the steps below to create the new managed property and start a full crawl.

1. Navigate to your Search Service Application within Central Administration.
2. In the left navigation, click “Search Schema.”
3. Click “New Managed Property.”
4. Fill out the form as shown in the list below. If not specified, there’s no need to change the field.
   1. Property name: owsURL
   2. Retrievable: Yes – check this box
   3. Safe: Yes – check this box
   4. Mappings to crawled properties: ows_URL
   5. Click OK
5. In the left navigation, click “Content Sources.”
6. Now we’ll start a full crawl on the content source. Starting a full crawl can put a load on your server(s) and cause a degradation in SharePoint’s responsiveness. It’s advisable to perform this step after hours when users are not interacting with the system. Hover over the “Local SharePoint sites” content source, open its drop-down menu, and then click “Start Full Crawl.” (I’m assuming this is the correct content source. You’ll want to start the full crawl on the content source that contains your newly created Links list).
7. You’ll get a prompt asking “Are you sure you want to start a Full Crawl?” If you’re comfortable with the potential performance impact to your users, then click OK.

Depending on how much content you have, the full crawl can take minutes or hours. While the crawl runs, you can move on to the next section and create the display template.

Create a Display Template

The display template controls how the search result looks and behaves. Follow the steps below to create a new display template.

1. Navigate to the top-level site of your SharePoint site collection that contains your links list.
2. From the gear menu in the upper-right of the page, click “Site settings.”
3. Under “Web Designer Galleries,” click “Master pages and page layouts.”
4. Click on the “Display Templates” folder.
5. Click on the Search folder.
6. Download Item_Default.html. Leave your browser open as you’ll come back to it.
7. It’s not recommended to change Item_Default.html itself because it’s a default file included with SharePoint. Instead, rename your local copy of Item_Default.html to Item_Link.html and customize that going forward. This is the recommended name only because it matches the naming convention used by the other display templates. If you want to make this stand out as a customization, I recommend adding a prefix for your company name. For example, I might call mine Quisitive_Item_Link.html or something similar. You can name it whatever you like.
8. Open Item_Link.html in your favorite text editor.
9. Replace all content in Item_Link.html with the code in the file I’ve linked to below.Eric’s copy of Item_Link.html on OneDrive
10. Save Item_Link.html.
11. Switch back to your browser and upload Item_Link.html to the Search Display Templates folder. You’ll see it appear in the list there under Item_Excel_HoverPanel.html. You should also see Item_Link.js appear. This file is automatically generated by SharePoint and you never have to touch it, so don’t. J

With that, you’re done with the display template and ready to move on to the next section to create a result type.

Create a Result Type

Why is this necessary? Well, technically it’s not, but I don’t want my custom display template that I created specifically for links to be used for anything else because that would cause some confusion. The result type maps the type of search result to a particular display template. In this case, I want all search results that have a content type of “Link” to use my “Link Item” display template. Follow the steps below to create a result type.

1. Navigate to the top-level site of your SharePoint site collection in which you’ll be searching. This could be a stand-alone search site collection or a content site collection that has a search site within it. Either way, it’s best to navigate to the top-level site.
2. From the gear menu in the upper-right of the page, click “Site settings.”
3. Under the “Site Collection Administration” heading, click “Search Result Types.”
4. Click “New Result Type.”
5. Fill out the form as shown in the list below. If not specified, there’s no need to change the field.
   1. Give it a name: Link
   2. Which source should results match?: “Local SharePoint Results“
   3. Open the “Show more conditions” section, and configure this section as shown below.
      1. ContentType
      2. “Equals any of…“
      3. Link
      
   4. Within the Actions section, open the “What should these results look like?” drop-down menu and choose “Link Item.”
   5. Click Save
6. You should be taken back to the “Manage Result Types” page where you can now see your newly created result type near the top under the “Defined for this site collection” heading.

With all that hard work done, you’re ready to move on to the next step and Test Your Search Results.

Test Your Search Results

1. Navigate to the search center.
2. Enter a query that will return an item whose content type is Link. If you’re having trouble finding any, you can search for “ContentType:Link” and you’re guaranteed to get one if you have any.
3. Verify that your search results are displaying the correct URLs visually as well as functionally. That is, you should both see the correct link and be taken to it when you click on a search result.